Attitudes to teamwork, leadership, and stress in oil industry drilling teams

Attitude questionnaires have been used in settings such as aviation and medicine to measure the human and organisational factors that impact on team performance and safety. This study set out to measure attitudes to teamwork, leadership, and stress in oil industry drilling teams (n = 91), across roles categorised as Decision makers, Evaluators, and Implementers. The offshore oil drilling environment comprises a distributed team working in a complex environment, and awareness of the human and organisational factors that can influence safe and effective performance has not to date been ascertained. Positive attitudes to interpersonal aspects of the task were indicated, with high levels of teamwork being reported. However, attitudes towards communication, leadership, and stress were less positive. These results provide a baseline measure which can then be re-examined following training interventions targeting human and organisational factors.