Advisory firm Deloitte Digital has identified a lack of effective communication among management, coalface employees and organised labour as a major challenge facing the South African mining industry.

Deloitte Digital director Tim Bishop says the company’s mobile-based workforce engagement solution – Deloitte Digital – will go a long way towards resolving this issue, as it allows for dialogue between mineworkers and employers.

Deloitte Digital is a global digital arm of the professional services business of Deloitte, focusing on customer and employee, online and mobile strategy as well as experience, design and development. The solution offers not only advisory services but also technology and channel execution services.

“The communication problem is just one of the challenges that has dogged the mining industry in South Africa, but it is an important one. Mining executives and the workforce have traditionally found it difficult to speak to one other – they often did not share the same language, culture or working geography, which has also been compounded by the absence of a platform to do so,” explains Bishop.

He adds that most of the mines are situated on the gold or platinum belts and, therefore, some distance away from the downtown Johannesburg or Sandton offices where management is housed. Labour unions have bridged that divide, but significant weaknesses in the communication system remain.

“Deloitte Digital is a global network of 17 digital studios within the Deloitte professional services firm,” he cites, adding that it offers a broad range of business, creative and technology expertise, from strategy to multichannel devel- opment and managed solutions.

Bishop points out that, as part of the interna-tional Deloitte brand, the solution leverages group’s professional services to provide longer-term business transformational strategies and services.

He adds that Deloitte Digital manages and creates technology, as well as deep human insights alongside content and communication strategies to ensure employee engagement in mining companies that want to introduce better ways of empowering their workforce through technology that is already widely available to them.

“Deloitte Digital partners with clients to deliver targeted, relevant content to the workforce and create feedback channels for employees to communicate with their employers,” Bishop says, adding that the workforce engagement advisory solution enables employers to learn who their workers are, what their concerns are and what they need in the workplace.

The psychographic data and real-time insights, alongside a measured stream of relevant communications, can inform corporate decision-making while empowering the workforce, as they are more informed about their job, company and community.

Bishop comments that maintaining the balance between workforce-specific insights and behaviour helps to tailor communication between employees’ careers and sustain a ‘human golden thread’ between the mineworker and the mine.

Although Deloitte Digital deploys workforce engagement solutions for many industries, Bishop says there is no greater need for such a solution than in the mining sector.

“The notion of workforce engagement is bringing the employer and the workforce closer to drive a common goal of excellence. This is done through a combination of information that engages the worker and gives him or her a proper channel and range of services that enable a two-way dialogue.”