Mining and Natural Resources Q4 2024
Snapshot
- While the mining industry’s top-rated risks in Aon’s Global Risk Management Survey (GRMS) focus on business operations, several key people-related risks are ranked highly. These include failure to attract and retain talent (ranked 12th by industry), workforce shortages (ranked 18th by industry) and work injuries (ranked 24th by industry).
- For many companies, strong safety and wellbeing practices leads to a more attractive employment prospect when looking to attract and retain talent, while competitive talent & benefits also links to a positive wellbeing outlook.
- From a mental health perspective, mining has a higher prevalence for poor mental health when compared to other industries with similar characteristics¹. In terms of industry specific work design variables that create additional risk for its workforce, research highlights the prevalence to work long shifts, often through Fly-in/Fly-out arrangements and a lack of diversity in the workforce – with only 10% of women working in large mines globally¹.
- Building and maintaining a psychologically safe and happy workplace is not just nice to have, it is the right thing to do. Not only does it provide the opportunity to build collaboration and forge connections among employees, but it also creates inclusive leadership practices where leaders and managers have genuine opportunities for growth and collaboration. This will naturally lead to high performance and innovation, increased productivity, reduced turnover, better engagement, and better collaboration among workers.
Welcome to our Q4, 2024 Mining Risk Insights!
In this edition we focus on arguably one of the most critical components of the mining industry – its people. While the industry’s top-rated risks focus on business operations, several key people-related risks are ranked highly, including:
- Failure to attract/retain talent (ranked 12th by industry and 4th globally) – Loss of income and additional costs incurred as a result of losing current or failing to attract new staff.
- Workforce shortage (ranked 18th by industry and 12th globally) – Loss of income and additional costs incurred due to unavailability of workers.
- Work injuries (ranked 24th by industry and globally) – Liability arising from a job-related injury (including death) to an employee from an accident or occupational disease.
Other people-related risks include aging workforce (36th), conduct (43rd) and gender pay gap (55th). So, with the critical importance of people to keep the mining industry going and the number of risks and opportunities related to these people, we have given this topic a two-part edition.
Safety and Wellbeing of the Mining Workforce
Safety and wellbeing are at the forefront of strategy for all mining companies. The safety and wellbeing of employees has a direct link to a company’s risk management practices, its culture as well as its success. Safety and wellbeing is a broad topic in itself, from physical to mental wellbeing. For many, strong safety and wellbeing practices leads to a more attractive employment prospect when looking to attract and retain talent, while competitive talent & benefits also links to positive wellbeing outlooks.
As our final publication of 2024, we trust that you find this edition on Safety & Wellbeing of the Mining Industry’s workforce of interest. Next quarter we will dive into Talent, Wellbeing and building a competitive benefits package to attract & retain talent to the industry.
We trust that you will find this publication to be insightful and as always, please contact Stacey Lloyd at Stacey.Lloyd@aon.com if you want to discuss any of this content further.
Download our Mining and Natural Resources Industry Risk Insights, to read the full report.
