Modern Mining August 2021

WOMEN IN MINING

Sandvik’s diversity and inclusion strategies bear fruit Diversity and inclusion remain issues of concern for the mining sector. As a service provider to the industry, Sandvik Mining & Rock Solutions Southern Africa believes it is well placed to influence the narrative and has therefore made a conscious decision to be the agent of change that the industry needs. Several key initiatives implemented over the past five years, Centre of Expertise manager Megan Rogers tells Munesu Shoko , have yielded solid results, with more set to be achieved in the next two years.

I n her role as the Centre of Expertise manager at Sandvik Mining & Rock Solutions Southern Africa, Megan Rogers is responsible for all the functions of human resources (HR) that are not operational. These include recruitment, talent management, plan- ning and development, transformation, employee relations and remuneration, among others. A labour lawyer by profession, Rogers left the practice of law a few years ago to venture into HR. Because of her labour law background, she

Sandvik put strategies in place to achieve diversity at the workplace.

Megan Rogers, Sandvik Centre of Expertise manager.

has always found herself in employee relations, employment equity and transformation. Other than employee engagement and all the elements that come with her HR function, diversity management is a subject close to her heart. While reports have over the years found that the business case for diversity and inclusion is stronger than ever, mining still very much lags behind other industries in terms of women representation. The challenges for the industry, says Rogers, are well documented. Firstly, she says, if one thinks of the particular work that gets done in an underground mining environment, for example, it generally tends to be male dominated. “From a South African perspective,” she says, “the situation is compounded by the patriarchal nature of the society. Because of its history, the mining sec- tor still has a patriarchal view embedded in a lot of practices and processes. Neither do hard labour and spending many hours underground lend themselves to female inclusion.” As a result, Rogers reasons that women have tra- ditionally been relegated to support functions such as human resources, finance and marketing. She, however, believes that things are changing for the better. “We are starting to see women show up on core processes of the mining business. We have also started to see women coming into leadership positions, who are calling out the industry policies, processes and practices that are not inclusive by

22  MODERN MINING  August 2021