Why Workforce Strategy Is Now a Boardroom Issue

The workforce risk most mining boards are underestimating

Until recently, workforce conversations in mining were largely operational 

• Hiring sat with HR and recruitment.  

• Retention lived somewhere between site managers and payroll.  

• Boards focused elsewhere - production, capital, and approvals. 

That separation no longer exists. 

Across Australia’s mining sector, talent shortages have moved from an HR and recruitment concern to a strategic risk discussed in boardrooms.

And the data is clear: This isn’t a short-term hiring squeeze. It’s a structural challenge that will shape growth, safety, and competitiveness for years to come.

Mining Workforce Shortages: What the Data Is Telling Us

According to the OECD’s 2025 “Mining for Talent” report, 86% of mining executives report greater difficulty recruiting and retaining people compared with just two years ago. More tellingly, 70% identify talent shortages as a direct barrier to meeting production and strategic goals.  

This is no longer about filling roles quickly. It’s about whether the business can execute its strategy at all. 

Why Unfilled Mining Roles Create Strategic Risk

Again, OECD estimates there are more than 10,000 mining vacancies, representing roughly 3% of the total workforce. On paper, that may not look catastrophic, but as a business that exists to source technical leadership, we know these gaps often sit in critical technical, supervisory, and leadership roles.

The very positions that determine operational stability and future capability.  

It only takes a relatively small number of mission critical vacancies to stall progress towards your strategic vision.   

This is where the conversation shifts from recruitment to leadership workforce strategy in mining. 

Skills Shortages in Mining Are Accelerating

Industry research from the Mining & Automotive Skills Alliance reinforces the point. Between 2021 and 2024, reported skills shortages across key mining roles increased from around one-third of occupations to nearly two-thirds.  

The Changing Skills Profile Mining Leaders Now Need

While most C Suite and board members of mining and technical service organisations would nod knowingly and agree that we have a numbers problem, the bigger issue is that concurrently, the skills profile required is changing faster than training pipelines can respond, particularly in areas linked to automation, digital systems, and data-driven operations. 

For executives, this creates a quiet but serious tension. 

Many organisations are investing heavily in assets, technology, and expansion plans. Yet fewer are applying the same long-range thinking to their leadership bench strength.  

• Who replaces the senior supervisors retiring over the next five to ten years?  

• Who understands both traditional operations and emerging technologies?  

• Who is being deliberately developed, rather than simply promoted out of necessity? 

The Cultural and Generational Talent Gap in Mining

The skills gap mining executives are grappling with isn’t just technical. 

It’s cultural and generational. The OECD notes persistent difficulty attracting younger and more diverse talent into mining careers, often driven by outdated perceptions of the industry and limited visibility of modern career paths.

This compounds the issue: Fewer entrants at the base means more pressure at the top all while those currently at the top, have a diminishing understanding of what is needed next. 

So boards need to start asking harder questions. Not just “Can we hire?” but “Do we have a workforce strategy that matches our growth ambition?”

We see two kinds of organisations;

Reactive vs Strategic Workforce Planning in Mining

1. Those that treat workforce planning as a reactive function often finding themselves: 

• employing lower quality candidates and, 
• paying more,  
• waiting longer, 
• taking greater operational risk 

And,  

2. Those that treat it as a strategic lever, aligned with capital decisions and long-term planning,  

• These organisations build a resilience that others struggle to match and they outcompete for talent. 

The uncomfortable truth is this: Mining talent shortages in Australia are not a passing cycle. They’re a signal. One that asks leaders to rethink how capability is built, sustained, and led.

Not just today, but a decade from now. 

The Question Boards Can No Longer Avoid

So, the question for boards and executive teams isn’t whether workforce strategy belongs at the table anymore. 

It’s this: 

If your growth plans succeed faster than your leadership pipeline, who will be there to lead your business forward? 

When workforce strategy becomes a leadership issue rather than a hiring task, it often requires a different kind of conversation. This is the lens through which we work with executive teams.

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