Exxonmobil has a system in place to identify and learn from previous losses, ranging from monetary to the intangibles. For years, this company is open in communicating these losses to all employees, in a hope that we can learn and not repeat these mistakes.

But are we really transparent? I fear not.

As early as July, we were all told that the company has been shortchanging us in CPF contribution payments for many years. It seems that the Human Resource Executives handling our payroll has been calculating our overtime payments in error.

And guess what was the Root Cause of this?

Not the Executives’ mistake, of course. But because we, the lowly technicians have been submitting our Overtime Claims late. How can submitting an overtime claim, at most, 72 hours after the end of our overtime be late?

It’s all through the magic of you vs me - who is of higher rank or status.

It doesn’t matter if you’re wrong when you are a supervisor, it will all be swept under the carpet.

A shift superintendent had rolled his SUV at a process plant, nobody bats an eyelid. But when a technician cracks his left rear signal light due to an error in judgement while parking, everyone loses their minds.