It is safe to say, careers in mining and metals are not yet top of the list of future career choices for bright young girls and women.

In this interview, organised by Axora and submitted to Mining Magazine, Elaine Hattingh, manager of Innovation Planning & Execution at Exxaro Resources based in Pretoria, South Africa, related her experiences to mark International Women's Day.

She shared her experiences of being a trailblazing female geologist and more recently innovation lead. She started her career literally at the "coalface" and is now leading transformative projects across all aspects of the business for one of the largest mining companies in Africa. 

With digitization gathering pace and a very different workplace compared with only 20 years ago, Elaine shows that dream jobs come in all shapes and sizes - sometimes even with a complimentary hard hat. 

There are many influences on girls and young women as they move through education and make their study and career choices. For Elaine, two key elements have influenced where she is today -  the careers guidance at school sparking a passion for geology, and later strong female role models early in her career. Breaking down barriers along the way as mining in South Africa has made progress in harnessing the power of diversity. Let's find out more about her journey …

Can you tell us about your background at Exxaro and the different roles that you've had within the organisation?  

My academic background is geology and mining engineering. Originally, I started as a production geologist at Namakwa Sands, which is a heavy mineral sand mine, 350 kilometres north of Cape Town where I spent about a year and a half. It's lovely to work on the beach as a geologist.  I then moved to Head Office, which is based in Pretoria, where I did geological resource modelling for two and a half years. From there, I went to one of the coal mines as a production geologist, for about three years. Then moved to head office into a business development role not in mining specifically, but in energy, water, and the agriculture sectors. Exxaro identified those three areas based on our purpose of Powering better Lives in Africa and beyond an its adjacency to our mining operations.

From there, I spent about a year in renewable energy generation, as Exxaro was moving increasingly into the renewable energy space. I was involved in the initiation and pre-feasibility studies of the solar power PV plants currently being installed for Exxaro's own use. After which I was appointed in the position I'm currently in, which is manager of innovation.  

Do you feel your experience is typical of the mining industry? And as a woman, in the way that women are embraced and treated within mining? 

Women in the mining industry aren't typically in geology or engineering roles. The largest part of female workforce is office-oriented such as human resources, health and safety and administrative roles.

You obviously decided when you were studying that you were going to go towards mining, to take the specific degree that you did. What led you to that point? When did you know that that was the direction you wanted to go in?  

I have always been more drawn towards the technical and science subjects such as maths, science and technical drawings and after high school I was planning to go study physics. The way the career advisers explained geology to me, really got me excited so I chose it as my optional extra subject during my first year at University. But I started enjoying it so much, without even giving a thought as to what a career in geology would be like, I changed my major from physics to geology.  

 

You've moved into the innovation side, is there anything you can share about how mining is committed to introducing new practices, which demand technical knowledge, investment in safety, sustainability, and efficiency? 

This is a discussion that my team and I have regularly.

Mining - because it's an old established industry - the typical thinking is, this is how we've always done it, so this is how we are going to continue doing it. Often there is very little thought as to how we can do it differently. Whereas in a world of distributed knowledge, the thinking around how to be innovative is coming more and more to the forefront - how we can do things better, cheaper, faster, while supporting our bottom line, while adding to safety and contributing to our ESG goals.

The mining industry has started thinking along those lines, and gradually took this quite dramatic step into innovation, and thinking more about how to innovate. Women I would say are ideally suited to this process due to their typically right brain, creative brain profiles.

Mining in general, not just Exxaro, has major targets to meet by 2050 across health, social and environmental aspects. I am pleased to say that Exxaro has a strong focus on empowering others to lead better lives in Africa and beyond.

At Exxaro we are investigating Open innovation as an Innovation strategy, as many CEO's of corporates are, as seen on the PWC innovation benchmark report. We have selected a few open innovation partners based on our research to support us on this journey.

What percentage of the mining workforce do you estimate is female?

I don't have the stats to hand, but by my experience, I would say it is still a very male dominated sector - I would guestimate that 35% of my colleagues are female.

It sounds very much that you're not quite a rarity, but there aren't many like you with your qualifications working in this sphere - is that fair?

Well if I just think of the meetings that I've been in only today, I was the only female in every single meeting.

Have you seen any changes though, from when you started in the mining industry?  

If I think of female representativeness throughout my career; In my first role, in 2010, I was the first female production geologist on that specific mine. When I moved to Head Office, I was the first female in the geological modelling pool.  During my first year at Head Office there were two other females appointed, also in the modelling space

During my time as production geologist at the coal mine I was the second female geologist. I was very privileged to have a female resident geologist who I reported to, she was a year older than me, and a very strong individual. During my consecutive role at Head Office, in business development, out of a team of eight we were two females. And in my current team, I'm the only female, but our team is very small, only three people.

Based on my experience there has been a slight increase in female participation but not as much as I would have hoped.   

You mentioned two things that seem to have affected where you are today. One was the career guidance you got, and another one was a strong female leader, a manager above you. If you're thinking about what would attract more women to the kind of work that that you're doing, are these key aspects or are there other things?

In the formative educational years, it's important for young girls to know that it's okay to be into maths, it's okay to be into science, and it's okay to be attracted to those types of academic goals, scenarios and situations. It also helps a lot to have strong female role models. Our CEO designate is female, Dr Nombasa Tsengwa, and she's incredibly inspiring. I once read a quote that said, ‘Women can't have it all because we can't do it all.' And for a long time that influenced my decisions and actions, but after speaking to Dr Nombasa, it just made me realise we can ‘have it all', because we can do it all.

Do you find that there's a difference with South Africa specifically, culturally, or do you think this applies globally?  

I think it applies globally, but I think the South African mines are a lot harsher on females, than let's say Australia, or elsewhere in the world. And I think it's largely based on our culture. So until recently, in my parents' age group, if you were a woman you were either a secretary or you were a teacher, there wasn't much room for anything else. And elsewhere in the world that stigma or that association changed earlier on than it did in South Africa. Only now do you see women business owners, scientists and engineers. If I think of the oldest female engineer that I know, she's probably early 40s, if that.

So, why do you think women should consider a career in mining and not another administrative role, but something like an engineer or a geologist?

Because it's fun. There's something exciting about having to make a production environment decision on the fly. For example - taking a call at three o'clock in the morning and you know you can't call your boss to ask his or her opinion. Having the ability, the knowledge, and  enough confidence to know that you have to and can make that decision; that is something that I think very few other careers can offer in quite the same way.

That sounds both exciting and scary, depending on your personality. Are you given time to grow into that responsibility, are you allowed to make mistakes shall we say?  

You're going to make a mistake at some point, nobody is perfect, but my thinking behind it has always been that as long as I can justify the decision I've made, explain how I arrived at it having considered all the necessary information, then I will stand by it. If it's wrong, I will learn from it and move on. Even though you are trusted and called upon to make those decisions, you usually have a team or colleagues around you who will understand your rationale and support you.

Exxaro's received numerous major accolades over the years and its mission to "Power better lives in Africa and beyond" is not what people might expect to see - how does it manifest in the workplace?

That's one of the reasons I've stayed with Exxaro for so long, we truly believe and support our vision and mission of powering better lives. Exxaro really believes in and upskills their people. Exxaro believes that a company's greatest resource is its people, so if you upskill, and keep developing your people, they will keep on doing their best. 

What changes have you seen in the years you have been there?

I remember when I started working as a production geologist at the coal mine, some African cultures is such that having a female in a position of power is culturally difficult for them. I had to take one of my male controllers with me to translate, because they refused to take instruction from me as a woman. As you can imagine, giving clear guidance is vital in a mining environment, so having a group of people not wanting to listen to me was hard.

What the culture taught me was to adapt my style. So instead of ‘giving instructions' I learned to talk in more persuasive terms by giving guidance. I suppose you could call it less confrontational language. Whatever you call it, it worked overtime, so that was a good learning for me about adapting to suit the local context I was working in. Equally, those I was working with also learned the benefits of a more collaborative approach, so we all found a way to work well together.

What are the career progressions and learning opportunities within the mining environment?

For me specifically, well I recently became a mother, and my son is one year old. So my career aspirations now are ‘to know that I am adding value'

When anyone asks me this question, I feel a bit awkward to answer in this way, but I just want to keep on adding value where I am and doing what I do well.

Eventually, when my son is a bit older, I may think in terms of other roles, but for now I am content when I know I can add value each day in what I do.

And learning opportunities, what things are there to learn within the mining industry? Either from a soft skill perspective or a technical perspective?

From a soft skills perspective, I know I used to be quite controlling. The mine environment in South Africa sometimes brings that out, because it's a very hierarchical environment. What I've realised since I've got older, is that an approach where you work to win people over is much more effective. It's not about ‘do this, because I said so, because my seniority allows me to oblige you to'. It's about how can we work together, and collaborate to arrive at what is best for this company?

At Exxaro we are also busy with a process of everyone going through ‘The Exxaro Leadership Way', which is about having a growth mindset and not being restrictive and hierarchical. 

From a technical perspective, digitization has been adopted large scale in other industries but as yet not to such a large extent within mining.

The mining industry in particular prefers adopting proven technology in the interest of mitigating risk. Added to this, with expertise across both data science and industry knowledge being rare, we are working hard on developing these skills internally. However, working collaboratively with other companies such as Axora to not only source and implement proven, impactful solutions but to also lean on their mining applied approach to innovation, is supporting us in the short to medium term to bridge that specific resource gap.

For International Women's Day, one of the things that we wanted to talk about is what can attract more women in to mining, and you've touched upon that. Including people being open with the guidance they provide. Obviously, there's a lot of men in mining who are very supportive and are just wanting the right people with the right skills to come into their business. Is that a fair assessment?

It is definitely fair. Increasingly managers are realising that the blend of skills and approaches you get from a mixed workforce is the best way forward.  

It is clear from speaking with her, that Elaine has now herself grown into a role model for aspiring female geologists and engineers tackling the challenges mining faces today and designing the innovations that will make a difference in mining and their communities into tomorrow.