The pay is good. The job openings exist. So what’s keeping people — especially young people — from considering mining as a career?
For Derek Grover and Dino Brunson, the answer is obvious. The co-hosts of the “Mining Minds” podcast believe culture has an overwhelming impact on attracting and retaining workers.
Speaking at the Utah Mining Association’s annual conference in Salt Lake City, the pair encouraged mining officials to reflect on, and improve, the culture they have at their companies.
“We know that [staff in] the mining industry makes great money, but that’s not enough to keep our people,” Brunson said.
“We can compete in wages,” Grover said. “You’ve seen people that jump from one job to another for a quarter more or a dollar more. But really, we’re competing on a cultural level, especially in the western United States. We’re competing to be best-in-class bosses or supervisors or managers.”
Grover said workforce development “is a big animal” in the industry.
“You can have all the technology in the world, you can have all the potential of investing, but you still need people,” he told the audience. “You still need the people in this room to drive those results that you’re looking for.”
The need for people is not unique to the mining industry but certainly exists. TPD reported in February that the U.S. mining sector faces a projected shortage of 27,000 skilled workers in the next five years, according to the Mining Association of America.
TDP also cites a survey by the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration in which 68 percent of young professionals perceive mining as environmentally harmful, only 12 percent of college students understand the technological advancements in modern mining, and 74 percent of potential applicants underestimate the average mining industry salary by $20,000 or more.
Some of the issues stem from the industry’s remote locations. Forty-three percent of qualified candidates decline mining positions due to remote work locations, although housing incentives increase acceptance rates by 38 percent for remote mining operations. And companies offering rotation schedules see 27 percent higher retention rates than those requiring permanent relocation, according to that Society survey
What’s at stake? During the conference, statistics showed that mineral production is a $4.5 billion industry in Utah. Extractive and energy operations contribute a total of $22.7 billion of combined GDP, or 10.3 percent of the state’s GDP total. Utah also is home to a combined 162,000 direct and indirect jobs in those industries, which pay 51 percent higher wages than the Utah average.
A main issue is that nearly one-fifth of the mining industry workforce is between the ages of 55 and 64 and likely to retire soon.
“Here in the next five to seven years, we’ve got 20 percent of our workforce leaving the industry,” Brunson said. “How are we going to backfill that? Everything is lining up for the mineral prices and the companies to make a lot of money, but we don’t have the people.”
Employee turnover rates also have reached 24 percent to 30 percent at mine locations, he added. “Automation is not there 100 percent yet,” he said, “so we’re going to need the people.”
And, Grover noted, “you can’t automate culture.”
To make changes, the pair said, companies need to reflect on their current operations. Brunson said management should think about their first job or where they felt the most valued, and then try to re-create that for their employees. They should work to build and retain trust, constantly be engaged, and set an example for their workers.
“Are you showing up excited? Are you showing up interested? Are you showing up ready to go to work and engaged?” Grover asked. “Those are questions I think we need to ask ourselves, and we only get asked these questions if we reflect a little bit. Too oftentimes we’re looking to the future, too oftentimes we’re focused on tons or running fast or what’s my spreadsheet look like and how quickly can I get it done. But how often do we reflect? In order to understand where we’re going, we have to understand where we’ve been, both the successes and the failures.”
The underlying thinking is that good culture attracts and keeps good people, which drives great results. The pair has seen contrasts among companies and their culture-boosting efforts. In one case, the culture was focused on procedures and standards. But another had an official who listened to his workers, and the employee-driven mine is having “a ton of success,” Brunson said. “The returns to their investors is over 600 percent. I mean, just phenomenal things that culture can do at your mine site. … I’ve seen a world-class culture in Nevada produce unbelievable results, not just from the mineral price but a quality-of-life perspective.”
Other elements of good culture are supervisors being in the field, “where everything happens,” Brunson said; providing mentorship and passing down the know-how from “the old souls” aging out of the industry; and even showing pride of being a miner to young people and people outside the industry.
“Are we preparing ourselves well enough?” Brunson asked. “If we weren’t here tomorrow, are we handing over a well-oiled machine to the next generation?”
“You can talk about 30 different things in workforce development, but when you start to do your root cause and start to go down that rabbit hole, it always depends on the people,” Grover said. “Regardless of what you’re doing, it’s always going to be that human element that you’re going to need to support.”
Workforce issues also were part of a panel discussion later in the conference, but it focused on trucking.
“Just like you guys are facing workforce shortages, the truck driving industry is challenging,” said Andy Pierucci, manager of government affairs at Savage, adding that companies are offering major employment incentives, reimbursements for relocation costs, and working with schools to develop a talent pipeline as ways to address the issue.
Ryan Barney, vice president of Barney Trucking, said truckers in the mining industry work with very specialized equipment. “If they’re able to go and pick a job that’s relatively convenient and easy, as opposed to doing something like this, it’s difficult to overcome sometimes,” he said.
Ben Hart, executive director of the Utah Inland Port Authority, said a growing trend is more people “working with their hands again.” While a need exists for people equipped with four-year degrees, not everyone is ready for or wants to attend college, he said.
“You’ve got to have a diversity in terms of what the workforce offers,” Hart said. “I think we’re getting better at that in the state of Utah. I think previously, in prior generations, I think it was kind of, in some ways, looked down upon if you decided you wanted to go to a trade school. That’s not where we need to be. That’s not going to serve our economy.”
“Not everybody can be a doctor or a lawyer, and we have really good-paying jobs in our industry,” said Keith Jensen, vice president of Jackson Group Peterbilt. Products need to move from mines to markets, he said, “so we need people to do that, or we’re all in trouble.”