Oil Drilling Jobs Demand Teamwork for Success and Safety

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.”

– Henry Ford

In many lines of work, having a real team, where members put aside their own interests for the good of the team, is mandatory to keep each member safe.

Oil drilling jobs are a perfect example of where teamwork is at the heart of on-the-job safety.

If one member is careless, if one member allows his or her ego to enter the play, there can be serious consequences. But when each member of the team really knows his or her role and does it professionally, they’re ensuring the well-being, the safety, and often, the very lives of their co-workers and themselves. The level of on-the-job safety is multiplied greatly when each member dedicates every move they make to the well-being of the group. This is critical for oil drilling jobs where the safety of each rig worker rests in the hands of every single crew member.

Today, we seem to hear about teamwork, team building, team spirit and being a team player more and more in reference to the workplace than we do sports.

Maybe we’re attracted to this concept of team, because we’ve seen the success athletes enjoy, even from a very young age, when they perform as a team. The old saying, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is demonstrated daily by major and minor league sports teams around the world. Baseball, football, hockey and soccer players alike have experienced the benefit of putting their individual good or desires second to the best interest of the team.

Oil drilling jobs are no different. An efficient and coordinated division of labor is mission critical on a rig. Losing the game on this playing field could mean losing a finger or worse. Working together on a rig, synchronized like a well-oiled machine, means everyone involved gets to work, win and play another day.

Experienced oil rig workers know that fitting each crew member into the job they do the best can make the work easier and safer for everyone.

And one thing is sure, on a rig there is no place for pretending you know or guessing because the rig can be unforgiving and sometimes brutal to those who bite off more than they can chew.

The right crew member in the right place at the right time is what fuels a productive and safe working rig crew. In other words: teamwork.

How safe and engaged any one workforce is should be the yardstick used to measure success in any line of work. CanElson Drilling Inc. is a great example of a company where safety is on the minds of every staff member. President and CEO, Randy Hawkings, says, “The kind of people we’re trying to attract are the people who what to play on a team, who want to work safely, who want to go home to their families with all their fingers and toes…”

There is no question that teamwork plays as large, maybe even a larger, role in the success of our personal and working lives than it does in sports. Oil field or ball field, teamwork rules.