Michael Gavin and Ben Tyson from PoweredBy have a combined 50 years of experience in senior HR positions, predominantly in the mining industry with major mining companies, contractors and OEM’s. Together with Maiko Lopera, who is a highly experienced and sought after industry analyst, the panel delivered a summary of what is happening now, along with possible future scenarios in the coal market as well as emerging talent trends and possibilities.

This session included an overview of factors driving the current market in terms of price drivers, margin impact and labour cost and availability as well as 5 key talent trends that have the potential to be more than fads. The talent trends highlighted were (1) Psychological Safety as a key enabler of talent initiatives; (2) Talent Based Organisations disrupting the more traditional approach to HR; (3) Applying the concept of Agile Workplaces to mine sites (i.e. creating opportunities for workers to build time into their site routine for self/family/home); (4) Using Customer Experience (CX) theory to drive Employee Experience (EX); (5) Closing the values gap for Gen Z’s and highlighting why the mining industry is highly compatible with how they like to work.

By leveraging the concept of “competitive collaboration” roundtable participants were able to expand on their own experiences of the difficulties in solving challenges like providing a value proposition for a segmented workforce and lead time to introduce new participants to the industry. Ultimately, it was clear that while individual organisations in the industry will choose their own path regarding the talent initiatives that will work best for them, there is still much scope to keep this discussion moving in order to find the right outcomes to address the challenge of attracting and retaining the skills to make the most of our current market opportunities.