Energy professionals may be holding on to the more traditional ways of collaborating with employees through face-to-face meetings, e-mail and conference calls, but a growing number think that some of the Internet’s social media and networking sites could improve the workplace, a survey has found.

Around 40% of 272 oil and natural gas professionals surveyed said productivity would be boosted on the job if energy companies adopted instant messaging (IM), podcasts and other social media tools, according to a survey by Microsoft Corp. and Accenture. The survey was released Wednesday at the Microsoft Global Energy Forum 2009 in Houston.

More than 70% of industry engineers, geoscientists and business managers worldwide responded that collaboration and knowledge-sharing were important for driving revenue, cutting costs and contributing to the health and safety of workers. Coming as perhaps no surprise, 61% said they spend at least one hour each working day searching for information and knowledge sources that they said were necessary for their jobs.

“During this time of economic upheaval, when every dollar counts and effective decision-making is crucial, new technologies such as social media tools can help oil and gas industry professionals find information, collaborate and generally be more productive,” said Microsoft’s Craig Hodges, U.S. energy and chemicals industry solutions director. “In an environment with fewer workers and less resources, this is incremental productivity our industry can use in finding new reserves, improving execution of capital projects, driving new innovations and reducing costs.”

Around 42% of respondents said they could save at least an hour every day by using newer and more effective collaboration tools. Seventy-four percent of those questioned said these capabilities were important in managing capital projects; 51% said they were important in sourcing technical skills to enhance revenues; and 50% saw these new technologies as important to the sharing of health and safety advisories or experiences.

“Companies are dealing with several trends right now, not only the aging workforce walking out the door with decades of knowledge, but also experienced hires coming into their businesses who need to understand a new corporate culture,” said Accenture’s Claire Markwardt, senior executive of the energy practice. “Companies have an opportunity to supplement their existing collaboration capabilities with newer tools such as podcasts and social networks to accelerate the sharing of knowledge, increase teaming and augment communication between their workforces in different regions.”

More than half the respondents favored adopting social media technologies to help shrink the productivity gap, but only 37% thought their companies were prepared to enhance collaboration through the Internet.

The on-line survey was conducted in January by research firm PennEnergy in partnership with the Oil & Gas Journal Research Center. The results are available at www.microsoft.com/oilandgas.

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