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Employee Turnover as a Sustainability Issue∗
David Brereton (Director, Centre for Social Responsibility in
Mining)
Ruth Beach (Researcher, Centre for Social Responsibility in
Mining
David Cliff (Deputy Director, Minerals Industry Safety and Health
Centre)
INTRODUCTION
High workforce turnover is a significant issue for the Australian mining
industry, particularly the metalliferous sector. Sections of the industry
continue to regard high turnover as a normal and unavoidable aspect of doing
business, but this ignores the costs and consequences of workforce
instability. Ongoing high turnover can threaten the sustainability of individual
operations and also makes it more difficult for the mining industry to make a
positive overall contribution to the development of social and human capital in
the wider community.
The importance of workforce turnover as a sustainability issue has been
recognised by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) which has included
turnover as a core social performance indicator in its Sustainability Reporting
Guidelines (GRI 2002, p. 52). Currently the International Council of Mines
and Metals (ICMM) is working with the GRI to develop an industry-specific
supplement. Once this exercise is completed, there will be growing pressure
on the minerals industry to report according to these guidelines. It is likely,
therefore, that in the near future companies, business units and sites will be
expected to present and discuss data on turnover rates as part of the annual
reporting process. This, in turn, will lead to increased scrutiny of corporate
and site performance against this indicator.
This paper aims to enhance understanding of the phenomenon of high
workforce turnover in the mining industry and assist companies and sites to
improve retention levels. In the first section of the paper we present data from
various sources about the extent and distribution of workforce turnover in the
Australian mining industry. This is followed by an examin