Working at BP Whiting requires a certain amount of incredulity - you'll perpetually slap the back of your hand to your forehead and say "I can't believe this is how it is here! How is this allowed to go on?"
First and foremost, the company culture is extremely resistant to change. In most companies, metrics are used to measure progress towards a goal. At BP, the metrics are the goal. This was the fundamental issue at Deepwater - where employees were pressured to keep quiet about safety concerns (survivors later testified about this to Congress) so as to make the KPI (key performance indicators) look good. This tradition is alive and well at Whiting, where all attempts to improve safety, morale, and efficiency are met with managerial or HR obstruction. The "post hoc fallacy" is essentially the office slogan, as management will attribute the causes of momentary drops in hand-injuries or slips/falls on safety initiatives, when in reality its just the law of averages, and if they're down one month, they'll rise the next. At one point, the refinery was becoming so dangerous that a refinery-wide "safety suggestion" meeting was held, where employees were permitted to offer suggestions on ways to reduce hazards. Every suggestion was shot down, even those that are performed as industry norms or are common at other oil/chemical refineries. Instead, the supervisors pushed the solution of stronger metrics. No attempts are ever made to change the safety culture.
If you have the misfortune of knowing BP Whiting's HR department, you'll understand why this is. Like most businesses, all BP locations have a "speak-up line", where you can call to report harassment, threats, health/safety/environmental concerns. The company freely admits that BP Whiting is the #1 source of speak-up calls. When I first started working there, a veteran employee pulled me aside and stated outright that if I call the speak-up line, I would be fired. There is a long history of employees calling the speak-up line to report harassment by their managers, after which the manager would work in conjunction with HR to terminate the employee. That's not conjecture or guesswork - it's verifiable. This policy ends up breeding an extremely toxic environment, where some managers have full leave to harass and scream vitriol at their subordinates, berate them loudly and aggressively in front of others, and abuse their ability to assign workload well over 40 hours per week (heck, I've seen certain managers assign 75 hours/week worth of work to individuals). Remember, at BP Whiting, HR always looks the other way when management engages in unprofessional behavior. There are department supervisors/managers who have remained in the same position for literally decades, all the while presiding over teams that suffer consistent 15-20% annual turnover to get away from them. There are departments with 10-20 people in them, where no one has been there for more than 5 years as people are more apt to walk away from the money/insurance/pension in order to achieve peace of mind and get away from harassment. How the HR employees are able to collect a paycheck and not be paralyzed by guilt or embarrassment is beyond my understanding. In any case, only two types of people can flourish in such a culture: sociopathic bullies and people who are just "going through the motions" and have given up any sense of ambition.
If you are considering working here, know this: Every year, dozens of employees walk away from very attractive pensions and salaries in favor of finding a professional environment to work at. And every other year, this includes the refinery manager. The BP corporate office will continually install some new accomplished, hardworking and efficient leader into the head role at the refinery, but after a year or so of experiencing the obstructive and morale-reducing culture perpetuated by the department "leadership" and the laissez faire attitude of HR, they too walk away from the company, deferring the pay, pension and stock benefits in favor for the two things you cannot find at BP Whiting: peace of mind and professionalism.
