Automation & robotics
recent report by PwC. In the same study – PwC’s 26th Annual Global CEO Survey – 41% of participating CEOs believe that their companies will no longer be economically viable within the next ten years if they continue on their current path.
Go in for the skills
Finding workers with those key technological skillsets is therefore crucial for the long-term health of the industry. According to the WEF survey mentioned previously, 57% of mining companies see recruitment as the greatest barrier to the adoption of new technology. With this staffing shortage, then, it falls to reason that mining companies will look to train workers and build up the skillsets they need to implement new technologies into their operations. However, one of the key issues facing the mining sector isn’t just training workers with the technologies skills needed, but also retaining staff after they’ve acquired said skillset. There are a number of reasons for this, varying from the better pay offered by other sectors, safer working conditions and better opportunity for advancement and location, among others. “From what I’ve seen with our clients, location is one of the biggest challenges for mining companies,” notes Vuyiswa Khutlang, Africa energy, utilities and resources partner at PwC South Africa, and part of the team that produced PwC’s ‘Mine 2023: The era of reinvention’ report. “Most of your mines are in very remote areas – so, to attract those with the right skills to come there, that can be very tricky, especially for a long period of time.”
In an attempt to solve this issue, many mining companies have introduced graduate programmes and bursaries to help recruit tech workers to come on-site. While this would appear to be an easy solution to the challenges around having workers with the right key skills, the problem is that once the bursaries are paid out, many of those skilled workers will move on to more urban areas. The reason for this isn’t hard to work out – mining companies struggle to retain tech talent because workers with these skills are in high- demand across the board. Rather than having to compete with local companies, as you would with many parts of the labour force, mines are having to compete with tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Tesla, SpaceX, Amazon and so on, particularly as many of these skills can be performed remotely. “With these skill sets, [workers] can be sitting anywhere in the world and they can work for a company anywhere in the world,” says Ian Mackay, smart mining senior manager, PwC South Africa, who worked on the 2023 PwC report, ‘Ten insights into 4IR’, which examined the state of digital transformation in the South African mining industry. “They can be fully remote and they can still programme, still do whatever. So, more and more, we’re finding that it’s not a level playing field.”
World Mining Frontiers /
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Keep things local One answer, at least, might be to keep things close to home. 73% of the surveyed companies in the ‘Mine 2023’ report name skills gaps in the local labour market as the biggest barrier to adopting new technology. With many mine sites operating in remote locations, successful retraining of local workers is likely to be critical.
“It makes sense that if I’ve grown up in [a mining] community, I probably have an understanding of mining,” says Khutlang. “Maybe my parents worked in a mine, so I have a preference towards mining. So, investing in the local community, upskilling employees – that makes a whole lot of sense when you look at a mine environment and attracting people, because they’re already there, there’s an anchor for them.” As it stands, though, many workers lack confidence that their current employers are willing to train them in the use of technology. In PwC’s ‘Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2022’, 38% of workers at metals and mining companies said that they’re concerned about not getting sufficient training in digital and technology skills from their employer. Of course, this lack of training is partially due to the mining industry’s previously mentioned concern over its ability to retain skilled workers, creating a kind of negative feedback loop. “Every investment in your employees is based on the understanding that they’ll stick with you, right?” asks Khutlang. “A company will say, ‘I will invest so much into your education for the next two years for you to upskill, so you need to stick with us for two years’ – and then you’d leave. I’ve seen that happen, where people have been upskilled and stay for the minimum required period, before leaving to go to other areas or other companies.”
Encourage the young With this in mind, it’s clear that the mining industry has to take further steps to make it more appealing to tech
Investing in the local community is vital for mining, especially in remote areas, ensuring that skilled individuals live nearby.
73% PwC 23
The percentage of surveyed companies that name skills gaps in the local labour market as the biggest barrier to adopting new technology.
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