I have completed a six week summer internship at BP; BP is one of the world’s six major oil and gas companies. BP is a public limited company (Plc) which means that shares are available to be bought by anyone and is listed on the London stock exchange.

During my internship I gained an understanding on how BP operates on a day to day basis and the experience will be beneficial in future work.

Structure of the work program

Firstly, BP have an induction for all new members of staff. During the induction, new staff will be instructed on the health and safety, for instance holding the hand rail, having lids on all drinks. They will also be given details about BP, what they do and what they offer their employees. Lastly, they will talk about what happens in emergencies such as fires or if somebody needs medical help. Experiencing an induction at BP will be beneficial for future jobs as you will already have an understanding on procedures and policies which usually are similar between different companies. In addition, you can ask any questions on things they may have missed which may be very important.

Everyone who works at BP has a designated base where they work. They will be located surrounding the team to encourage teamwork. It also makes working easier because it’s easy to ask questions with team members who are located near you; it would be a hassle if you had to travel to ask something. BP also have hot desks which means that anyone who comes to work there but doesn’t have a designated base can work at these desks. Because BP have designated bases where employee work it means that when working at another company it is easy to ask questions, for instance asking if they do the same thing. This will ensure that you know where all employees are if you needed to see them and know that the people located around you are likely to be team members.

BP employees are only specialised in their jobs. They do not have a rotation policy. This means only people within teams can complete the job. This is because they have already had the training and have the knowledge of what the job is about which means nobody from outside the team will be able to do the job. However, BP do encourage employees to move around in different areas of the business. Knowing that companies have rotating programs will mean that you can ask questions to future employers if they offer the same program. And it can reassure the employee if they need to take time off there will be people who can fill in for you as they have people able to complete your job. In addition, by asking questions may allow you to rotate to a different job; opening up new opportunities.

Work practice role setting

There are many different roles in BP. Firstly there is administration. Administration is the process of organising people and resources efficiently. Tasks they may include receiving phone calls, attending to guests, paper work and they also include personal assistance. They also have to deal with post. Post is usually organised by administration and the reception. Knowing that there are admin teams will prompt questions at a new job to find out if they have the same team. This will allow you to know if you have to do all the admin jobs yourself or if there are people who can do it for you.

BP also have a set of people who deliver parcels to people at their desks. Furthermore, an important factor in BP is meetings. It’s important that at other companies you find out what their post services are. Because of previous experience you can ask questions regarding if they have the same policies and find out how and where to send post.

Meetings are usually arranged on Outlook and Lync and they provide a notification when a meeting is booked and when it is coming up. When arranging meetings there needs to be information like the date and venue of the meeting, a link to join the online Lync meeting and the agenda of what the meeting is about. The majority of meetings at companies are used on outlooks and therefore the knowledge learnt at BP can be used at other companies to set up meetings and to have conferences via Lync.

In addition, they produce manuals; staff will receive handouts on policies and procedures and health and safety. They also have the intranet where the handouts will be located. Manuals are very useful for new employees to find out Information about the company and information on procedures and policies. Experience on where to find these manuals can be used to find manuals at other companies.

Moreover, they will need people to order stationery. Every building has a section where all stationery is located; the cleaners are in charge of maintaining the stationery and restocking if needed. But they would contact the administration team for them to order stationery if they were running low. As BP had a stationary section, at a different company you will need to find out if they provide stationary. If they don’t, it’s important to bring your own as stationary is vital.

In addition, administration will do archiving; this is when you file away documents for a later date. Archiving is usually done electronically on websites like SharePoint. It is then easy to access when it’s needed at a later date. Archiving has to be done in every company and the way it is done may differ from different place. Knowing that achieving is done it’s important to ask questions to a future company to ask if they archive electronically or store it in boxes.

Lastly, BP allow work shadowing for new staff and work experience students. This is where they are matched with an experienced member of team gain a better understanding of the job so that they can do it in the future. It’s important at future companies to ask if they have work shadowing at it is very beneficial when learning.

Experiences

After completing an interview, the interviewer will provide valuable appropriate feedback to the candidate. This is good because they can understand what they did great and what they can improve on which can help them at later interviews. After the interview you can gain feedback in which you can work on to improve for any other interviews in the future.

BP also do a lot for young people. They provide work experience, internships and have a graduate programme. Other companies may offer the same placements for young people and therefore it’s useful to know if you want to participate or know someone who would want to as you can ask the company what they do for young people.

The majority of the employees at BP have full time jobs. However, there will be people who have part time jobs where they have set days. And there will be people who work for BP temporally because they may be filling in for somebody who is absent or may be there to finish a specific project. It’s important to know when people are working so you will need to ask working hours of employees. This is because you may need to contact someone but they may be unable to respond if it’s out of hours.

Health and safety is very important to BP and they make sure every employee knows the set of health and safety rules. These include hold the hand rail when going up and down the stairs and to never use your phone whilst on the stairs; also ensure that all drinks hot or cold, have lids on them to ensure they don’t spill over which could ruin paperwork or electrical items. They also have tests of the fire alarms and public address system every week which ensure that if there are any problems that they are in order so that everyone is safe. Policies on health and safety are likely to be similar across all companies and so the knowledge learnt from precious jobs can be then adapted to other jobs.

Teamwork is evident at BP. As team members sit amongst each other they are encouraged to ask each other questions. Also emails are sent to all the team and to team in other countries. Furthermore, in meetings everyone works as a team to contribute ideas. Because teamwork is used in every job, skills learnt at previous jobs can then be used within any job elsewhere which can increase work produced.

When employed the employee will be aware of all responsibilities of employment. They will receive a job description which will tell them their roles, who they are responsible to and who are they responsible for. Because you will have had an idea previously of your responsibilities when you get to a new job you can ask what the job responsibilities are so they know what is the job is and what isn’t.

Information

Information has great importance in BP. Firstly recording information, storing and reporting information is usually done on SharePoint; this is a website where documents can be stored. Knowing the way in which information is stored can help store information at future jobs as you will have the knowledge on how to do it. You can also ask the employer how they store the information.

They then may share this information because they want other opinions or because it may help them. This may also be shared on SharePoint or email, Lync calls or teleconferencing. Having previous experience on sharing information can be useful as you will know in what ways you can share the information and also you will have practice which will make the delivery of the information easy and professional. For example in meetings, you will have practice which will improve the presentation.

However, this information may be confidential and so when new staff are employed they will be told to turn computer screens off when not in use and lock the screen, don’t leave print outs lying around and they will also sign a confidentiality contract. You can take the knowledge on how to keep information confidential to other companies which will help ensure the safety of information.

Lastly, to improve confidentially all staff will have passwords on their laptop and to any information sharing medium; only the people with the passwords can gain access.

In conclusion, working at BP has improved my understating on the workplace and I now have a great understating of how BP operate as a large successful energy company. Although there are things that I still need to learn, with the knowledge I have it will benefit me at future jobs.