Hail Creek Mine scoops award for advancing women in non-traditional roles

Hail Creek Mine has taken out a major national award for its success in boosting female employment numbers in non-traditional roles.

The mine, which has a 15 percent female workforce, was today presented with a Business Achievement Award by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency.

Hail Creek Mine took out the "Outstanding Equal Employment Opportunity Practice for the Advancement of Women in a Non-Traditional Area/Role" category for its recruitment strategy to attract more women into the mining industry.

Hail Creek Mine's General Manager Operations, Andrew Woodley, who accepted the award at today's ceremony in Sydney, said the mine undertook its recruitment campaign at a time when women represented just three percent of all employees at mine sites and mineral processing operations in Australia.

"Hail Creek Mine took a very proactive approach to encouraging women with no mining experience into non-traditional roles when it began compiling its operating workforce in 2002," Mr Woodley said.

"With the endorsement of the Anti-Discrimination Commission, Hail Creek set out to attract women to apply for mobile equipment operator roles in a local recruitment campaign.

"There was an overwhelming response with 1200 women applying for roles. It resulted in women making up 23% of the operation's initial workforce, a move which opened doors and provided new employment opportunities for local women.

"By employing a higher proportion of females, Hail Creek was not only able to double the talent pool from which to source and select new employees, but it also helped counter the skills shortage and create a workforce that was more representative of the local community."

Mr Woodley said the mine's recruitment policy has been extremely successful.

"Our workforce today is around 15 percent female, and while we have not set a deliberate target to achieve a certain percentage of female employment, we are continuing with our recruitment strategy as it has many significant benefits" Mr Woodley said.

"We have further built on this strategy with a successful trial of job share arrangements in the mining operations area, which we have now rolled out. This is offering women the opportunity to stay within the business and progress their careers after starting a family.

"We have also partnered with the education system and the local community to increase the number of females in non-traditional roles. We support a programme to encourage local businesses to employ extra apprentices who are indigenous and/or female (the MAIN Care Apprenticeship programme run by the Mackay Area Industry Network) and we sponsor the E=MC2 programme through the Mirani Cluster of Schools which encourages girls in years seven to nine to look at non-traditional roles in ICT."

Mr Woodley said he hoped other mining operations would follow Hail Creek Mine's lead.

"We adopted the leading practice principles outlined in the Queensland Resources Council 'Women in Resources Action Plan' and were committed to not only attracting women into the workplace, but retaining them," Mr Woodley said.

"Earlier this year we were honoured to receive the inaugural Queensland Resources Council Award for Women - Best Company Initiative.

"These awards reinforce that we are on the right path to building capacity within the business through our practices in the attraction and retention of women at Hail Creek.

"We acknowledge that there is still some way to go in increasing and maintaining the high percentage of women in our workforce, especially in leadership roles, professional roles and trade roles, but I think the foundations for a successful, sustainable operation have been laid and we will continue to maintain this momentum in our rapidly changing industry."