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The summer before her senior year in high school, Maria Martinez landed a job as an office education assistant at an oil company. She was placed in the executive suite but didn’t have a desk; she just worked around a table in the file room. Some things don’t change, and some do. Martinez is still at an oil company, but today, her office is right next to that of Murphy Oil Corporation’s CEO.
The vice president of human resources and administration oversees all global human capital programs including HR, training and development, talent acquisition and retention, diversity and inclusion, compensation, and benefits and administration. Martinez has spent more than fourteen years at Murphy Oil Corporation, and in that time, she’s amassed institutional knowledge that cannot be overvalued.
“With a career like mine, I’ve done all of the jobs in HR, and I think that allows me to understand how to serve my team best,” Martinez says. “Whether it’s compensation or recruiting, I have been there. I’ve done it. And now, I want to help advance others, because someone did that for me. I want to ensure that my team has those same opportunities.”
While the VP worked in HR at a number of different organizations, none managed to keep her for such a lengthy tenure. Martinez says it’s a reflection of the culture at Murphy: great people, great teams, great leadership, and an organization truly centered on its core values. And those are values with which Martinez naturally connects.
“We were able to implement a number of programs for girls with our sister organization in Mexico. We’ve had opportunities to engage with the Mexican Senate and with the UK Parliament, and it’s all centered around empowering girls and women.”
Maria Martinez
One of those values seems to inform the rest: Do Right Always.
“We respect people, safety, the environment, and the law,” reads Murphy’s “Our Purpose” page on its website. “We follow through on all commitments. We make it better. And we share openly and accurately.”
The VP says she’s focused on ensuring Murphy creates and maintains the best programs possible to attract and retain high-caliber talent. That process involves securing feedback from employees about what they need, what they want, and what makes them happy to come to work.
“We try and stay creative about how we engage with our staff and ensure that what we’re offering is competitive and a reflection of what people actually want,” Martinez says. “I know this sounds simple, but I think HR can sometimes design benefit programs without speaking with their people first. We need to seek that input, so our employees understand that they’re part of the process.”
Martinez says now, more than ever, it’s imperative for employees to see a chance for development and advancement with their employer. Murphy’s talent management team has worked hard to create career ladders and to ensure managers are having conversations with their employees around their growth and future development.
Martinez is inspired by Murphy’s strong engagement in the communities where it is present. That includes a $50 million commitment through the El Dorado Promise, a scholarship that pays tuition and fees at any public or private university for students at El Dorado High School in Murphy’s previous Arkansas headquarters.
Murphy also annually participates in a campaign to raise funds and volunteer time for United Way, an effort that has raised more than $15 million over the past two decades.
Martinez says she’s incredibly proud of how her organization has responded to its own employees in times of significant need.
“Our former CEO would say, ‘You’re not going to see me on the news handing out a giant check, but we’re going to take care of our employees,’” the VP recalls. “We’ve responded to hurricanes, floods, winter storms, and other challenges in ways that make me so proud to be here. We have the ability to help our staff, and we take that responsibility seriously.”
Martinez is an extension of that giving spirit. The HR leader has just completed her tenure as board chair of the Greater Houston Women’s Chamber of Commerce, an organization dedicated to the advancement and empowerment of women.
“I know this sounds simple, but I think HR can sometimes design benefit programs without speaking with their people first. We need to seek that input, so our employees understand that they’re part of the process.”
Maria Martinez
“I’m so proud of what we were able to accomplish in the last year,” the VP says. “We were able to implement a number of programs for girls with our sister organization in Mexico. We’ve had opportunities to engage with the Mexican Senate and with the UK Parliament, and it’s all centered around empowering girls and women.”
That focus on the empowerment of women is especially poignant for Martinez. She’s the eldest of three girls. She now has two of her own. She and her husband of twenty-five years both want to ensure that the working world their daughters enter has been made better the strong women that came before them.
She hopes her daughters might pursue HR in their own careers, but regardless, her daughters have grown up with the role model of someone who has accomplished great things and endeavored to create those same opportunities for others.
