Opinion: There has been a lot of recent talk about getting more Women into mining, more Indigenous Australian's into mining, more Older people into mining and of course getting more Overseas Workers into mining:
Opinion:
There has been a lot of recent talk about getting more Women into mining, more Indigenous Australian’s into mining, more Older people into mining and of course getting more Overseas Workers into mining:
On the International Recruitment front, various Governments could certainly help by getting moving with relaxing regulations and barriers currently making it far too hard to get overseas workers into this country. Someone please remind them that 99% of Australian employers are NOT out to rip off overseas workers and do not want to pay them less than what an equivalent Australian worker would be paid.
More generally, we’re often asked to comment on the hot topic of diversity. Our thoughts are that it is not so much about attracting more of any particular group into mining, but that it is more about encouraging the concept of diversity generally.
The mining industry has traditionally held quite strong stereotypes of the kinds of people that were or weren’t suited. Going forward, encouraging managers to remove these strong stereotypical filters and encourage more broad diversity, will in our view have a bigger impact than the promotion of any one interest group.
We’re absolutely FOR more women in mining, but we’re also for more older people, more indigenous people, more overseas workers, more…….
The fastest way to get there is to teach managers to take the blinkers off and value difference and diversity. This change starts at the top, as with almost all change.