Staking a Claim: Four Talent Management Strategies for High Performance in the Mining Industry

Faced with unprecedented demographic shifts and booming demand in an increasingly competitive global market, mining companies worldwide are grappling with a significant challenge: How and where can they get the talent they need today to provide the infrastructure-building resources for tomorrow?

In Staking a Claim: Four Talent Management Strategies for High Performance in the Mining Industry, we outline four distinctive strategies for mining companies to adopt:

• Differentiated employee value proposition
• Retention through engagement
• Collaboration and processes to develop and diversify talent
• Automation and technology to optimize available talent

Mining companies around the world see their markets, customers and operations poised for a series of remarkable structural changes, each more challenging than the other.

Accenture research has found that six trends will define and characterize the industry in the current decade. They are:

• The rise of emerging markets and their ever-growing appetite for resources.

• Growing competition for mineral resources and risks associated with extraction.

• Increasing focus on sustainability and environmental concerns.

• Scarce managerial and technical talent.

• Ever-increasing operating costs.

• Increasing market liquidity and price volatility.

The growing scarcity of talent is easily the most important challenge facing industry leaders trying to making their organizations “change-capable.” The hard question before them: How and where can they get the talent today and tomorrow to meet the ever-growing demand for resources and achieve high performance?

Talent management capabilities lead the list of factors critical for achieving high performance. To begin managing the talent crisis, mining companies need to develop talent management strategies governed by a talent management framework aligned to the business strategy and geared to achieving business results. Accenture’s talent management framework states that companies need to act now to mitigate immediate and longer-term risks by:

• Defining their talent needs.
• Discovering and attracting new talent.
• Developing and retaining critical talent.
• Building robust capabilities to manage and deploy talent.

James Arnott is an executive director in the Accenture Resources operating group and is aligned to Talent and Organization Performance. He is also the lead for the Accenture Resources Talent and Organization Performance team. He has extensive experience in the electricity, chemicals and energy industries and has a deep understanding of the strategic issues pertaining to transformation and restructuring of these industries.

Helga Aranda is a consultant with Accenture Management Consulting, aligned to Talent and Organization Performance. She has more than five years of experience in a number of roles for resources and government clients and specializes in change management specifically in business readiness and change enablement activities.

Ross Harrison is a consultant within Accenture’s systems integration group, aligned to Systems Integration-SAP. He has spent three years working in the plant maintenance and material management fields for clients in the steel and oil industries.

Stian H. Hodnebo is a consultant with Accenture Management Consulting and specializes in human resources and talent management in the resources industries.

Simon Wienke is a consultant with Accenture Management Consulting, aligned with Talent and Organization Performance. He works on human resources and talent management projects specializing in the metals and mining industries.

Analah Fawcett is a consultant with Accenture Management Consulting, aligned with Talent and Organization Performance. Fawcett has worked on change management assignments related to SAP implementations for large global mining companies.