Skills Accelerator

The Wits Mining Institute (“WMI”), received support from Sibanye-Stillwater, aimed to address this major challenge through the development of a training programme in Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) practice focused on modernising South African minerals sector. The programme is a progressive four-step journey covering the following:

1. Short Course  1 – Minerals Value Chain for OHS Practice - equipping professionals with an understanding of their role in the minerals value chain.
2. Short Course 2 – Fundamentals of Occupational Health and Safety in Mining - equipping professionals with competences that help them navigate the complex regulations, and occupational health and safety management systems through beyond compliance behavioural transformation.
3. Short Course 3  – Occupational Health and Safety Practice in Mining- converting theoretical understanding into practical strategies for designing competitive risk management approaches. 
4. Advanced Certificate in Occupational Health and Safety Practice in Mining - putting it all together through project - design-based learning for professionals to demonstrate competences in leading operational health and safety risk management efforts for their organisations and industry.

The Wits Mining Institute has now taken all Sibanye-Stillwater management on the pilot programme covering the first three courses. After every course, Wits Mining Institute received constructive feedback on the content, training methods for continuous improvement of the programme. The third course was conducted from 20 May to 24 May 2024. Guest speakers, including May Hermanus, a seasoned OHS expert, and Ian Holme- Head of Integrated Risk and Business Continuity at Anglo American were included as part of the weeklong proceedings. Ian was emphatic on the need for integrating OHS risk into the broader risk management framework of the organisations because there is a strong relationship between the risk management principles, framework, and processes. He exposed the huge opportunities that lie ahead with data analytics to move the needle on OHS.

To mark the conclusion of the first three course, William Taylor, Executive Vice President: Technical Services Southern Africa Region Group Champion Health and Safety, attended the final day of the 5-day course on Occupational Health and Safety Practice in Mining. He highlighted Sibanye-Stillwater’s commitment to a healthy and safe mining industry. The initiative is Sibanye-Stillwater’s contribution to the health and safety in the industry. Sibanye funded the entire cost of programme development.

To ensure the programme is of the highest quality and relevancy, senior management at Sibanye had to go through the training programme, followed by various levels from the company. The Executive Vice President commented that “light the fire from the bottom”, arguing that we don’t reach OHS excellency simply because we do not seek it. If we pursue it with all our energy and resourcefulness, we can achieve zero harm. It takes all of us to save a life every day and remember that ‘’the gate to harm needs to be closed’’. 

Comments from management - Cobus  Lubbe "Best week to close off the programme, timing of the short course 3, the timing and it was the right conversation’