An oilfield services corporation headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with operations in Russia, the United States, Algeria and Australia needed a fresh business and HR strategy to manage their rapid growth. The company maintained over 1500 employees and provided a wide

range of services including acidizing, coiled tubing, fracturing, nitrogen pumping, cementing, microseismic, and industrial services.

For the CEO, developing human capital was important to the longevity and success of their business. In the early years of the company, the personnel administration department was merely the processing of payroll, benefits and applications. Over time as the corporation grew

and expanded, their human resources executive needed to be involved with the company’s leadership team and conferring with human resource experts to develop complementary goals for workforce growth and the overall business. In an ideal world, there is not a line drawn in the sand between human resource strategy and business strategy; and successful business owners realize the strong connection between the two.

The corporation’s executives were paying close attention to a trend toward blending human  resource strategy and business strategy. This was supplemented by HR technologies which have become the integrated engine for advancing their broader needs of the business, supporting far more than basic transactions, and advancing the HR and business agenda of  their strategic plan. However, the real test of a relationship between human resources and  overall business strategy is the quality of the interaction between human resource executives  nd other company executives. Many times, human resources leaders who are denied access to the boardroom complain that organizations don't appreciate the value of human capital.

A strategy was developed for the corporation to enhance the relationship between HR and business executives by demonstrating a return on investment (ROI) in human resource strategies. This involved explaining the connection between a reduction in employee turnover, retention strategies and an improvement in job satisfaction which overall improved the corporation’s bottom line. 

Shale Team also provided thought-leadership services for HR and business executives. With competition for high-caliber clients becoming more intense and an increasingly fungible array of competitors, being a thought leader is proving to be one of the most powerful ways to garner the best clients for this corporation. While HR appeared to have some influence when it came to how staffing related to strategy and how organizational structure related to implementing strategy, we found that HR played a less prominent role when it came to the development of strategy, the consideration of strategic options and other strategic areas, including acquisitions and mergers.

Therefore, Shale Team tailored a HR thought leadership strategy for corporation as follows:

        - Developed thought leadership content that was tightly targeted to oilfield services.

        - Developed content that had considerable value to both their HR and business executives.

        - Created a strategy to consistently develop ongoing thought leadership content.

There are a number of factors that effect the relationship between human resources and  business strategy. Executive leadership needs first to understand the benefits of aligning HR  goals with overall business goals. For some companies, this forward-thinking concept may need 

to be approached carefully to avoid skepticism among old-school executives who still consider  human resources as merely personnel administration. 

This corporation chose to build a relationship with the services provided by Shale Team to map  a strategy for effecting change. As a result, this corporation was named in 2008 one of "Canada's Top 100 Employers" by Mediacorp Canada Inc., and was featured in Maclean's 

newsmagazine. Later that month, corporation was also named one of Alberta's Top Employers.