I&D: Gender balance and driving performance

BHP is an example of what’s possible when it comes to driving more rapid pace in achieving gender balance, and the bottom-line benefits of doing so. Of course the benefits for business of gender equality have been clear for some time. Gender diversity, together with the inclusive culture that comes hand in glove with it, brings improved efficiency, productivity, innovation, creativity and employee engagement, stemming from bringing the best and brightest minds together to problem-solve and make decisions. Studies from Chief Executive Women (CEW) show that gender-balanced leadership results in better decision-making, execution, and performance that generates higher profitability and stronger value growth.

However, the CEW 2023 census released this week found that at the current rate of change in Australia, it could take 50 years to achieve gender parity in ASX top 200 CEO roles, and a decade to reach gender parity in their executive leadership teams. Knowing what I know about the positive impact on company performance, not to mention the basic principle of equity and growing societal expectations, that is too slow.

At BHP, we have been committed to improving female representation, and have been measuring our progress, for many years. But 2016 was a pivotal year. Female employee representation across the resources industry was around 16 per cent. At BHP, only 17.6 per cent of our employees were women. Extrapolating our rate of progress at the time, we calculated that it would have taken us decades to achieve gender balance. So, in order to stimulate greater focus and pace, we formally committed to an aspirational goal to achieve gender balance in 2025. We required leaders to develop specific plans and initiate actions to make this goal a reality. And we were made accountable for progress against those plans, including through our remuneration outcomes. This approach is consistent with any other BHP strategic priority.

We heard from our people about what they were experiencing and their views on the impediments to inclusion and diversity. We then took methodical steps to address these barriers. This included measures to reduce bias in recruitment, as well as annual reviews to address the gender pay gap. We embedded flexible work through hybrid arrangements and through re-designing work such as time on site, fly-in-fly-out rosters and job shares. We re-designed some of our tools and equipment to reduce physical strain and upgraded our workplaces and villages to make facilities safer and more inclusive. These changes have been welcomed by men and women alike. We are still learning and the effort continues.

We continue to drive improvement in culture, including being more deliberate about setting and upholding the standards of behaviour we expect at BHP. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect. That has required us to accept where we have not met the standards we now expect, and to apologise where harm has been caused. This includes where sexual harassment has occurred at BHP operations and accommodation villages. From 2018, we have treated sexual harassment as a health and safety risk. This reflects its gravity and its impact on psychological safety, and ensures it gets the requisite focus, effort and resourcing to reduce and ultimately eliminate this behaviour.

Today, more than 40 per cent of our senior executives are female and our Executive Leadership Team has been gender balanced for some time now. Our overall female representation has more than doubled to more than 35 per cent. The workforce at BHP’s newest iron ore mine, South Flank in Western Australia, is 40 per cent female and 15 per cent Indigenous. When production starts at our major new Jansen potash mine in Canada in 2026, the workforce will be gender balanced and will have 20 per cent Indigenous representation.

The changes underway in BHP continue to be transformational. A gender balanced workforce, built upon an inclusive, performance-oriented culture, is critical to BHP’s ongoing success. Our aim is a workforce of the best and brightest, representative of the communities in which we operate. We need people with diverse backgrounds, professional experience and skills, bringing new ideas and effort to the goal of sustainably providing the metals and minerals the world needs, and to enable us to win against the competition.

We are by no means always getting everything right, but we are building a better culture and on track to achieving a gender balanced workforce by 2025, and it has translated into improved business performance.