5 minute read
Realizing Indigenous employment goals: Challenges and strategies
By Jamie Wolcott, Director of Labour Market Information and Gustavo Jurado, Labour Market Economist, the Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MiHR)
Impact Benefit Agreements (IBAs) are an important pillar of establishing partnerships between Indigenous communities and mining companies. Failure to meet IBA commitments can erode trust and undermine the very partnership both parties are working towards, making it critical for IBAs to be negotiated not only with good intentions but also with the knowledge that the goals are attainable.
For Canada’s mining industry, a growing commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) includes building trusting relationships with Indigenous communities and ensuring that community members directly benefit from mineral exploration and mining activities. Accordingly, IBAs typically set goals for mining operations to employ a minimum percentage of their workforce from the local community. Although goals are negotiated in good faith, parties often lack the necessary information to know whether they are in fact feasible.
At first glance, it is natural to assume that a particular community — home to many thousands of people — can meet any negotiated employment target with little difficulty. However, a quick glance is not enough to measure the true extent of the labour pool, as several considerations can push or pull on the readily available labour supply.
What iS the true Size of the local labour pool?
Estimating who should be counted “in” or “out” of the potential labour pool can be difficult. It depends on many factors including skills, wages and labour force participation, with each having an impact on the size of the workforce available for mining operations.
Limiting factors can add up quickly. Take the following hypothetical example: in a population of 10,000 people, 65 per cent are of working age and 70 per cent among them are labour force participants. Of these, only 10 per cent are estimated to be in mining-relevant occupations such as heavy equipment operator or skilled tradesperson. The original candidate pool of 10,000 quickly dwindles to fewer than 500 people, many of whom may already be employed by competitors. Other barriers to employment such as the fly-in-fly-out schedule, childcare, familial obligations and disability can further reduce this number. Without an informed estimate of the number of potential candidates, IBAs run the risk
of inadvertently setting targets that are too out of reach. Instead, effective employment goals should be as ambitious as possible while remaining realistic.
StrategieS for eStabliShing (and meeting) iba employment goalS
To establish more effective goals, mining companies can benchmark performance against labour supply rather than operational workforce size.
Research from the Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MiHR) has found the capacity to meet employment targets is ultimately limited by the local labour supply. Any plans to scale up operations are likely to be constrained by the availability of skilled workers, thus it is crucial to have a reasonable estimate of the labour pool most relevant to a project.
Yet, employment goals are typically quoted in terms of an operation’s size, which may irregularly expand and contract over a mine’s lifecycle. This can be problematic, especially when there are plans to expand beyond what the labour supply can support. Therefore, MiHR recommends that employment goals be measured in terms of a company’s share of the Indigenous labour supply.
Secondly, companies could focus on labour force development in addition to recruitment, as recruitment efforts alone are often not sufficient to address labour supply and skills shortages. Instead, additional emphasis on longer-term labour force development is critical to realizing employment goals.
Labour force development means investing in skills and training at the community level to essentially “grow the whole pie” to levels that can support a competitive and sustainable labour pool. This strategy would have a more substantial effect compared to competition, or “growing the slice” alone.
One way a mining company can approach this is to partner with local Indigenous communities to deliver preemployment training, such as MiHR’s Mining Essentials program. Mining Essentials uses traditional Indigenous teaching methods to provide the essential and work readiness skills needed to work in mining. Effective employment goals are critical to building partnerships, promoting a productive business environment, and contributing to economic prosperity in these communities.
If you are looking to better understand your Indigenous employment goals, get in touch with MiHR at research@mihr. ca to learn more about our custom labour market analysis research.
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