The WA Mining Club Emerging Professionals hosted our third Miners’ Mingle of the year, bringing together an incredible panel for Safety Through the Decades a conversation about where safety in mining started, how far we have come and, importantly, where we are heading next.
The discussion highlighted just how significantly the industry’s approach to safety has evolved. We have moved from the old “walk it off, you’ll be right” culture, through a strong focus on physical safety, health and hygiene, to something far more holistic. Today, we are looking at the whole human and recognising that keeping people safe is about much more than rules and compliance.
Our panellists reflected on the role that fatality awareness and taskforces of the 1980s and 1990s played in changing the industry, alongside the gradual shift away from blame following incidents. Over time, there has been a much greater understanding of human factors and the influence that leadership, workplace culture and frontline engagement have on safety performance.
With all of that progress came an important question on the night have we overcomplicated safety?
The next evolution of safety may not be about adding more rules, processes or procedures. When the information people actually need is buried in legalese, lengthy policies and complicated procedures, it becomes harder to access and engage with at the moment it matters most.
As one point raised during the discussion captured well, those who plan the battle are not always the ones battling the plan. There can be a disconnect between the people developing a procedure and those actually carrying out the work.
People need to understand what they are doing, why they are doing it and what could happen if it goes wrong and that information needs to be delivered in a format that makes sense to them. When people genuinely understand the reason behind a safety process, they are far more invested in it and better equipped to identify risks and make proactive changes before an incident occurs.
This led to another interesting discussion around how we make safety something people actually want to engage with. We can pull up a YouTube tutorial in seconds when we need to learn almost anything. Why shouldn’t critical safety learning be just as accessible, relevant and immediate?
Perhaps the next step is about making safety interesting, tapping into human curiosity and being brilliant at the basics. Strong safety performance increasingly comes down to leadership, culture and frontline engagement rather than simply adding more procedures. It is about creating an environment where people are comfortable asking questions, speaking up and challenging something when it does not feel right.
Ivan left the room with a simple but powerful reminder: “Always trust your gut. If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.”
It was also fantastic to see so many of our emerging professional and student members getting involved in the conversation and asking questions of the panel. Their engagement showed that the next generation of our industry is already thinking critically about how we continue to improve what is arguably the most important aspect of mining ensuring everyone goes home safely.
A big thank you to our panellists for sharing their experiences, lessons and perspectives, and to everyone who joined us for another great Miners’ Mingle. We would also like to give a special vote of thanks to our event sponsors Epigroup, R-Group International and Safetec Group.
Jasmin Bentink
Emerging Professionals Advisory Committee Member
