While mid-tier metal producers and mining giants may have some fundamental differences in relation to corporate and operational strategies, they are generally on the same page when it comes to health and safety.
Although adhering to the sometimes investor-driven principles of environmental, social and governance (ESG) plays a motivational part, it is undeniable that miners across the board are genuinely injury and fatality adverse.
For Rio Tinto for instance, one of its core values is “caring for each other”, with the miner conceding that all incidents involving safety breaches are preventable.
As a result, much effort has gone into identifying, managing and, where possible, eliminating risks. “We use automation and robots to do some of our high risk work,” the mining house said.
“And we are focused and committed to strengthening our partnerships with industry and associated committees (like the International Council on Mining and Metals), contracting partners and local communities with the priority of learning and sharing to protect everyone’s health, safety and wellbeing. “Across our operations, we continue to see serious incidents where people are exposed to potentially fatal events.”
The main safety risks observed by Rio Tinto relate to falling objects, staff toppling from heights and vehicle-related accidents. “These risk areas account for 58 per cent of the total potentially fatal incidents and remain at the forefront of our safety maturity efforts. “Our all-injury frequency rate was 0.37 in 2023, an improvement from 2022 which was 0.40.
“We continue to see a disparity in safety performance for employees compared to contractors, so our focus remains on improving contractor safety by further integrating contractors into our safety culture.” Aside from mitigating site risks, the world’s second biggest mining house is also committed to improving the general mental health of its workforce and, as a result, has strengthened its psychological risk management “to support an environment where everyone feels safe, respected and included”.
Last year, Rio Tinto continued to help leaders recognise psychosocial hazards, assess the risks as well as implement, evaluate and monitor effective controls. Reducing stigma while raising awareness of mental health issues was also factored in. “In 2023, we challenged ourselves on the role we can play in preventing suicide,” Rio Tinto explained.
“This work involved understanding how we can work together as a business, improve identification of those individuals who may be at risk and support our people and families impacted by deaths and suicide.” In addition, the company has updated the way it reports annually to the market, thus ensuring data collected and released is relevant to both internal and external stakeholders. “This transparently shares our health, safety, environment, security and community performance over a longer period of time, and builds our ESG credentials,” Rio Tinto added.
Meanwhile, Evolution Mining – the third largest ASX-listed yellow metal producer in Australia – is just as committed to the wellbeing of its workforce, taking a “holistic and iterative” approach to risk identification and management, while providing a healthy and safe environment for its employees. “We apply risk management principles that seek to eliminate risk where reasonably practicable, and/or within agreed risk tolerability levels,” the company said. “This process is supported through appropriate risk identification and assessment, the ongoing review and improvement of risk and the active management and verification of associated critical controls to ensure the controls are adequate, in place and appropriately applied.
“We aim to continuously improve health and safety performance, reduce incident frequency and prevent the recurrence of incidents.” Key mechanisms of Evolution’s approach to this crucial area of mine management includes leadership training (which involves site inductions, field safety interactions, as well as inspections and audits) on top of daily pre-start briefings, wherein each department holds staff meetings prior to every shift in order to discuss the planned activities.
“They review how the work will be done safely and reliably and incorporate recent incident learnings, action close outs and other information relevant to the safe conduct of work,” the company said. Monthly safety toolbox meetings are also conducted, whereby education and awareness campaigns on a range of safety topics such as food safety, vehicle incidents, hand injuries, fatigue management and the safe handling of tools are enforced.
Further, regular safety inspections of all equipment, tools and personal protective equipment ensure they are fit for purpose, while proactive near-miss reporting and thorough incident investigations provide important data surrounding on site health and safety.
