Digging deeper for sustainable mining

With more than $2 trillion in annual revenue, mining is one of the world’s largest industries. In 2021 alone, the world’s top 40 global mining companies earned $159 billion in profits—but mining has not earned commensurate levels of respect from key communities, such as investors or the millennial generation, where many believe that mining doesn’t share their priorities.

In addition to challenges to the mining brand, the industry continues to experience significant disruptions related to geopolitical risks, volatile commodity prices, and sustainability issues. Established mining companies also face competition from newcomers with greener, more socially responsible mining models.

However, the value of the mining brand can be bolstered as the mining industry takes steps to build its economic and social capital. Making this transition will require a concerted effort toward digitization and democratization as part of a larger digital transformation journey.

Building innovation, collaboration, and transparency

Through digital transformation, mining can create a more open business culture that actively innovates and co-creates. By partnering across ecosystems with peers, competitors, and other industries, mining companies can accelerate the creation of mining business platforms and take advantage of proprietary data to transform operations and shape markets.

Digital transformation will also support greater transparency with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting. ESG data and insights can help mining leaders improve performance, especially in the environmental domain.
 

More than half of mining CEOs (53%) say increasing sustainability is one of their highest priorities over the next two to three years.

Enabling integrated and intelligent workflows

Digital transformation can make a critical, enduring impact on mining operations by providing employees with tools to improve productivity, including changing the way people do their jobs by freeing up time to work on higher-value activities.

Intelligent workflows transform operations to be smart from the inside out, using data to generate a competitive advantage and provide insights to build greater efficiency and productivity. These workflows can be shared on proprietary or collaborative industry platforms to support the mining operations of the future.

By orchestrating automation, AI, analytics, and skills, intelligent workflows change how work gets done across an enterprise. Until recently, leveraging AI in this process has been expensive, time consuming, and often difficult. However, the maturation of generative AI shows how pre-trained large language models can accelerate AI adoption.
 

Tapping intelligent workflows

Developing new talent and skills

The male-dominated mining industry continues to be diversity-challenged. Women account for only 14% of the global mining workforce, 18% of company boards, and 3% of CEOs. In addition, mining has the second-largest median gender pay gap globally, behind only the construction industry.

Mining companies need to co-create, co-execute, and cooperate in transitioning skills to create a culture of diversity and close the talent gap within the industry. Agile, multidisciplinary teams with a broad range of skills, interests and expertise, will greatly accelerate this effort.

In addition, almost half of current mining employees will need to learn new skills within the next four years. Increasingly important roles include AI specialists, data analysts and scientists, process automation specialists, robotics engineers, software developers, digital transformation specialists, and remote sensing experts.

Download the report to learn how digital transformation can help your mining company become more sustainable, transparent, and responsible to your stakeholders—and develop a workforce that will deliver a competitive edge.