Strategic HR Profile
Bundles of
energy at BP
The oil and gas giant’s group HRD has a very clear idea of how HR can help
the business transform and be fit for the future. PETER CRUSH hears how
technology, young people and reverse mentoring will all play a part
It was Oscar Wilde who wrote ‘it is what you read
when you don’t have to that determines what you
will be when you can’t help it’. It’s a maxim that
perfectly epitomises group HR director at BP
Helmut Schuster – a man whose office contains
books on many topics far beyond HR.
“Did you know a cursive ‘swish’ font is the best
one for a drinks menu?” Schuster asks
in relation to a tome on typography
atop his desk. “The flourishes give a
more luxuriant feel. Studies prove
customers buy more expensive bottles
when printed in script fashion rather
than in plain lettering.”
He adds: “Interesting isn’t it, how we
as HR professionals decide to present
staff communications?”
Schuster is one of life’s thinkers,
finding intellectual stimulation from a wide variety
of unexpected sources. “When I was young I had to
do a year’s military service,” he recalls. “That gave
me lots of time to think. I realised I didn’t want to
be an economist the subject he read at the
University of Vienna, so with the clock ticking I
went into marketing at Henkel.”
As for many HRDs one thing led to another, with
Schuster specialising in branding and then taking
on an employer branding role in BP’s refining
business. This morphed into him taking on greater
HR responsibilities. And after 22 years at the oil and
gas giant – now the 12th-largest company by
revenue, employing more than 73,000 people – he
finally got the HRD role in 2011.
Not that during this time he has grown to think
of HR as a clear-cut discipline. “HR is not at all a
codified function,” he says. “I even hate the word
HR. What my team and I do is a mix of marketing,
branding, reward, compliance, development and
everything in between. The longer I’ve done it the
more that’s become apparent. While people are what
make businesses successful, HR isn’t managing
them; it’s really about creating an ecosystem.”
BP recently predicted that renewable energy will
account for 30% of all electricity by 2040, up from
an estimate of 25% last year. And so,
considering BP is in the middle of
particularly uncertain and fastchanging
times, perhaps the above is
about as definitive as Schuster can be
in summarising what his broad
responsibilities involve.
Right now the organisation has to
transform; for example through a
venture capitalist division investing in
new start-ups such as AI firm
HR is not at
all a codified
function. I
even hate the
word HR
Belmont Technology, which BP put £4 million into
in January. But it also can’t ignore its heritage. For
instance, it is still predicting oil and gas growth of
16% between now and 2025 as world demand for
energy is forecasted to grow a third by 2030.
This presents unique talent challenges. As does
the fact that some of the businesses BP invests in are
more for stakeholding purposes – leaving their
employees to work outside BP’s control. Others such
as Chargemaster, the UK’s largest electric car
charging network bought for £130 million last year,
are absorbed directly into the company. (This latter
acquisition was made to allow BP to speed up the
introduction of ultra-fast electric charging points at
its network of 1,200 UK service stations.)
So how does all this occupy his thinking? “The
one advantage HR has over other disciplines is that
it has the ability to think about the long term,” says
Schuster. “My main message to the board is that in
Photography: Graham Trott
24 HR October 2019 hrmagazine.co.uk