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Millennials can make December. This included 15 newcomers out
of 33 overall appointments for WA-based
companies.
a difference applicants into their very first executive role.
Acacia itself helped place a record 72% of
It was also a breakthrough year for gender
diversity with the Perth-based recruitment
firm reporting that 60% of its board appoint-
cacia director Abbi Vermey is pleading energy and chemical engineering Michael
Afor more millennials to consider enter- Hitch, who urged the rest of the industry to ments were female.
ing the resources sector where she believes take a leaf out of BHP Ltd’s book and identify “At Acacia, we’re absolutely seeing more
they have a genuine opportunity to deliver on better ways to promote “how cool the sector females shortlisted for roles and more fe-
their vocal ideals for a cleaner world. can be”. males keen on putting their hand up for
While she is full of praise for the way in “We’ve been thinking outside of the box for board-level roles,” Vermey said.
which the industry embraced a new genera- 6-7 years now, this is not something that hap- “Of course, we’ve still got a long way to go,
tion of executives over the past 12 months, pened yesterday,” he said. “Many domestic but if I’m comparing last year to the last 10,
Vermey continues to wonder if past stigma students aren’t interested in this industry, for I definitely feel like the last 12 months has
around mining being a “dirty” business was whatever reason. It could be the ‘three D’s’ – seen the biggest increase in females going
still a barrier to entry for today’s youth. dangerous, dirty and dark – which isn’t true. into executive roles.”
“There’s a very big disconnect between “Although corporations such as BHP have Vermey attributed some of the changing
place and, on the other, you’ve got an indus- “ I definitely feel like the last 12 months has
millennials and what they stand for in this
modern world, and the opportunities that the
industry can offer now in terms of having an
impact through decarbonisation and clean
energy production,” Vermey told Paydirt.
seen the biggest increase in females going
“On one hand, you’ve got these millen-
into executive roles.
nials that want to make the world a better
try that’s actually changing and entering this
new industrial revolution for a cleaner world, done a remarkable job in public advertising,
but there still seems to be that connotation they also do fabulous work in showing how attitude towards board and executive ap-
of it being a male-dominated, dirty industry. cool the sector can be. If I was starting again, pointments to the wave of new project oppor-
“We need to find a way to bridge that gap BHP’s television ads would have convinced tunities being promoted across the industry.
because there’s a real opportunity here to me long ago.” “If you look at the last five years, it’s all
make a difference. We definitely still have a Vermey hailed a changing of the guard been about gold and iron ore predominately,
lot more work to do, particularly at a school at the executive level last year with 19 first- so building underground gold mines and pro-
level.” timers among 47 total managing director/ cessing plants, and if you look at the people
Vermey’s view is shared by Western Aus- chief executive appointments in the metals coming through, a lot of that has always been
tralian School of Mines head of minerals, and mining industry over the six months to dominated by men,” she said.
“With these new projects in commodities
like lithium and rare earths that a lot of people
are still getting their heads around, the slate
is a bit cleaner in terms of female versus male
experience. There aren’t a lot of specialists
in some of those commodities and so I think
boards have been forced to look outside the
box to try and find someone with a different
skillset who can move a project forward.”
Vermey also noted companies were be-
coming more flexible about where their sen-
ior executives could base themselves. For
example, Acacia recently placed a Singa-
pore-based executive for a WA project and a
Sydney native to oversee a North American
project, with the rest of the board operating
out of Perth.
“We’re definitely seeing people are more
open to executives residing anywhere,
whereas before if a board lived in a particular
city, they would ideally want the executive to
be in same location as the asset or the rest of
the board,” she said.
– Michael Washbourne

Abbi Vermey

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