Creating a safe and inclusive workplace culture
Commendation: Inclusion and wellbeing, Resources sector
Olympic Dam is one of the world’s most significant deposits of copper, gold and uranium – resources fundamental to the way we live, now and in the future.
BHP support diversity across the business and help teams become safer, more productive and inclusive with an ongoing commitment to eradicating inappropriate behaviours within workplaces.
Making concerted effort to eliminate these inappropriate behaviours ensure employees are safe from sexual assault, sexual harassment, discrimination, racism, bullying and other forms of disrespectful behaviour.
The approach is focused on understanding specific drivers of behaviours, and what needs to be done to address them at BHP.
Key actions to drive change are summarised under the categories of Prevention, Reporting and Response.
This work has been critical in progress towards BHP’s goal of achieving gender balance in the workforce by 2025. The percentage of women in the Olympic Dam workforce has increased from 10% in June 2016 to 27.2% as at August 2022.
Inclusion and wellbeing has improved through Olympic Dam’s ongoing efforts to eliminate inappropriate behaviour.
Q&A with BHP Olympic Dam
At BHP Olympic Dam, our purpose is One Team Sustainably Delivering Copper to the World. We are successful when our people start each day with a sense of purpose and end the day with a sense of accomplishment, and when our teams are inclusive and diverse.
As we have sought to ensure inclusion and diversity in our workplace, it has brought into focus the need to address inappropriate workplace behaviour. Everyone has a right to be safe at work. We recognise that this is about more than eliminating accidents and injuries. It is also about ensuring people are safe from sexual assault, sexual harassment, discrimination, racism, bullying and other disrespectful behaviours.
Our Charter Values and Our Code of Conduct set out our expectations for the conduct of our people. They are the foundation of what we do and how we do it. Our Code makes it clear that disrespectful behaviours will not be tolerated.
Over many years Olympic Dam, and BHP more broadly, have taken action to prevent these behaviours, including through leadership and culture, education, encouraging reporting and security measures. However, we know there is more to be done. We are determined to continue to address this, with focus and urgency.
This project is an essential enabler for BHP Olympic Dam to live Our Charter Values and create an inclusive and diverse workplace, that reflects the communities within which we operate. We know that inclusive and diverse teams are safer and more productive, because people in these teams feel safe to speak up, share their ideas and different points of view and work together to solve problems and make better decisions. This project supports the creation of both the environment and culture to attract and retain the skills we need to deliver Copper to the World, and supports our teams to thrive.
While BHP has been on the journey for many years, and we know that there is more to be done, we recognise that industry’s and organisations are at different levels with regards to inclusion, diversity and eliminating inappropriate behaviour. We hope that by sharing our journey, our successes and lessons that we can help both raise standards and drive positive change in the resources industry.
Passion of people for South Australia, and living in a great environment
The world needs resources, particularly as we see realisation of the mega trends in decarbonisation and electrification. The world will need a lot more copper and South Australia is well positioned to support this.
Our BHP purpose is to bring people and resources together to build a better world. BHP is focused on future-facing commodities, particularly focused on electrification (copper and nickel), infrastructure (iron ore and metallurgical coal) and food (potash).
Sharing and recognising achievement are important for advancing and driving progress.
When we put all the work over many years on a timeline the scale and depth of what we had achieved became very apparent.
While you are working in the moment and constantly driving to improve, you can sometimes lose sight of how far you have come. As such it’s important to periodically pause and reflect on progress made.
- Foundations in order, operating discipline, clarity of purpose and delivery of the plan
- BOS – serve our customer, pursue operating perfection, empower our people
- Asset outlook - Stabilise, Optimise, Transform, Grow
Great environment and standard of living, culture, festivals, food, close to other states, international connections, what is there not to like.
Be bold, be humble, keep learning and own your career.
