Challenges in Attracting and Retaining a Workforce in Mining Sector
The mining industry is undergoing through the shortage of qualified professionals which are unable to meet its production needs. Every year, most of the people leave this sector for pursuing careers in different domains. There are few prime reasons like industry image, decreasing number of graduates from mining programs and draining of knowledge. These challenges and trends have been widely discussed over traditional mining countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia and United States. The Canadian mining industry recruits 25,000 to 65,000 employees over the next 5 years (Bartram, 2018). From the past 2 decades, there is decrease in the number of individuals and it is expected to decrease by 10 percent. More than 30 percent of Canadian Mining employees will retire. Mining companies have started acknowledging that current supply scarcity will have a lot of impact over the efficiency, profitability and productivity of operations. The scarcity of skilled workers, which is in combination with increased turnover rates are top factors which have an impact over the growth. This is done by delaying or completely stopping the projects.
Employees are regarded as valuable assets, but mining industry considers it as a backbone. The mining industry needs to spend money on training and recruiting of employees, but also impact the staff productivity and morale. The challenges for Human resource department are to retain talented workers. The mining jobs are demanding and employees cannot stay in roles beyond an average age. The operations are followed by the truck drivers, service operators and worker supervisors. The employment differences have been negative in the mining industry.
The Mining industry is undergoing through the retirement stage. There are traditional challenges which are being suffered by the countries like Pakistan, United States and Australia from past 2 decades. According to the statistics, more than 5 percent of the people retire form mining industry every year. According to the business consulting, research, there are critical risks for every industry (Lieber, 2012) –
- Increased labor competition-Firms need to hire more labor when marginal revenue is greater than wage rate. The labor market differs from market of goods and services because labor demand is considered as the derived demand.
- Expansion of skills-Skill up-gradation is required in few occupations. Finding a well-qualified and well trained employee needs to focus on the productivity and innovation. The greatest change is technological change can produce shifts in skill requirements (Jamieson, 2018).
- Increased competition from entry talent-pool- Competition is one of the biggest factors which exist among the employees and the application and recruitment process must be simple and automatic. It will be a win-win solution for every employed(Khoo, 2013).
- Loss of retention rates and executive knowledge- The organization ability to retain its employees. This is represented through the simple statistic. If the retention rate is poor, then satisfaction and commitment will be withdrawn. The organizations will lose hope in the employee and will start looking for other personnel(Traub, 2004).
- Impaired Productivity and stagnant growth-Productivity is everything in the long run. In order to improve the standard of living, the country must be focused towards improving the output of each worker(Cahill & Sedrak, 2012).
- Changing environment-The present environment is affected by a number of variables. These can be external or internal variable. An internal variable has a long term effect on the workforce. The workers need to be motivated through high wages and special skills training. The external variables which can have an impact over the organizations are GDP, National income and export and import policies which can have a large impact over the investments made(Cahill & Sedrak, 2012).
- Loss of operational knowledge- The concept of risk is very broad. It represents an opportunity and danger. There are abstract possibilities and controlling policies by which ideal forms of projects can be developed. A classification system must be developed for reshaping of the organizational change and mining processes(Bostjancic & Slana, 2018).
- Weaker Management teams- At times, the organization has a weaker management team due to which control cannot be exercised over the workers. This is mainly due to the conflict of interests, breach of fiduciary duty, mismanagement, waste of organizational resources; more than 50 percent of managers are ready to commit the crime. Crisis management, risk management and corporate social responsibility are three variables which determine the position of a firm in a long run(Ali, Metz & Kulik, 2015).
- High Involvement work procedures- These days, the operational mining work procedures are time-consuming and lengthy. The high involvement work practices must engage the employees in a way so that firm’s productivity can be reached. The company should focus on the employee productivity and fair remuneration. An employee involvement program is participative management. This program allows the workers to get into decision making power(DuBow, 2014). Workers unions comprises of elected or nominated employees, which are consulted through management in decision making procedures. The direct participation can help the organizations fulfill the mission and can meet with the objectives. The workforce will be applying its own ideas, efforts and towards problem solution and making decisions. Employee involvement is a practice which is adopted by the companies that will have a direct impact on the jobs and employee empowerment is a corporate body which allows non-managerial workforce to take decisions (Ogle & Eaves, 2017).
- Research Limitations- the Company must identify the shortcomings of the mining work and how these research limitations can have a major impact on the mining research. The research can have numerous limitations, but it is essential to discuss those are stated in the research objective(Dillman, 2000). Formulation of research objectives must be narrowed to a level of focus and studies can be conducted. An implementation of data collection practices requires extensive experience and there are high chances that the methods adopted can be flawed. A sample size is dependent on the research problem (Bhandari, 2018).
Gender Discrimination at Work
Gender discrimination means treating the individuals in a different form in employment because of the respective genders. There are instances where the rejection takes place due to employment or fired or harmful effects in employment, and then there is gender discrimination in the organization. In most of the laws, sex and gender are interchangeable terms, but these have two different meanings (McKenzie, 2011). The term sex has been used to refer the person’s biological identity as male or female. Discrimination is considered illegal regardless of sex or gender. Hiring/promotions and firing are based on the gender discriminations. The individual has made application for the job, having the similar experience and excellent qualifications because of the premise that supervisors can handle the men in the mining industry (Elias, 2008).
Five Themes
Women entrepreneurs can grow in small scale mining industries, but people are finding it hard to grow and business development (De Cieri, Zhang & Dowling, 2018). Gender discrimination will be adding more challenges and preventing woman from accessing the money for enhancement of activities. Women entrepreneurs lack financial resources. There could be a lot of ease in the mining industry if labors were paid easily and women may not be reluctant to work with men. Financial institutions practice the bureaucratic tendencies and prevent the floating of money into the scale of operations. There are mining businesses which are unable to reach the full potential. The women are appealing for every sector and ensure financial resources are provided to the women, it must not be any obstacle to conducting the good business (Czarniawska, 2006).
Organizational ethics and HR
the mining industry worldwide has been making use of large labor stocks for the achievement of organizational objectives. A lot of studies have been conducted for determining the HR practices that are currently followed at the Pakistan, China, Bangladesh and USA. The mining companies need to adopt the result based approach which can act as a benchmark with the present HR practices is compared to. The research data has been gathered through the convenient HR managers(Valentine, Hollingworth & Francis, 2013). Mining companies in Australia need to interact with the different stakeholders group. A different range of programs must be undertaken by the communities to assist the public profile and land access. Depending upon the cross-cultural diversity, initiatives must be taken towards the power sharing and broadening the organizational interface and adopting more ethical practices in the mining industry. The mining companies which are operating in Australia are changing drastically (Duncan & Loretto, 2004). There is a need of changing the human resource practice and evolving a set of criteria’s which have simply economic or productivity output. The effective utilization of workforces is necessary and identification of factors to promote the strategy. If a mining company uses the resource based view, the greatest results can be produced with little cost as possible. A company is presented with external opportunities and decreases its internal weaknesses to create a competitive advantage among others. HR practices must be developed in the way that it is too hard to imitate the measures by a different company (Geimer, Zolner & Allen, 2017).
Mining supervisors need to ensure the underground resources like metals, oil and gas and minerals must be extracted safely. There are a number of job responsibilities which will assess the commercial benefits and feasibility of new sites. Job analysis of union councils and the workforce must comply with health and safety requirements. For instance- On a track record the commodity prices in Australia are having increased value; this can be accounted to expansion periods. The value of mineral exports has been increased to a point where it can cover half of the export value. Mining expansion plays a significant role in the rising exchange rate of Australia. The non-mining sectors are under pressure due to high exchange rates. Manufacturing in Australia has been declined 5.5 percent over the last year. The number of international tourists coming to Australia has reduced as people tend to choose the cheaper destinations(McCarthy, 2004).
Gender Discrimination at Work
Most of the mining jobs are well paid and 99 percent of people living in Queensland have high housing costs, high interest rates and lesser tourism jobs, agriculture and manufacturing. Research shows that people have overestimated the economic effects and little consideration has been provided to the economic costs. The mining boom can make larger profits for foreign owners and companies can easily benefit through unions who are in close association with industry. However, it is easy to take up the advantages of the Australian mines. The mining industry is very quick to claim profits and revenue through job retention, but reluctant for the adverse impacts of the expansion of different activities.
Ageing Workforce and HR planning
The business leaders have a strong focus towards the people strategies. The present era is witnessing demographic shifts in Australia, Pakistan, USA and has resulted in labor and skills shortages. This can threaten the business growth and potentials. In mining, these trends are known through economic cycles, ageing workforce and volatility. Moreover, the mining companies have started shifting towards the strategic HR practices, HR analytics, workforce planning and workforce optimization (Sharma & Sahoo, 2013). Workforce planning is a short term which requires recruitment planning and need based staffing plans must be integrated so as to allow the organizations to mitigate the business risks.
The mining business needs to measure the workforce and forecasting requirements and invest proactively in the retention and growth of the workforce. The union workers must be imparted with the right knowledge, abilities and skills must be in the right place and right time for meeting the business objectives. Strategic workforce planning must be adopted for reducing the fluctuating commodity price and economic cycles. The mining industry allows for efficient and effective use of union workers and management decisions must meet with the long term and immediate needs. Advanced workforce must be designed to help the industry workers what are the economic obstacles and which proactive plan will be needed over the longer time period. The mining sector composes of a wide number of organizations-small companies to lean operations, flat corporate organizations to multinational organizations with extensive design organizations. Irrespective of the differences existing in organizational structures, mining industry is competing for skilled labor. The employers face tough competition and management needs to address the long term conflicts in a coordinated industry approach for attracting and retention of the workforce (Varney, 2008).
Job Analysis
Fair Work Commission and Employee conflict resolution
There are different mechanisms for employee representation and voice in the mining industry. The procedures are connected with the employment relationships which include-
- Delegated regulation-This type of regulation is dependent on the operational mode of the company being in question, whereas individual voices will not have any great effect. Collective voices will come through the organization’s role in dispute processes.
- Statutory regulation- In statutory regulation, voice is raised politically. Individual mechanisms can come through a political party membership. This can grant legal rights to individual employees.
- Individual contracting- In individual contracting system, workers will be directly dealing with the organization, employer and formally agree to the employment terms(Pounder, 2009).
- Collective decision making-This is dependent on the organizational model as employees can participate through collective means like trade unions and ratify the agreement.
- Managerial Unilateralism-the workers will be participating as individuals through the complete acceptance of rules which are made by management. The company can allow selected employee input through employee councils, but operation takes place at the management discretion.
The disputes can occur at any stage. Union councils need to productive and cooperative and grievances must be taken seriously through the employers. There is always an opportunity for independent union councils to assist in the resolution of a given dispute. Conflict resolution can take place only by bringing disputes to an end. Foremost, the union council, employer and employees must engage in negotiated outcome. Here, the parties will sort the things themselves. Another way of solving conflicts in the mining industry is through the mediated income. The parties will be using the independent mediator services and arrive at an agreement. The mining companies can also engage in adjudicated or arbitrated outcome where the court will determine how the conflicts will be resolved and binding decision to the effect.
Conclusion
The union councils have interesting consequences for balancing the acts between collectivism and individualism and therefore the employee voice. The dismissal of unfair provisions provides the individuals with the opportunity to initiate the complaint. The employees were reliant over the trade unions for the treatment of their dispute. At present, mining industry must understand the advantages associated with the collective agreement which can encourage the employees to become a part of trade unions. The compulsory arbitration means a guaranteed role for trade unions towards the provision of different rules.
The negotiation needs to be done with the employers and strategies must be adopted which are focused towards organizing model rather on servicing model. This encourages decentralization of the locus of power and provides ranking opportunities to union members. Workers can directly exercise voices and participate in the negotiation of the collective agreements. The Workplaces Relations act allow the employees to make an appointment of bargaining agents. This is simply drawn from the management laws and must be presented to the employees for approval. However, employers should be prohibited to compel the employee for signing an agreement and preventing the employer for providing the job to take it or leave basis. The voice mechanism structures are appealing.
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