When staff work on remote sites in the Eastern Goldfields, coordinating training sessions can pose a challenge.
But CCIWA’s Employee Relations Consulting team came up with a tailored solution for gold miner Regis Resources by sending senior consultant Stephen Farrell to the company’s remote Duketon Gold Project, 130 kilometres north of Laverton.
Farrell attended the Duketon Project four times in January and February to conduct the three-day Pathway to Leadership courses.
It meant almost 50 staff from Regis’ Duketon sites – Moolart Well, Gloster Gold Deposit, Garden Well and Rosemont – could attend the courses without the lost production time or expense of travelling to Perth.
Regis Resources’ HR Advisor Rachael Ashton said participants ranged from leading hands right up to general managers, who led by example by undertaking a refresher and keeping up to date with what’s new.
“The courses were presented in a practical and succinct manner, making it easy for our leaders to immediately apply what they had learnt in the training with confidence,” she said.
“Whilst the staff were keen for the training it’s tough asking them to attend on their R&R, an option which would also pose coverage issues.
“Having a presenter come to us meant that not only were the above issues alleviated, all of our leaders had the opportunity to attend and still have some time in their day to attend to job matters.
“The feedback was really great and a good majority of attendees got a lot out of the course. We are hoping to provide more training later in the year.”
Farrell said the training was based on existing courses but tailored to meet the requirements of Regis, covering common management matters such as performance management, managing mental health issues, workplace behaviour and investigations.
“We were contacted last year after they signed up as CCIWA members and enquired about some leadership training,” he said.
“We worked out that it was better for me to fly in Monday morning, conduct the courses from Monday to Wednesday and then fly out back to Perth the Thursday morning, rather than them fly their people to Perth.”
Farrell, who had never been to a gold mine before, said when feedback from the first course included requests for more mine-specific scenarios, he was able to quickly gather stories from colleagues in the workplace relations team to make the training even more relevant. He also took advantage of being given a mine site tour by the course participants.
“CCIWA prides itself on making courses as relevant as possible, which is why we work closely with our clients to tailor our courses to suit their workplaces,” he said.
“As a presenter I find that most adults learn through being given practical exercises. An example of this is my use of a role play activity at the end of the managing the poor performer course to encapsulate all the theories, techniques and concepts I’ve run through and provide the opportunity to participants to put these techniques into practise.
“The participants at Regis really got into the spirit of immersing themselves in the scenarios and putting into practise the different concepts and techniques that had been taught that day, and it was probably the most enjoyable part of the course.
“For them, it’s an opportunity to provide their management a safe environment to practice the skills they’ve been taught.”
► CCIWA’s highly-skilled team run many training courses, specialising in safety and employee relations, all of which are customisable to any business. Contact (08) 9365 7746 or [email protected] for more information.
