Prominp

Objective

To improve the Brazilian oil and gas industry and to bridge the projected skill gap.

Overview and Main Activities

Prominp is a federal government programme implemented with collaboration among government agencies, the private sector, trade associations and labour unions. Petrobas is the main source of financing of the programme, which aims to improve operations of Brazil’s oil and gas industry by bridging the projected skill gap. To achieve this, Prominp established a three-step process:

1. Identifying talent requirements: Prominp developed a five-year projection of the manpower needs in specific geographies and skill areas such as shipyard welding, pipefitting or petroleum engineering.
2. Coordinating curriculum development: Prominp gathered big companies in each field to identify specific skill requirements down to the level of specific activities. Then, it identified suitable education providers to co-develop a curriculum with selected companies to meet those exact needs.
3. Overseeing training: Prominp ensures that providers are offering appropriate programmes according to talent demands for the respective region. Training is co-delivered by education providers and selected employers through a mix of theory and practical training. Prominp also selects 30,000 participating students a year and sponsors their education in the form of tuition payment and allowance. More than 80% of students receive full-time employment after graduation.

Prominp is popular among participating companies since no financial contribution is required. Petrobras funds 90% of the programme, and the government funds the rest. In addition, the risk of sharing sensitive information is limited as none of the participating companies is a true competitor of Petrobras.

In addition to Petrobas, partners include the Brazilian National Development Bank, Ministry of Mining and Energy, National Organization of Industry and the Brazilian Institute for Petroleum.

Success Factors and Challenges

Most critical success factors:

• Shared stakeholder ownership of students’ education
• Industry-relevant curriculum co-developed by major companies and providers to ensure relevance
• Sector-wide collaboration

Main challenges:

• As Prominp does not require job promises or commitments from participating employers, there is no guarantee of employment following training, and so some graduates struggle to find jobs

Replicability and Scalability

How easily can this initiative be expanded to include a larger number of participants?
Easy: Prominp already operates at a large scale, since the programme is implemented at the sector level; thus, it is able to reach potential employees across the industry and scale up.

About the Organization

Website: www.mckinsey.com
Sector: Professional Services
Size (number of employees): 10,000 – 50,000
Headquarters: New York, United States