KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 23 – Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) spent about RM500 million on talent management as well as on leadership training and competency building across its 51,000 employees last year. President and Chief Executive Officer Datuk Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin said apart from making a hefty investment to nurture talents, the company also spent a lot of time looking at succession plan and employee development needs.
“It is quite a significant sum, but we take it as a long-term investment. The company put a lot of emphasis on talent management due to the changing demographic landscape within the company as 55 per cent of Petronas employees were below the age of 35,” Wan Zulkiflee said at the CPA Congress 2015 here on Tuesday.
“On the future of fossil fuels, the fuels would continue to be an important part of energy mix in the next 20 to 30 years. Meanwhile, the despite increased efforts to use alternative energy, the contribution of alternative energy to the energy mix was still small compared with fossil fuels,” he said.
“There were still a lot of things that needed to be put in place to make alternative energy as a major contributor to energy mix such as incentives and technological breakthrough. So, I think for the next 20 to 30 years, I’m confident that fossil fuels will still play a big role,” he said.
“The technological breakthrough helped the oil and gas industry to continue production, thus sustaining the supply of fossil fuels in the market as in Malaysia, today we are drilling deep water with a depth close to two km offshore Sabah. That was not possible in the 80s, but now we have access to that resources,” he added.
Therefore, it also had been themed “Leadership, Strategy, Business” which the congress drew about 300 participants from the accounting profession, multinational corporations, financial institutions, business community and public sector as well as the students.
