Western Australia miners coding psychosocial health into safety protocols

Psychosocial safety is being added to miners' safety protocols in Western Australia, the world's biggest iron ore and lithium producer, to combat sexual harassment.

A June 2022 parliamentary inquiry report into sexual harassment of women in the fly-in, fly-out mining industry detailed harassment and violence. The inquiry also found that employees did not trust existing hierarchical management structures to adequately address the problem.

"One of the most important things about what we've done in changing the way we think about psychosocial safety in our workplace and how we treat mental health and emotional challenges is to move it to a safety context rather than a [human resources and industrial relations] context," Warren Pearce, CEO of the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies, told the Driving Respect mining industry summit in Perth on Aug. 1.

Addressing psychosocial issues is "gaining momentum" in the industry, Curtin University professor Sharon Parker told S&P Global Commodity Insights. Parker led a Western Australian government-funded landmark study into mental health and workplace culture across the state's mining sector in 2018.

"Employers are realizing that sexual harassment, which impacts workers' psychological welfare, is also part of their safety," said Parker, who defines psychosocial hazards as "things that cause stress in the workplace."

"This [culture change] never, ever happens fast enough, and we need it to happen faster than it has before, and [industry is] absolutely committed to delivering that change on the ground," Rebecca Tomkinson, CEO of the Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia, told the summit.

Australian academic Sharon Parker at the Aug. 1 Driving Respect mining industry summit. Source: S&P Global Commodity Insights.

Making progress

Miners in the top 200 companies of the Australian Securities Exchange "tend to place more priority on physical health and safety, with less attention to mental health and well-being and even less on the topic of respect," Parker told the summit, regarding the results of her team's study.

Things seem to be improving in Western Australia, Parker said. About 23% of women and 11% of men reported being subject to bullying in a broad sense at least two to three times a month in the past six months at their resources sector workplaces, declining from 2018.

"If bullying improves, it's fair to assume that sexual harassment is improving too, though there's no way of knowing for sure right now," Parker said in an interview. Parker's team will release its latest findings in October, then repeat the study in 2025.

Rio Tinto Group has been shutting down its entire West Australian iron ore business for an hour every October for the last two years "so every team can talk about respect," Richard Cohen, managing director for port, rail and core services, told the summit. Prior to that, operations had only been shut down for a fatality.

"The first year we did that, supervisors and superintendents wanted senior leaders in the room to steer the conversation. Last October, literally senior leaders got kicked out of the room because supervisors wanted to have a much more intimate, honest conversation about progress," Cohen said.

Sam Retallack, chief people officer at IGO Ltd., which owns part of the world's largest hard rock lithium mine at Greenbushes in Western Australia, told the summit that "there have been some people that have left our organization because they've acted in a way that was inappropriate, and we've moved them on."

Skills shortage solution

Addressing psychosocial health in the industry, particularly for women, is seen as key to the skills shortage crippling the sector.

"Given the significant skills shortages we are seeing across the resources sector and the wider economy, we cannot have a mining and energy sector which inhibits women's full participation," Australian Minister for Resources Madeleine King told the summit via a prerecorded speech.

Western Australia's government is starting a pilot program in the first quarter of 2024 to support Gold Fields Ltd. unit Gold Fields Australia Pty. Ltd. with templates on auditing and policies regarding sexual harassment matters, said Sue Ellery, Western Australia minister for women's interests.

"The mining industry will not be as good as it can be until it has all the workforce available to it," Western Australian Mines Minister Bill Johnston said, noting that women only comprise 20% of the state's resources sector. "If it doesn't provide a respectful work environment, women don't come into the industry, and that means industry will miss out on the skills capacities that women bring to industry."

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