Oil and gas companies are willing to invest a significant amount of capital in skilled workers, especially in cases where they are pushed to bring them in from overseas – a fact companies like Aussie Orientation Services know all too well.

The company takes charge of looking after the imported human capital making its way to Australian projects by helping to make the resettling process easier.

“There are a lot more senior personnel that we look after these days, and it’s expensive to bring people from overseas,” company founder and director Sue Pember said.

“People don’t do it just for fun, you can’t find the people here.”

The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association agrees on that point, referencing industry case studies in its Improving labour productivity: a regulatory reform agenda and asserting that contrary to popular belief, skilled migrants are not cheaper than local workers.

So, how do you make sure your investment sticks around?

Woodside has recognised the threat of local competitors moving towards operational phases in various projects over the next few years, making its own workers involved in the Pluto and North West Shelf LNG projects look mighty attractive.

According to the company certain skills sets, particularly in operations, continue to be in demand in the oil and gas sector, leading to an increase in its turnover.

On a global scale, Woodside’s voluntary turnover rate increased from 8.4% in 2012 to 9.4% in 2013, according to its last sustainable development report.

Among the Western Australian company’s attraction and retention strategy, focus points include the recruitment of entry level employees, competitive remuneration and promoting the company externally.

For those companies forced to search wider for skilled workers, however, there is a lot more involved in game of retaining employees.

A recently announced proposal from the Immigration Department outlined potential rules that allow foreign workers to come to Australia on a short-term mobility visa, enabling them to work for up to one year without a 457 visa.

The proposal is designed to facilitate the completion of specialised work over a short period; however, according to Pember, the investment required to bring workers over means many companies seek longer-term arrangements.

Pember said the job of keeping relocated skilled workers on the pay roll extended well beyond just keeping them happy at work.

“What we do is we help people when they move to Australia,” she said.

“We help them get a rental property, send kids to school, create a new life and get involved with the community.

“It comes down to a lot of productivity from an employer’s point of view, because the last thing they want is for an employee to be learning on the ground and spending all their time getting a rental property or being concerned about their wife and kids not being happy.

“At the end of the day, if an employee’s not happy or settled and they pick up stumps and go again, that’s very expensive to a project.”

APPEA asserted that the oil and gas sector had it harder than a lot of other industries as wages, on average, equalled between 2 and 2.5 times higher than base salary when employing overseas workers.

“If a salary was, say, $100,000 for an Australian worker, the cost to employ an overseas worker would be around $250,000 per annum over the life of the assignment,” the national representative said in its report.

“These business costs generally include visa processing costs, flights, car accommodation, medical checks, shipping for transporting personal effects, insurances, expatriate allowances and so on and these can be significantly higher if, as in many cases, spouse and children are also involved.”

The Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency’s last Skills for a transitioning resources sector report, issued in December 2013, predicted a 57% increase in oil and gas employment from 2013 to 2018 thanks to the operations phase move.

“Resources companies will need to develop more people with specialised technical skills and industry experience, to maintain momentum and growth in the sector,” the agency said.

“While many companies and education providers are delivering effective skills development programs, AWPA believes individual efforts will not be sufficient to prepare the sector for the challenging skills demands which lie ahead.

“With a long lead time required to develop critical skills for the sector’s future, especially in oil and gas, it is clear industry, government and education and training providers need to collaborate and plan now to develop the workforce the industry will need in the years to 2018.”

Woodside seems to have taken the hint, running programs to engage future workers with the prospect of a job in the sector.

Its 2014 graduate program took in 71 graduates, including 12 international graduates – approximately 50% higher than the 2013 intake.

“As we go more into the operations phase [of LNG projects] they’re looking for people that have operations experience that have been working in one area for 10 or 15 years and those people don’t grow on trees, and they’re not in Australia,” Pember said.

“Those people need to be head-hunted, the people that have been working in operations, on a particular project for 10 years, that’s the kind of person they want, because turnover is really expensive and you can’t afford that in operations. So you want someone who’s not going to project hop. You want to pick them out of wherever they are, bring them to Australia and keep them happy and keep them engaged.”