Newsletter February 2024 - Collaboration: the future of mining?

Hello, and welcome back to The Intelligent Miner newsletter! This month, our editorial theme is 'working collaboratively'. The ability to work jointly on an activity or project to achieve a common goal is a very human skill, and I think it’s one that is underrated and undervalued, not just in the mining industry, but in many sectors today.

As the challenges and opportunities that mining companies face become more complex, the range of skills and knowledge required to find solutions is broadening, and often, that transcends the aptitude of a single person or team of people. As such, the ability to leverage connections both in and outside of the sector, to think in systems, and to draw upon a business network to extend a company’s own capabilities, is now future critical.

Think about it: collaboration is required to successfully educate the next generation of mining professionals, to create partnerships with communities in mining jurisdictions, to evolve regulatory requirements and to harness the power of a team to deliver new projects. Executives and boards must collaborate to govern companies in a future-fit way, actors up and down the value chain must collaborate to ascertain the ESG credentials of raw materials, and teams are increasingly leaning upon partner companies and academia as part of their innovation efforts (we’ll be exploring the value of collaboration in many of these scenarios this month).

However, human skills like collaboration, empathy and influence, cannot be taught in a classroom; they’re the product of lived experience. And therein lies a potential problem… the COVID-19 pandemic robbed many students and young professionals of valuable chances to hone these skills. The way that we collaborate is also changing. Gen Z is the most digitally connected generation in history, and members are often likely to communicate via digital technologies than to seek out face-to-face opportunities. Digital collaboration comes with its own set of nuances, upsides and downsides.

So, the question is: if the future of mining depends heavily upon collaboration, how are we going to foster this future critical skill to deliver it?   

Carly

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Reading list
Eight interesting articles to get you thinking...

CNBC: Why The U.S Is Running Out Of Mining Workers
CNBC goes behind-the-scenes at Rio Tinto's copper mining operation in Utah to better understand the role that miners play in the green transition and how communicating that can help improve recruitment

Global Mining Education Foundation: changing perspectives - finding new solutions for mining education
Brad Ross explains how better alignment between industry and academia can improve professional development solutions

Davide Elmo: Mining For Talent
An article from CIM Magazine. Davide Elmo from UBC discusses the steady decline in students graduating from mining engineering courses and what can be done to reverse this trend

Cripps Global: Securing mining’s future workforce - taking action today for a better tomorrow
Rowan Phendler interviews Simon Thomas, President at BHP Potash, and Joanne Doyle, Senior Manager at Deloitte Consulting, on how the mining industry can transform its recruitment strategy

Deloitte: Collaborating with governments to rethink regulation
Part of Deloitte's Tracking the Trends 2024 report. Deen Sanders, Michelle Leslie and Louis Kruger explore how to unlock critical resources through innovation in permitting

Kelly Bron Johnson: Neurodiversity in Mining Pilot Project - two years in
After two discussions on neurodiversity in mining in 2021, Kelly Bron Johnson invites Nermina Harambasic and Nathan Stubina, to talk about their hiring experiences with the Neurodiversity in Mining pilot project

North American Mining: Challenges and opportunities in mining education
 Jonathan Rowland discusses the current state and future development of mining education in North America with a host of industry experts 

ICMM: Collaboration underway to develop consolidated standard for responsible mining
The Copper Mark, Mining Association of Canada, ICMM and the World Gold Council are working towards consolidating their individual voluntary responsible mining and metals standards - a big step forward for the industry