Inclusion and diversity

An inclusive culture and diverse workforce allows for greater collaboration, innovation, and performance.

Building and maintaining a workforce that represents the communities in which we operate, especially recruiting more women into operational roles, is an industrywide challenge that we are working to address.

Our Inclusion and Diversity Policy outlines our commitment to building an inclusive and diverse workforce and our internal inclusion and diversity standard defines expected inclusion and diversity practices across all aspects of people management. Our annual inclusion and diversity plan, which is approved by our CEO, outlines our priority focus areas. In FY24 these included:

Embedding the performance requirements of our internal inclusion and diversity standard;
Conducting sexual harassment risk assessments for our operations and offices;
Rolling out a discussion series on the important role bystanders can play in creating a safe and respectful work environment;
Supporting our inclusion and diversity networks, which are now in place at all our operations and offices; and
Developing a discussion series on workplace behaviours for roll-out to contractors in FY25.

We set and track performance against a series of inclusion and diversity measurable objectives aimed at improving inclusion and diversity in our workplace. Read more about these measures and our performance against them in our 2024 Sustainable Development Report.

At South32 we are committed to offering market competitive remuneration and benefits and have designed our reward framework to reward achievements, leadership, and behaviours that promote our values and purpose.

Pay equity

We complete gender pay equity reviews each year and invest to improve pay equity across our employee workforce.

During our FY24 review, we identified opportunities to mitigate potential gender pay gaps that may be introduced in key phases of the employee lifecycle. Continuing improving our business processes, particularly in the recruitment and hiring stage, to support pay equity is a key focus for South32.

Pay equity and fair and equitable remuneration information is provided in our Sustainability Databook 2024.

Australia - WGEA reporting

WGEA is an Australian Government statutory agency created by the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (The Act). The Act requires annual employee remuneration disclosures for Australian private sector employers and Commonwealth public sector organisations with 100 or more employees. WGEA uses the mandatory disclosures to calculate each reporting organisation’s gender pay gap with the objective of creating gender remuneration transparency.

For the 2023-2024 reporting period (1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024), South32 had a gender pay gap of 3.8% (inclusive of CEO and Heads of remuneration) which is broadly consistent with the previous reporting period. South32 benchmarked well against WGEA Gender Equality Indicators - which compare our performance to industry and national averages.

The WGEA report for 2023 - 2024 is available below:

WGEA South32 Executive Summary 2023-24

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Champions for diversity

Workers at our Cerro Matoso operation posing for the camera in front of some trucks

Champions for diversity

We are a signatory to the 40:40 Vision, an initiative led by HESTA and supported by industry partners to pursue diversity in executive leadership in ASX300 companies. Our Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is a founding member of the Champions of Change National 2021 Group, which is a shared commitment to achieving gender balance across workforces and creating a workplace culture that is diverse and inclusive, at all levels and in all locations. Our CEO is also a member of CEOs for Gender Equity, a CEO-led membership organisation committed to achieving gender equality in Western Australia.

Inclusion and diversity

An inclusive culture and diverse workforce allows for greater collaboration, innovation, and performance.

At South32 we are committed to offering market competitive remuneration and benefits and have designed our reward framework to reward achievements, leadership, and behaviours that promote our values and purpose.

Pay equity

Australia - WGEA reporting

Champions for diversity

Champions for diversity

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