During my internship I gained an understanding on how BP operates on a day to day basis

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
BP also have a set of people who deliver parcels to people at their desks. Furthermore, an important factor in BP is meetings.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
BP also do a lot for young people. They provide work experience, internships and have a graduate programme.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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. 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. 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.