Discussing his company's efforts to improve gender balance and diversity this week, CEO Andrew Mackenzie outlined some of the milestones already reached like 1000 women added to the workforce. 

 

He said the most gender diverse workplaces within the company also had the lowest rate of accidents, but did not elaborate at to which sites or areas these were. 

 

BHP has set out to have a gender balance globally by 2025 and Mackenzie has outlined the successes and increases in female participation in the past year. 

 

"Our progress in the last 12 months has been bumpy and we have learnt a lot," Mackenzie wrote on his company's blog. 

 

The last financial year saw an increase in female representation of 2.9%. The company hired another 1000 women in the 2017 financial year and has a 20% female workforce now; female turnover is down to 3.7% higher than men. 

 

 One more lateral move was to change hiring tactics at its Brisbane logistics centre and look for people with skills that matched, but did not necessarily have mining experience leading to a 53% female workforce. 

 

In the coming time flexibility will be key, offering workers differing arrangements on the understanding that most workers also have other important family or personal commitments.

 

One challenge that required serious conversations was that, "Many of our employees needed time to digest such a big change. They needed reassurance the aspirational goal would not disadvantage men."

BHP's challenge has been shared by others in the resource and oil and gas industries and fears of tokenism have persisted. 

 

Speaking the World Petroleum Congress panel in diversity in July Woodside Petroleum CEO Peter Coleman said that his least diverse department was human resources, which was 85% female but also overwhelmingly white. 

 

Woodside, which bought half of BHP's Scarborough assets last year, has avoided hard quotas, but Coleman believes a 30% female workforce is a beginning point "sweet spot" that leads to conversation and change. 

 

"Early on we set some broad objectives but I challenged the organisation ‘don't make me set a target', because you get the excuse that setting targets means you get token outcomes and the quality of people being promoted isn't good enough," Coleman said.

 

"That's simply not true. They are good enough, but you need to keep replenishing the pool."

 

He said achieving that goal requires ensuring there are enough female graduates and, importantly, that they are encouraged to apply for and pursue careers within the oil and gas industry. 

 

Encouraging gender diversity in the supply chain not just the company is another way to more broadly address gender issues.