Getting the right information to those who need it is critical in mining operations. Credit: Schroptschop via Getty Images.

When it comes to data capture in mining, it is crucial to be clear on what is required and its value in terms of decision-making. Furthermore, operators must make sure that data integrity is maintained, which helps build a consistent database over the long term to establish patterns and trends. Timely information in the right hands enables better decision-making.

A digital resilience platform is the most efficient and reliable way of collecting and sharing operational data, which would be almost impossible using the traditional manual approach.

“Data-driven decision-making is essential in today’s business, but mining leaders need to consider what data they need and why it is important,” says Jarrod Wilson, CEO of Dynamiq.

“Corporate reporting for stakeholders, including board members and external agencies for ESG assessment, feed into the need for greater consistency and transparency in data capture. Operationally, the benefits of quality data also help with trend identification to put better controls in place, asset and geographic profiling for performance, talent identification through seeing your people perform under pressure, and lessons learned for continuous improvement.”

Dynamiq’s emqnet resilience platform records valuable incident data, allowing your organisation’s leaders and their incident management teams to make informed and timely decisions. This increases the effectiveness and efficiency of your organisation’s response actions to any crisis.

Targeted investment

Being able to access critical data allows leaders to assess where they need to invest to protect their people and operations. Trend data, both real and training, reveals the level of effort and investment going into various assets and functions to determine where investments can be targeted to fill a particular capability gap, or demonstrate the efficacy of the existing capability to assure stakeholders that the threats in a particular environment are well prepared for.

“You can explore trends and potentially arrest those trends before they become too obstructive,” says Lucas Saunders, Head of Advisory at Dynamiq.

“A simple example could be if the data is pointing at incidents occurring an hour before shift change over, does that mean that there’s a fatigue issue and health and safety need to do a review of their fatigue management plan?”

Talent identification

Rarely understood and only seen by the best of businesses, observing and assessing how your people perform and make important decisions when under pressure allows for your best talent to shine and help build the future leaders of your business.

By assessing post-incident outcomes, the lessons learned not only improve your operational resilience program; but also shine a light on who has performed well and made quality decisions. Reviewing data leads to constructive feedback, aiding the professional development of team members, and identifying areas they need to improve to advance their careers.

Data built over a period of time highlights within a teams-based resilience program where your best and brightest staff are and allows you to deploy them where they can make the most positive impact on your business time and again.

How to build the dataset you need

emqnet is configurable to be specific to your own business’s unique needs. Data input fields and various platform features are developed to allow consistent capture across your organisation and targeted so you can capture what you need for quality reporting and in-depth analysis.

Dynamiq’s Advisory team works closely with clients to understand their needs and ensure that the platform can meet today’s operational demands, but also makes sure that you can build a quality dataset over time.

“Consistency across data capture is really important. Not just for reporting, but also to improve business-related outcomes,” adds Wilson.

The impact of quality data

Leading ESG operators in the industry use emqnet data to support reporting requirements and also demonstrate that they have a credible crisis management capability that can be relied upon. All data in emqnet is auditable, with interactions and activities logged in real-time. This increased transparency builds trust with regulators and stakeholders.

“You can download a complete chronological report of the event, providing the necessary data for effective post-incident reviews or discovering lessons learned,” explains Saunders.

Data from emqnet has also been used for a diverse range of highly sensitive issues, for example, HR-related incidents. Furthermore, emqnet was used to formulate a government’s national response to a highly infectious disease outbreak pre-Covid and leveraged the stakeholder function in the platform to manage internal and external issues through the duration of the response.

“In the platform, the client was logging all of the infections and local issues. And because they’re a material site in that country, our data from emqnet became the proxy for their health data for that nation,” adds Wilson. “The data became the proxy for decision-making beyond the business.”

Proving an ROI on a business resilience program is a difficult task. Credit: simonkr on Getty Images.

An effective business resilience program is critical for reducing operational disruption at mines; however, measuring and proving the return on investment (ROI) is often complex.

The billable hour, human capital consulting model for the resilience advisory market has left providers unable to demonstrate a clear ROI for their clients. Operational data is typically undervalued and not used to inform better decision-making. Usually, there is a failure to either share important data or even collect it in the first place.

While a digital resilience platform offers significant value to a business, it is difficult to measure performance and demonstrate the actual return on investment without this detailed supporting data.

But the upfront costs in a digital resilience program can put operators off making the investment in the first place. However, there is a serious risk of higher costs in the long term caused by attempts to save costs by not investing in a resilience program in the short term.

“It’s much easier to quantify once you have the data because the formula goes back to: how much would this event normally cost us? Which is information that you can get from the market. Let’s say, for a mining business with a revenue of a billion dollars a year, a severe weather event might cost them $10m every time – just in operational and infrastructure disruption,” explains Kel Donovan, business resilience expert from Dynamiq.

“Now, when you compare that to the amount of money that they could invest in a resilience program, which is usually around $100,000 for an equivalent business, then the investment stands up every day.

“But that’s a very difficult equation to put on the table unless you’ve got the data to show how many events of what nature and scale that you’re having to manage each year. A technology solution like ours allows us to collate that information.”

Digital resilience program advantages

Dynamiq’s emqnet offers a digital resilience program that collects a comprehensive set of operations data. The centralised platform is easily accessible by stakeholders and staff regardless of location.

emqnet allows more parties to keep track of events in real-time, providing a clear understanding of the potential consequences of a disruptive event. The tech allows operators to build a database to enable an effective response. Data is required to determine benchmarks both internally and externally against other information from across the industry.

This is in direct contrast with a traditional resilience program that commonly uses manual processes, which have a much more limited scope, involves fewer people, and restrict the availability of data.

Traditional resilience programs are not centralised or measured. They are often hosted by separate business systems, where the information can become diluted and hidden away. In addition, there is typically no standardisation on how that information is correlated or stored.

In comparison, a digital resilience platform such as Dynamiq’s allows the standardisation of data, which informs decisions on responding to an event. Ultimately, the speed and efficacy of the response proves how effective an investment is. Data can also be used to identify where operations improvements are needed, for example, if more staff require training or communications need improvements. All of this adds significant value to a business and is easily measured.

“It’s having the right people in the right place, making the right decisions as quickly as possible to mitigate the impact of an event. And that’s rarely measured. So, that $10m example event with the necessary preparedness efforts and a quick response could significantly reduce the impact by millions of dollars by restoring operations faster,” says Jarrod Wilson, CEO of Dynamiq.

Supporting data is essential to highlight the effects of natural risks, insurance implications, and any environmental costs.

“When you boil it down, it’s collecting and analysing data to demonstrate return on investment and make better investment decisions,” adds Donovan.

Measuring value

One way of changing the perception of resilience is to measure the value of a program rather than the investment itself. Measuring risk under management and response efficacy are vital to understanding the overall value that a program is delivering.

An inadequate resilience program means a business is unprepared for disruption. Should a disruptive event occur, then this lack of preparedness will almost certainly lead to a failure on a much larger scale. Operations will be disrupted, and resources may be unavailable when they’re needed the most. As a result, operational downtime could last for extended periods and costs will continue to soar.

For example, major flooding events are common in Australia and have increased in frequency and severity in recent years. Flooding can cause significant disruption for both mining operations and local infrastructure. During one such event in the northern part of Australia, a significant part of the state was affected.

Dynamiq was dealing with many clients involved. And the team noticed a stark contrast between businesses that were prepared and those that were not.

“What we saw really clearly was that the clients that that sat and waited for the water to go down before they got together to work out what to do, they just got left behind,” explains Donovan.

“Whereas the people that got together while the water was still coming up and worked out their plans, they booked all the resources first. This meant that the people that waited for the water to recede had lost the opportunity to secure basic materials when they tried to book resources.

“When you consider the multiplier effect, they’re no longer waiting days or a week. They’re now waiting months before they can even start to execute a recovery plan.”

Many mining businesses still view this kind of disruption and downtime as an issue that insurance will solve, measuring the costs only in the aftermath of a severe event. However, as Wilson explains, this is a mistake.

“It’s nothing to do with insurance at all, and particularly with mining companies who have really extensive insurance programs, and they have significant self-retention exposures. So, every dollar beneath the self-retention excess they wear, matters,” says Wilson.

Measuring value

Linking resilience to business strategy

Regarding operational resilience, the business resilience program objectives are tactical and delivered to a narrow scope. Objectives do not always link to a strategic outcome.

Business leaders commonly fail to understand the value of resilience. They regularly make short term procurement decisions without understanding the need for capability development. In addition, board audit and risk committees need ROI measurements to support their role in guiding business direction. Yet all too often, they fail to ask for evidence.

By linking resilience to business strategy and objectives, leaders can understand the role resilience plays in communicating to internal and external stakeholders that the business can achieve its objectives regardless of the operating conditions.

“Almost all business resilience program owners think that measuring return on investment in this area is impossible. They just put it in the ‘too hard basket’ because they haven’t seen it done before. When in fact, it’s infinitely possible, and the leaders of most high-risk industries have been doing it for some time,” adds Donovan.

“The simplest approach is to record the cost of each event you manage over a year, then compare that to the publicly available average cost of events to similar-sized businesses. You can then estimate your annual savings. Given the infrequent nature of these significant events, it’s best to base your investment decisions on a longer timeframe like five years. “Dynamiq’s technology makes capturing data effortless, and over time provides great insights into the performance of the program.”

Towards Sustainable Mining framework is be introduced in Australia from 2025 to help improve the environmental footprint and accountability of mine operators. Credit: King Ropes Access via Shutterstock.

Mining companies seeking to improve their environmental performance and move to an ESG rating are adopting the Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) framework. And in Australia, mining businesses have just over two years to get their operations in order to comply with TSM requirements, which are being introduced in 2025.

Yet TSM is far from new. Introduced by the Mining Association of Canada in 2004, TSM provides companies with a series of performance tools to measure and manage the environmental impact and social responsibilities of their operations, while ensuring that risks are effectively managed. Crucially, TMS acts as a platform to drive improvements throughout mining operations.

The core aim of TSM is to allow mining businesses to fulfil the demand for raw materials required for minerals, metals, and energy in the most responsible ways. Examples of commitment to TSM leadership include: “Engaging with communities”, “Driving world-leading environmental practices”, and “Committing to the safety and health of employees and surrounding communities”.

While some governments around the world may be slower to act than others when it comes to environmental commitments, the TSM has been developed and implemented by the industry. In Australia, transparency requirements and the TSM framework are being pushed through by the Minerals Council of Australia and its members. Furthermore, using internationally recognised standards will ensure consistency in operations across numerous jurisdictions.

“Mining has had to clean up its reputation to have a licence to operate in the future,” says Jarrod Wilson, CEO of Dynamiq. “It’s almost like a reinvention of the industry. And the only way they’re going to be able to do that effectively is by being transparent in all aspects of their operations.”

Increased accountability for mining operators

TSM increases the accountability of mining operators. Performance indicators are publicly reported annually, with results verified independently every three years to ensure greater transparency and assure stakeholders and communities that there is no greenwashing taking place. TSM is different from ESG reporting in that it is measured at a local operating asset level. For local communities, the results offer an accurate insight into the operations footprint and the overall impacts of a mine. Many are using the TSM as a pathway to a future ESG rating.

“A company may be wanting to start its ESG journey, but it might not be ready yet. So, this is a framework to use to allow them to move to progress towards that goal,” adds Wilson.

TSM highlights the need for companies to demonstrate leadership in minimising the impact of mining and increasing the sustainability of resources throughout operations and supply chains while protecting the biodiversity where activities are taking place. Furthermore, TSM requires companies to engage in initiatives to increase the safe reuse of minerals and metals. Alongside this is the need to ensure that employees, contractors, and communities are protected from any potential risks encountered during operations.

TSM doesn’t stop at active mining operations. It also covers working alongside communities to tackle issues with the legacy of mining, such as abandoned or mothballed mines that have not been managed adequately.

It is believed that making operations more transparent will also help recruit an increasingly conscientious and eco-minded workforce.

“There has been a change in the profile of people who are joining the mining industry, many who are highly educated engineers, geologists, and data scientists. There is a real change of the guard generationally,” adds Wilson. “When you think about shared values, employees are looking for purpose-led organisations, and they’ll hold the company they work for to account.”

Data capture for TSM and ESG performance

To demonstrate performance for TSM requirements, operational data is required. The traditional method of paper-based of crisis reporting is simply insufficient to deal with the reporting demands across every facet of your operations.

“You need to be able to capture data across all your operations, and you need to be able to capture it consistently. Then use that data to tell your story on your own terms,” adds Wilson.

With data only increasing in importance, mining companies that avoid or delay adopting technology to capture and record operations data will only find themselves behind the curve. Crisis management is a key component of TSM, and you need a measurable program to demonstrate your credentials via regular auditing. And with ESG obligations increasingly linked to capital, an inability to verify performance will diminish profitability.

This is where a digital resilience platform such as Dynamiq’s emqnet can be used for important data capture and consistency of reporting. Through emqnet, companies can gain maturity assessments and a roadmap for where they need to reach with a gap analysis on areas for improvement and benchmarking for charting progression.

TSM also has requirements for crisis management and related training. emqnet was built specifically for businesses when supporting their crisis management activities, enabling advisory teams to access the same platforms as those involved in an event to deliver greater support services. The platform can also be used for training and performing After-Action Reviews to enable continuous improvements and maturation of programs.

With more than 15 years of experience working with some of the biggest mining companies in the world, emqnet has credibility throughout the industry and is a trusted resilience platform.

“We work with industry leaders already, particularly around ESG. We can benchmark performance within a business across operating assets and then holistically. We can also benchmark them against the market to understand what their performance looks like,” adds Wilson.  “From there, we can build a roadmap, which helps create a maturity pathway. But you can’t do everything all at once. That’s why we spend time to understand what their key priorities are and how to deliver them.”

After Action Reviews, whether done after training or real incidents, are a fundamental part of any operational resilience program. They identify areas of strength and areas for improvement. It is critical to dig into the preparation, response, recovery as well as stakeholder management aspects of the event to ensure regular improvement and adjustments to processes are applied, as required. Just as important in identifying areas of improvement is identifying areas of strength and building on them.

These reviews capture the quantitative and qualitative part of how a response is managed, assess what priorities need to be addressed for future events, and measure the return to normal operations while establishing how the process feeds into a continuous improvement cycle.

“It’s the discipline to make sure that you conduct reviews to continually improve your process,” says Jarrod Wilson, CEO of Dynamiq. “But it’s also ensuring that you assess all facets of it.”

After Action Reviews enable a business to understand what ‘good’ looks like, set expectations, and measure the outcome against both. When conducted properly, findings from the review feed positively into an organisation’s culture. If teams know what the goals are and what they’re trying to achieve, then it increases levels of engagement. Furthermore, After Action Reviews also enable learnings to be shared with other parts of the business and improve the entire system.

“If you think about in a mining environment where an incident might happen at a particular site level. How do you feed that back into the overall organisation, up the structure and across into other operating environments? Get it right and you’re actually getting that rising tide uplift,” adds Wilson. “And it’s the program level benefits where you see that force multiplier of impact.

“With data, it’ll help you communicate across your business but also externally about what’s happened, why it happened, and whether you can avoid it happening again or just get better in your response.”

Why After Action Reviews must take place

Despite the multiple benefits, too many businesses are skipping After Action Reviews in an attempt to save time and return to normal operations as quickly as possible.

Ultimately, this is down to the leadership. And one reason for avoiding After Action Reviews is that the leadership may be keen to keep criticisms and issues out of view. A failure to conduct an After Action Review enhances the likelihood of the same or similar incident occurring again as the issue wasn’t identified and the fix completed. Furthermore, a negative corporate culture can result in a lower ESG rating.

After Action Reviews also give a voice to personnel at all levels of an organisation. Anyone involved in a crisis response should have input to build a collective picture across all perspectives of operations, as not everyone’s experience, expertise or focus will be the same.

Teams must also have the confidence to speak honestly and constructively to each other, and the collective aim being to improve every aspect of business resilience. But if their voices are ignored, personnel will be less motivated to engage in future. While at the other end, if team members are listened to, it builds confidence and increases ownership of processes.

“It’s more than just tinkering at the edge and just trying to do small improvements. It’s looking for things that can structurally change and feed into an organisation’s overall performance,” adds Wilson.

“Everyone looks at that as a negative connotation. And if you’re doing the strategy side of it really well, what it actually uncovers is opportunities. The best businesses, particularly in those volatile times, all they see is opportunity.”

A platform for After Action Reviews

Dynamiq’s digital resilience platform emqnet enables simplicity with After Action Reviews following a real-life event or a training exercise. The platform logs all actions and interactions between the teams and stakeholders in real-time, providing a complete audit trail and the context behind decision-making.

“Even if an AAR is conducted immediately after the event, we’ve got the analytics there to be able to report on it,” says Adam Worsley, General Manager of Dynamiq.

“An After Action Review is based on our Teams-Based Approach cycle, and is applied to the four commonly accepted questions required of an AAR,” adds Worsley. “These are: 1: What did you expect to happen as a result of the event? 2: What actually happened in the event? 3: What went well and why? 4: What could be improved and how?”

Data from emqnet can be used to verify why certain decisions were made at particular times, with a record of what information was available to personnel and when. From there, captured data can be fed back into the overall program improvement cycle, helping individuals improve their roles and enhance the response capability of a business. Importantly, consequence management allows the system to be more adaptive and agile, often picking up the pieces where risk management doesn’t.

For mining businesses, the environmental, societal, and governance (ESG) dimensions matter like never before. Yet this is only a relatively recent development. Historically, the evolution of business sustainability struggled to drive business strategy.

What has changed is the greater awareness surrounding the environmental impact and corporate ethics, which has led to investors linking ESG performance to capital. And the importance of ESG ratings is only increasing.

ESG ratings are awarded annually through independent certification from a limited number of accredited organisations. To obtain an ESG rating, businesses must submit the necessary documentation and operations data across multiple specified areas to satisfy the criteria. Many companies later choose to make datasets public to increase transparency with stakeholders to avoid the greenwashing tag.

One of the main organisations responsible for ESG ratings for international mining companies is S&P Global Market Intelligence with its Metals and Mining index. To determine the rating, businesses are subject to a weighted scoring system across a broad set of categories. A high ESG score means that a business is understood to be a safer long-term option for investors. But given that companies with higher ESG ratings are considered better placed to handle future risks, it is perhaps a little surprising that Risk and Crisis Management is not weighted more heavily.

In S&P’s Governance and Economic Dimension section, Risk and Crisis Management is considered the third most important category with 12% of the weighting. This is behind Corporate Governance with a weighting of 24%, and Business Ethics at 21%.

Corporate Governance is the policies and procedures that define how a business should operate, and Business Ethics defines how a business will conduct itself during operations. While Risk and Crisis Management highlight any potential areas of concern, identify controls, and set the appetite for risk. Notably, Risk and Crisis Management is weighted more heavily than cybersecurity, which is getting much more attention within the industry.

However, there is a belief that the relatively low weighting for Risk and Crisis Management is misleading as it impacts virtually every facet of operations.

“Crisis management is the most tangible part. Whilst it’s 12%, it’s the third highest modifier,” explains Jarrod Wilson, CEO of Dynamiq.

A business may have quality governance, ethics, and risk identification processes. But it is the response capability that determines how quickly a business can return to normal operating conditions after a serious event. If there are any deficiencies in the crisis capability, it will hurt a business’ overall operating performance and potentially undermine stakeholder satisfaction.

“You can pat yourself on the back and say we have an excellent set of policies. But at the end of the day, your failure point will be in your response,” adds Wilson. “We work in such a volatile and complex operating environment, that there is a high likelihood that something’s serious will happen. It’s probably the thing that you don’t expect. Therefore, you need to invest in your response capability and make sure it’s mature and robust. That’s what will get you back into a normal operating environment.”

Building ESG ratings through crisis capability and datasets

To establish a credible crisis capability, a business must have a clear plan. Personnel must be trained to the necessary levels and routinely tested against key operational threats. Crucially, management must conduct regular after-action reviews to identify opportunities for continuous improvement within the team and the approach.

Crisis capability should not be viewed as a static process or a box to tick and put to one side. It is vital to regularly review and update processes wherever necessary and the data that results from these reviews are important inputs for an ESG assessment.

Implementing a crisis capability across every area of operations requires the right technology, which is central to linking different aspects of operations and divisions. A digital resilience platform enables greater consistency in the approach with each event, providing evidence of the crisis capability of a business to its stakeholders. Datasets need to be structured to support decision-making.

Multiple datasets from operations must be submitted to an accredited organisation to obtain an ESG rating. To achieve this, several major mining companies use their operations data from Dynamiq’s emqnet platform in their submissions for ESG ratings. emqnet is a digital resilience platform that provides comprehensive datasets across all operations to build a clear picture, with real-time reporting that is fully auditable. Crisis management can be performed remotely on the platform and accessed by teams operating all around the world.

“We understand how critical it is because we’ve done the research on our tool for all of this,” says Adam Worsley, general manager of Dynamiq. “Our technology will connect the dots in terms of being the final equation to build that ESG rating.”

Mining companies must deploy effective strategies to manage stakeholders. Credit: CUHRIG via Getty Images.

Stakeholder management is essential to the effective management of any incident and a cornerstone of reputation protection in the mining industry.

Businesses must build strong working relationships with stakeholders, both internally and externally. Internal stakeholders may include employees, vendors, and business contractors at every stage – from exploration, construction, and operations to closure and throughout remediation. External stakeholders may be from the government, action groups, or indigenous communities living near operations and those with ownership of ancestral lands.

Effective stakeholder management requires hard work, transparency, and a willingness to engage. Regular review and updating of stakeholder management is a must to ensure they are managed appropriately.

However, transparency does not always work both ways and crisis management teams must understand who they are dealing with as the motives of some stakeholders are not always clear. If stakeholders are from an issue-motivated group, their intentions may be unknown and who is funding them can be a mystery.

For this reason, Adam Worsley, general manager at Dynamiq, suggests crisis management teams use the same approach for all stakeholders, regardless of where they are from. Because while stakeholders might initially appear friendly, they may not always be that way.

“They say the secret to good crisis management is recognising the friend or foe and treating them equally so that you don’t overemphasise the response on one side and compromise on the other,” says Worsley. “The good leaders recognise that. They understand who’s who and treat them accordingly.”

Why preparation is vital in stakeholder management

In stakeholder management, the preparation phase is critical. Key contacts and their details must be identified well in advance. It should be viewed as part of a resilience program, with the majority of the response determined in contingency planning. If a crisis begins and the management team is chasing around to find the right contacts, then they are already on the backfoot and the prospect of a successful response is lessened.

“It’s doing it beforehand and identifying all your stakeholders. It’s making sure you’ve done all your planning and preparation – namely, your scenario development – well in advance. And you’ve prepared yourself with all of your messages,” adds Jarrod Wilson, CEO of Dynamiq. “As the saying goes, you best prepare for war during peacetime.

“Categorising and organising stakeholders into priority groups is another way that you can manage information flow. You need a crisis management platform to help you coordinate that and organise the response because the timeliness of being able to respond appropriately is critical. You must address the issue at hand.”

And in a crisis, prioritisation is essential. During the first minute, hour, and days, the most important stakeholders must be identified and managed correctly. This is in the face of competing demands while establishing who will respond and help during a response. Any potential problematic stakeholders must also be known and handled accordingly. There may be some white noise from various channels that will need to be assessed but might not require a response or reaction.

“If it’s someone on Twitter, with a ghost avatar and three followers, why engage? But if it’s a well-funded, issue-motivated group, you prioritise that,” adds Wilson.

Yet there is a risk of the snowball effect, where an issue with a stakeholder not believed to be a concern quickly turns into a huge issue because it has not been dealt with effectively or in a timely manner.

Leaders must make that judgement call. One decision can set off a chain of events with second and third order effects. It is vital to get the response correct and monitor developments to avoid any unintended consequences from that initial decision.

Setting the response agenda

usiness must set its response agenda and determine exactly who is driving this. If the response is driven by stakeholders, a business is no longer in control of the narrative and must get on the front foot to avoid dancing to the tune of external forces. There is a risk here for a serious outcome to be the spread of misinformation.

“You control the message. You control your stakeholders. As soon as you lose the response agenda, you’re opening yourself up,” says Worsley. “The secret is to recognise that you’re in that position. The best leaders recognise and get a sense of that really quickly. Whereas some just to try and ride it out.”/p>

emqnet is a digital resilience platform that logs all communication flows between crisis management teams and stakeholders. The platform is a vital tool for stakeholder management, allowing access to all necessary communications by crisis management teams to monitor a situation and understand the context should there be an escalation.

“There’s specific functionality within emqnet for stakeholder management planning and implementation based on stakeholder engagement, workflow prioritisation, method engagement. And you can invite them to communicate,” adds Worsley. “In a crisis, this can be vital.”

To find out more about how Dynamiq’s emqnet platform can help with stakeholder management and the megatrends impacting the mining industry, download the white paper below.

Businesses must make an honest assessment as to whether their crisis management capability has diminished post-pandemic. Credit: Philthy Phil Photography via Shutterstock.

The way businesses are operating has changed in the last two years through remote working, with certain workers not expected on-site on a full-time basis and the effort associated to provide a safe work environment. To achieve this new normal, businesses have had to invest significant resources, with costs running into millions of dollars in some instances.

In addition, other existing threats persist, and new threats have emerged. The focus on the pandemic has introduced a level of complacency not normally observed across areas of their operation. As a result, threats that would have been previously considered and mitigated as part of routine resilience programs, have been neglected. The risk long-term is these threats escalating into a full-scale crisis event that a business hasn’t recently considered or isn’t suitably prepared for.

While teams have been distracted by the Covid 19 response and recovery cycle, by focussing on the ‘doing’, many have forgotten the importance of the critical event management (CEM) process that provides the necessary focus organisation-wide.

“Your resilience capability has to continue to operate regardless of what you’re dealing with. Covid, like any other threat, you’ve still got to manage to operate through and find a way. Otherwise, your resilience capability is not doing its job,” says Jarrod Wilson, CEO of Dynamiq.

Despite the changes in working environments in the past two years, the fundamentals of managing a response remain the same.

“The principles of a response don’t really change. It’s the application, the discipline of maintaining that cycle,” adds Adam Worsley, General Manager of Dynamiq. “It’s about ensuring that you’re capturing and sharing information, providing informed and timely decision-making, responding, analysing that response, and then, of course, correcting and doing it again.”

Leadership in crisis management

When it comes to team-based approaches in crisis management, it is vital to identify who is responsible for various elements of the response, establish how they are notified, as well as their preparedness to rapidly add value and solve the issues at hand. This is not as easy as it once was given the challenges of the hybrid workplace and the need to bring the team together.

The role of the Leader is more important than ever. Understanding the process at this level is key to driving the cadence of the cycle and keeping the team and the response on track. It is crucial to capture data in a logical flow that contributes to the leadership process.

Ultimately, the leader is the driving force of a crisis response. They must be honest with themselves and assess whether management for time-critical, complex and often chaotic environments has diminished within their organisation.

The leader must also determine whether they can apply the process effectively, assembling the team quickly, assigning tasks, updating the situation, and analysing the issue, while implementing stakeholder management plans. It is important to view this as a continuous process, a fit-for-purpose method for managing one or multiple crisis management events.

“Our observation, in the return to site-based training, is that leaders and teams have forgotten the importance of the crisis management process. Too many have taken a linear approach focussed on implementing response or recovery plans rather than testing or re-setting objectives,” says Wilson.

Addressing the skill fade and experience gap

Workers being absent from operating environments for extended periods during the past two years has led to a skill fade in crisis management practices. Many mine sites, still recovering from the significant turnover of staff after the pandemic, have seen the result of some new workers being unfamiliar with their roles and responsibilities in crisis management.

To address both the skill fade and experience gap, regular training and feedback are fundamental to ensuring that workers are capable of dealing with any threat type. And technology can play a key part here.

“You can’t undervalue the importance of the leadership role. If you’re going to add new people to your program, you’ve got to put your training investment in because that’s going to be your weak point,” adds Wilson.

“Many leaders only want to see the team on-site, but this is not practical and should only be where there is real value to be added. All of the individual learning and training, there is an acceptance that can be done digitally and in people’s own time. And it can be self-paced. But traditionally, you’ve had everyone together in the classroom to learn the fundamentals.”

Data collection with purpose and completing after-action reviews are more important than ever to ensure that the resilience program continues to mature. Yet all too often, these reviews are not happening because businesses prioritise continuing operations instead. Avoiding after-action reviews is ultimately detrimental to a business in the long term.

Dynamiq’s emqnet is a digital resilience platform that enables virtual crisis management, bringing together all teams involved in the response. emqnet is widely used around the world by companies for response management as part of their resilience program.

Training modules in the platform can also simulate a crisis, allowing teams to build confidence and capability. After-action reviews provide opportunities to identify areas for improvement. All of this will help businesses build back their capability for crisis management after the pandemic and enhance future operations.  “We are making changes to the platform, based on recent observations, to highlight the importance of the process and essentially guide people, teams and leaders through it in a more structured and intuitive way,” adds Wilson.

In the mining industry, businesses must be prepared to manage multiple crisis events at once. Credit: Thomas Barwick / DigitalVision via Getty Images.

In fast-moving mining operations, multiple events may need managing across several locations globally. Yet using the traditional business resilience model limits the ability to gain and maintain situational awareness, manage resource allocation and fatigue, as well as lacking the necessary flexibility in the response.

The only way to manage multiple events simultaneously is through a tech-driven operational resilience program. This provides the capability to maintain control of several events at once across different points of time and geographies. Business as usual (BAU) must continue as best as possible in the circumstances, while ensuring that an event is managed to completion and opportunities for improvement are not missed.

Despite Covid-19 challenging operations during the past two years and presenting new levels of complexity for business leaders, traditional threats to businesses remain. For example, threats such as reputational, whistle-blower, natural perils, and cybersecurity have continued throughout the pandemic, which can all significantly impact operational continuity. And with resources diverted towards the pandemic response, this has increased the potential for vulnerability in other areas.

Dynamiq’s business resilience platform, emqnet enables reporting, tracking and monitoring progress over time. And data captured through the platform allows for trend analysis, helping build an understanding of where ongoing issues are occurring and any identifying areas that require focus. The platform also has a map feature that displays incidents around the world, allowing a snapshot of the various event types across the Globe. All these features offer increased accessibility of vital information.

“Having multiple events within emqnet will allow people to understand what their focus is at that particular point in time. The paper-based or traditional method of crisis management or business resilience is difficult to follow if there is a need to manage multiple events. And it’s difficult to maintain situational awareness to get back into that focused mindset when you are changing between events. Whereas emqnet allows you to refresh yourself through reading the status board and confirming the status of tasks and management of stakeholders,” explains Lucas Saunders, Head of Advisory at Dynamiq.

Managing resources during multiple events

A key consideration in managing multiple events is allocation of resources, especially when different event types may be at varying stages. Some areas may require more attention than others and need prioritising, yet full oversight is necessary across all events should any escalations occur.

In a crisis response, leaders get to see their team perform under pressure, which helps identify talent with the ability to handle stressful environments. While at the other end, any members of staff that may be challenged in particular situations can either receive extra training to address deficiencies or be redeployed to other operations where they are less exposed.

Leaders must also recognise opportunities for continuous improvement through lessons learned, and ensure these learnings are shared up, across and down through the organisation to build capability. However, opportunities can sometimes be missed when responding to multiple events at once.

“You’ve got to be able to manage the event cycle,” says Saunders. “The instinct is that once an event is dealt with to return to BAU and continue on, not taking the time to pause and reflect.

“If you’re not doing those after-action reviews, and you’re looking for opportunities to improve, you’re just going to continue to go from event to event. The entire purpose of conducting after action reviews is to enhance the organisational business resilience capability.”

When responding to multiple events, it is often necessary to involve other teams. emqnet can add multiple teams, both internal and external experts, to an event to enable collaboration between several parties and strengthen the response.

“Take a cyclone or severe weather event as an example. You potentially have a regional corporate office and multiple mine sites within the cyclone-prone area. The organisation can start an event in emqnet and invite multiple teams,” explains Saunders. “Some clients did this during cyclone Debbie [in Australia] and it’s similar to the approach taken with Covid. They can have the one event and develop those plans across as many sites or locations as they need.”

Challenges with multiple events management

Fatigue is a key consideration in the effective and efficient management of multiple events affecting an organisation, particularly in heavy industries. Response fatigue must be managed to avoid workers experiencing burnout, especially when trying to perform under duress or dealing with stress in a crisis. Working across multiple events simultaneously can significantly intensify the strain on all personnel.

“Fatigue is a real issue. It impacts their decision-making process. It impacts their ability to do business as usual. It also impacts their families and their loved ones,” says Saunders.

And post-pandemic, leaders also need to be aware of the potential for both skill fade and a loss of mental stamina after workers have been absent from the workplace for extended periods in the past two years.

emqnet platform records who is working on any particular event, indicating who may need a break and when. The platform builds a common operating picture across multiple events at once to enable operations continuity and establish a cohesive response for as long as an event lasts and however many incidents there may be, and at all times monitoring personnel participation and involvement in the event management.

Video calls have become commonplace for leading and training teams during the pandemic. Credit: vm on Getty Images.

Two years of the pandemic have thoroughly tested the strength of business resilience programs, with mining leaders adapting to digital platforms for communications, management, and training of teams.

Businesses that have experienced the least disruption have been those with effective digital resilience and remote work capabilities, possessing the required flexibility to shift operations online. According to Lucas Saunders, Dynamiq’s Head of Advisory, simplicity is crucial for successful digital resilience programs.

“It needs to be intuitive; it needs to guide people through the process,” says Saunders. “If it’s complex, people aren’t going to use it effectively under pressure. It’s as simple as that.”

Dynamiq’s digital resilience platform emqnet has been helping businesses effectively manage incidents remotely, including the management of Covid-19 related issues throughout the pandemic. emqnet users have recorded significantly lower impacts and levels of disruption since March 2020 than businesses still using paper-based resilience programs. Remarkably, emqnet did not receive any specific updates to cope with the increased demands caused by Covid-19 restrictions.

“The fact that we didn’t have to change it means that the platform is flexible enough, regardless of the incident, complexity and duration,” adds Jarrod Wilson, Dynamiq CEO.

EMQnet supports the establishment of a common operating picture, with immediate data sharing across geographic areas. Notifications are personalised and targeted for the exact personnel who need them. Tasks can be allocated and tracked accordingly, with clear records of all formal interactions between stakeholders in one place.

Progress can be monitored in real-time in the platform’s reporting function. Data gathered ensures lessons are learned from events, enabling continuous improvement and capability development. Members can develop and share plans through what are effectively virtual whiteboards, with the option to bring authorised external experts on board for specific duties. Yet a successful resilience program all starts with the right leadership.

The importance of leadership in business resilience

When teams activate in response to an incident, leaders need to set clearly defined objectives and team operating practices. They need to remain visible, be collaborative when required, and make effective decisions based on advice from subject matter experts. They must control the pace and cadence of the team to achieve agreed objectives and minimise any impacts on their organisation.

Whilst team leaders are the final decision-makers and decide on the response pathways to be taken, they need to do so based on solid guidance and advice from their team.

“If they sit at the top and just drive ahead without listening to their people, they’re going to lose their support and the people won’t want to work for them,” argues Saunders.

Adhering to a clear set of values and the desired end state will define how the culture is nurtured. In an autocratic organisation, the fear of making a mistake can lead to nervousness within the team to make decisions and result in slow response planning and execution. This is less than ideal when time is of the essence.

“The leaders of an organisation need to identify the risks. They need to identify that the company may face issues that impact its ability to continue with business as usual and they need to mitigate the impact those risks may cause by having a strong and regularly practiced resilience program,” says Saunders.

Regular training and constructive feedback help build confidence within teams. And the best leaders recognise that there are always areas for improvement and strengths to exploit.

“When we do leadership training, it’s important to identify and acknowledge that you don’t know everything. The key to business resilience is to surround yourself with subject matter experts that can inform and advise you,” explains Saunders.

Furthermore, a digital resilience platform ensures more effective management of staff and deployment of resources. In a crisis, personnel who have been working for long periods can be rotated for a break after a certain number of hours to avoid fatigue affecting performance and leading to bad decisions.

“Being able to manage your resources helps to avoid fatigue or burnout,” adds Wilson.

How training builds operational continuity at mines

In an effective resilience program, defined duty cards outline team members’ roles and responsibilities. Everyone should know their duties and be prepared for any extra responsibilities they may take on in a crisis. This allows for considerations to be identified and enables the team leader to effectively manage the outcomes of the incident by activating their teams to suit the situation. Duty cards facilitate the teams’ ‘swim lanes’ to ensure that management is streamlined and roles are clearly defined.

In a crisis, familiarity with processes and procedures can be the difference between success and failure in managing the response. Regular training and exercises can identify issues without the pressure of a real-world situation, allowing the team to fix those issues. Exposing team members to alternate roles during the training and exercises assists in building redundancy.

Training allows workers to build a rhythm within their response. The more often personnel use the digital platforms in exercises, the more effective they will be when responding to a real-life crisis event.

Even if experienced staff leave and replacements join, making the operations history accessible to those who need it is effective in getting new members of staff up to speed by reading what has happened in past events.

“The more exposure to the resilience decision support tools, the better off they’ll be and the more likely they will use it under pressure because they trust it,” says Saunders.

The EMQnet platform can provide training with levels of pressure that build to a full-scale event in real-time, simulating a crisis at their mining operations.

And while there are routine updates to EMQnet, there has been a conscious decision to keep the user interface and layout the same for its 15 years of operations. This is in contrast to the redesigns every few years for desktop suites from the big software companies, which can confuse users. During a crisis, this wastes valuable time when every second counts.

“That continuity of features and the approach is really important so that you don’t have issues with the training deficit,” says Wilson. “If you were constantly changing the UI and moving buttons around and transforming the UI all the time, you’d lose that investment in the training.”

Credit: Westend61 on Getty Images.

Standardisation provides greater consistency in business resilience and decision-making for mining companies operating across multiple regions, enabling more efficient coordination of activities.

However, achieving the standardisation of a resilience program in the mining industry is filled with challenges. These may include assets spread far apart globally and a workforce with varying approaches and cultures.

Furthermore, operations at other locations may use different communications and data exchange platforms. Then there is the potential language barrier. Ultimately, this all contributes to a lack of consistency and greater complexity throughout operations, leading to a fragmented approach to incident management and inefficiencies. And during a crisis, any inconsistencies or inaccuracies will be exposed.

Yet if everyone has access to the same operational data from a shared resilience platform, it increases clarity. Any trends can be assessed through organisation-wide data analysis, identifying when there is a need for an intervention. Centralisation enables targeted interventions and continuous improvements, maximising investment and minimising the cost of incidents to an organisation.

Achieving standardisation can depend on the leadership style and business culture within an organisation. A hierarchical organisation that imposes commands from the top will likely be worse off than one that fosters collaboration and takes constructive feedback on board to drive continuous improvement, which connects back to resilience.

“An important part around operational resilience is the continuous improvement. So, the standardisation and then a continuous improvement culture, post-exercise and post-event, where they’re doing the reviews, it’s all allowing them to improve the system each time,” explains Jarrod Wilson, CEO of Dynamiq.

“If they have standardisation, it allows that to spread across all the operations. Rather than just that lesson being learned in a localised environment, they can improve the whole system.”

Dynamiq’s eqnet platform is a centralised digital resilience platform that allows everyone within an organisation to access a consistent set of operational data. Users can also log in on any device anywhere in the world, further increasing accessibility. The platform facilitates post-event reviews and identifies areas of risk for further improvements.

“emqnet allows everyone to come together with a common operating picture. Even if they are operating differently, they can still at least agree on what the facts are,” adds Wilson.

Communications consistency at mines

In an interconnected world, leveraging technology for interoperability has become even more important in improving the speed and accuracy of communications.

A standardised business resilience platform allows data to be targeted to the people who need it, without sending out alerts to everyone for everything happening across all operations. Personnel receive the exact information they need to do their jobs without being distracted by multiple notifications.

“You don’t want to send a deluge of information to people, you just want to keep it specific, and to the point of exactly what they need,” adds Wilson.

Often with mining businesses, a corporate office may be in a completely different country to where impacted operations are. This can lead to gaps in the understanding of national regulatory requirements. Having that common operating terminology and reliable communication channels removes any potential ambiguity.

A shared digital resilience platform enhances communication channels. emqnet enables the secure sharing of vital documentation with approved and trusted third parties and official bodies. For example, if regulators need to approve a re-entry plan for a mine, they can view this on emqnet. This increases the speed of approval processes, minimises downtime, and allows operations to resume as quickly as possible.

In addition, with global operations, the language barrier can obstruct operations. There can be confusion between management and the workforce due to the lack of clarity in communications.

“That’s a significant barrier in some organisations. We have clients that may be headquartered in the US and have several mines in remote areas of South America where the dominant language is Spanish. So, having that ability to translate accurately is a substantial benefit,” says Lucas Saunders, Head of Advisory at Dynamiq.

EMQnet allows communication in different languages, removing barriers and increasing operations efficiency

Leveraging resources through standardisation 

Standardisation in business resilience means that they can operate a leaner model during an incident due to the flexibility and agility in responding to threats. Resources can be leveraged both internally and externally according to what is happening on the ground. This avoids the issue of overstaffing or understaffing in certain sites. Operators can have the best people for the job regardless of their location without compromising operational confidentiality.

“You can also bring in external subject matter experts and limit what they can see within the platform,” adds Saunders.

“For example, if you need a geotech expert for a high wall failure or a dam failure and they need a dam engineer, they can bring those experts into their platform and give them access to a workspace only.

“They can limit the information external parties can see through access control. They can also attach documents, plans or inundation mapping, bringing these into the workspace feature. This allows them to see the relevant information that enables them to make key decisions at the appropriate time.”

Regular training is also essential for an effective business resilience platform. Through routine crisis management training, personnel become familiar with the platform, enabling them to understand what to do during a serious event. Furthermore, a centrally managed capability avoids exposing inexperienced staff to duties and locations they are ill-equipped for.

emqnet allows the management of risks and is fully configurable around existing management systems. The resilience platform supports a ‘just in time’ resource model for both training and real response.  “The simpler you can keep the approach, the more simple you can keep their processes and procedures when they’re working under significant pressure – you’re talking about people’s lives, you’re talking about their organisations – the more effective the resilience program will be,” adds Saunders.