Preparation is key

It’s no stroke of luck that a $34 billion company was able to rebound from potential disaster
largely unscathed. The enterprise had been training, planning and preparing for just such an
incident for years, with the most recent training exercises conducted one month prior to
activation. This meant that when confronted with a real-life incident, the group had the
capability to instantly enact their crisis response, following the well-rehearsed framework of
the emqnet platform.

A textbook response

With relevant personnel notified almost simultaneously upon incident activation, the
company was able to switch to crisis mode without delay. Situational awareness was
promptly established, and the event assigned a medium-level threat on the severity matrix.
The company recognised the urgent need to protect assets, staff and the broader
community, and resolved to immediately bolster security, liaising with local authorities and
the regional police commander to deploy more than 200 officers and put the military on
standby. The site was secured, night shift suspended, supplier traffic diversions established,
and contingencies made for employees remaining on site. Importantly, the management
team leveraged their stakeholder relationships, reaching out to local village chiefs to
negotiate with agitated youths. The situation was defused, and the mine was back to full
operation just 72 hours after activation on emqnet.

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Maintaining operational continuity

With no control over external supply continuity, the company had to rapidly exercise levers within its power to minimise the operational impact of a gas shortfall. There was no time to waste: every minute was costing the enterprise money. Event activation on the emqnet crisis management platform was immediate, and within five minutes a team of 10 key personnel was notified and assembled. Their primary concern? How to shield the core operations of the business from a major supply disruption. Fortunately, they had at the ready their Trigger Action Response Plan (TARP) – a crisis management blueprint for overcoming the most severe threats to operational continuity.

Plan for prosperity

The TARP was tried and tested. In the four months before the gas disruption event, the enterprise had undertaken two training sessions to put their crisis response framework to the test. This resilience-building exercise meant that when faced with a real-life event, personnel could act quickly and decisively. Their first task was to shut down any non-essential energy use so that power could be diverted to core mining operations. The crisis management team then had to investigate alternative fuel sources and suppliers, liaising with the Australian Energy Market Operator and other stakeholders to shore up reserves. While output was affected, the enterprise succeeded in mitigating productivity loss, and within six days normal operations had resumed and the incident was closed on emqnet.

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Planning and Preparation

While any workplace death is a tragedy, it’s an eventuality all enterprises – especially those operating in hazardous environments – must prepare for. With the emqnet crisis management platform and process-led strategies, the mining company was able to respond to the incident swiftly and effectively, minimising operational downtime. The enterprise had uploaded their crisis management plan to the emqnet platform in the months leading up to the fatality and, just days beforehand, participated in a live training event. This routine practice gave all teams the capability and capacity to effectively respond to the real-life mine incident.

Response and Recovery

Within 10 minutes of initiating an event on the emqnet platform, key stakeholders had been alerted, the Emergency Management Team (EMT) had activated, and site operations paused. Within two hours, next of kin had been notified, site and severity assessments had been completed, police had been called in and employee assistance programs initiated. During this early window, government stakeholders were also contacted, internal and external communications drafted, and a spokesperson appointed. Within four hours, the body had been recovered, an inspector had taken control of the site, and the event moved into the pre-investigation phase. Each action, communication and decision followed a prescribed process, enacted and documented through the emqnet platform.

The strength of the platform was demonstrated in its ability to seamlessly connect off-site personnel, updating team members enterprise-wide on the one, centralised system. As a result, the general manager, who was on leave at the time and several hours away, was able to link into the event via the mobile app and receive real-time updates. This platform connectivity meant that by the time the manager arrived at the site some hours after incident activation, they had full situational awareness and were immediately able to assume a lead role in the Incident Management Team/Crisis Management Team (IMT/CMT) without any undo delay. The swift, efficient response – enabled by the emqnet framework – potentially saved the enterprise hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity. In an era where companies are measured on their triple bottom line, the promptness and efficacy of the response also publicly demonstrated the enterprise’s commitment to upholding its obligations to its workforce and regulators.

“In an era where companies are measured on their triple bottom line, the promptness and efficacy of the response also publicly demonstrates the enterprise’s commitment to upholding its obligations to its workforce and regulators.” Jarrod Wilson, emqnet CEO

After Action Review

The post-incident review is just as important as the response and recovery phase. This forensic analysis of what went well and what could be improved will enhance the company’s resilience program going forward. The review, which exposed incident notification weaknesses and failures in communications equipment, will inform how the enterprise’s crisis management plan is revised and augmented. This, coupled with ongoing training, ensures the organisation is best placed to respond to whatever unforeseen eventualities may occur in future.

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A workplace in crisis

Tensions had been simmering at a gold mine in Argentina when union-led conflict over site access reached a tipping point, forcing the mine into a costly shutdown. Union-backed workers downed tools and blocked internal roads, stopping mining operations for more than 20 hours. The downtime cost the group a day’s productivity, equating to about 26kg of extracted gold.

But the shutdown could have had deeper repercussions if not for the company investing in a comprehensive operational continuity plan. Armed with the specialised knowledge and tools from the emqnet platform, enhanced by two recent training exercises, the group was able to defuse the situation swiftly, bringing the blockade to an amicable end and getting workers back on the job promptly.

Dissecting the response

Within 10 minutes of activating the event on the emqnet platform, 53 people had been notified of the blockade, including the executive team. Contingencies were initiated to ensure that essential work relating to maintenance and ventilation continued while production work halted. The mining company simultaneously activated its chain of stakeholder networks, liaising with police, local authorities, the Labour Ministry and the media, who were probing the mine shutdown. This engagement resulted in authorities quickly issuing a conciliation order to break the impasse. Roadblocks were subsequently lifted, site access reinstated and operations resumed. In less than 24 hours the mine was back running at full capacity and the industrial turmoil was over.

Lessons learned

“The incident demonstrates the crucial role stakeholder management plays in dispute resolution. The enterprise had done their homework – identifying key stakeholders and building relationships – so that when a crisis emerged, teams could immediately engage their networks.” Jarrod Wilson, emqnet CEO

The incident demonstrates the crucial role stakeholder management plays in dispute resolution. The enterprise had done their homework – identifying key stakeholders and building relationships – so that when a crisis emerged, teams could immediately engage their networks. Without the requisite preparations in building and strengthening these stakeholder connections, negotiating a resolution would have been a far more complex and protracted process. As with any incident, the after-action review also plays a critical role in strengthening and maturing an organisation’s operational continuity program, so they are best placed to navigate future crises.

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Getting the right information to those who need it is critical in mining operations. Credit: Schroptschop via Getty Images.

When it comes to data capture in mining, it is crucial to be clear on what is required and its value in terms of decision-making. Furthermore, operators must make sure that data integrity is maintained, which helps build a consistent database over the long term to establish patterns and trends. Timely information in the right hands enables better decision-making.

A digital resilience platform is the most efficient and reliable way of collecting and sharing operational data, which would be almost impossible using the traditional manual approach.

“Data-driven decision-making is essential in today’s business, but mining leaders need to consider what data they need and why it is important,” says Jarrod Wilson, CEO of Dynamiq.

“Corporate reporting for stakeholders, including board members and external agencies for ESG assessment, feed into the need for greater consistency and transparency in data capture. Operationally, the benefits of quality data also help with trend identification to put better controls in place, asset and geographic profiling for performance, talent identification through seeing your people perform under pressure, and lessons learned for continuous improvement.”

Dynamiq’s emqnet resilience platform records valuable incident data, allowing your organisation’s leaders and their incident management teams to make informed and timely decisions. This increases the effectiveness and efficiency of your organisation’s response actions to any crisis.

Targeted investment

Being able to access critical data allows leaders to assess where they need to invest to protect their people and operations. Trend data, both real and training, reveals the level of effort and investment going into various assets and functions to determine where investments can be targeted to fill a particular capability gap, or demonstrate the efficacy of the existing capability to assure stakeholders that the threats in a particular environment are well prepared for.

“You can explore trends and potentially arrest those trends before they become too obstructive,” says Lucas Saunders, Head of Advisory at Dynamiq.

“A simple example could be if the data is pointing at incidents occurring an hour before shift change over, does that mean that there’s a fatigue issue and health and safety need to do a review of their fatigue management plan?”

Talent identification

Rarely understood and only seen by the best of businesses, observing and assessing how your people perform and make important decisions when under pressure allows for your best talent to shine and help build the future leaders of your business.

By assessing post-incident outcomes, the lessons learned not only improve your operational resilience program; but also shine a light on who has performed well and made quality decisions. Reviewing data leads to constructive feedback, aiding the professional development of team members, and identifying areas they need to improve to advance their careers.

Data built over a period of time highlights within a teams-based resilience program where your best and brightest staff are and allows you to deploy them where they can make the most positive impact on your business time and again.

How to build the dataset you need

emqnet is configurable to be specific to your own business’s unique needs. Data input fields and various platform features are developed to allow consistent capture across your organisation and targeted so you can capture what you need for quality reporting and in-depth analysis.

Dynamiq’s Advisory team works closely with clients to understand their needs and ensure that the platform can meet today’s operational demands, but also makes sure that you can build a quality dataset over time.

“Consistency across data capture is really important. Not just for reporting, but also to improve business-related outcomes,” adds Wilson.

The impact of quality data

Leading ESG operators in the industry use emqnet data to support reporting requirements and also demonstrate that they have a credible crisis management capability that can be relied upon. All data in emqnet is auditable, with interactions and activities logged in real-time. This increased transparency builds trust with regulators and stakeholders.

“You can download a complete chronological report of the event, providing the necessary data for effective post-incident reviews or discovering lessons learned,” explains Saunders.

Data from emqnet has also been used for a diverse range of highly sensitive issues, for example, HR-related incidents. Furthermore, emqnet was used to formulate a government’s national response to a highly infectious disease outbreak pre-Covid and leveraged the stakeholder function in the platform to manage internal and external issues through the duration of the response.

“In the platform, the client was logging all of the infections and local issues. And because they’re a material site in that country, our data from emqnet became the proxy for their health data for that nation,” adds Wilson. “The data became the proxy for decision-making beyond the business.”

Proving an ROI on a business resilience program is a difficult task. Credit: simonkr on Getty Images.

An effective business resilience program is critical for reducing operational disruption at mines; however, measuring and proving the return on investment (ROI) is often complex.

The billable hour, human capital consulting model for the resilience advisory market has left providers unable to demonstrate a clear ROI for their clients. Operational data is typically undervalued and not used to inform better decision-making. Usually, there is a failure to either share important data or even collect it in the first place.

While a digital resilience platform offers significant value to a business, it is difficult to measure performance and demonstrate the actual return on investment without this detailed supporting data.

But the upfront costs in a digital resilience program can put operators off making the investment in the first place. However, there is a serious risk of higher costs in the long term caused by attempts to save costs by not investing in a resilience program in the short term.

“It’s much easier to quantify once you have the data because the formula goes back to: how much would this event normally cost us? Which is information that you can get from the market. Let’s say, for a mining business with a revenue of a billion dollars a year, a severe weather event might cost them $10m every time – just in operational and infrastructure disruption,” explains Kel Donovan, business resilience expert from Dynamiq.

“Now, when you compare that to the amount of money that they could invest in a resilience program, which is usually around $100,000 for an equivalent business, then the investment stands up every day.

“But that’s a very difficult equation to put on the table unless you’ve got the data to show how many events of what nature and scale that you’re having to manage each year. A technology solution like ours allows us to collate that information.”

Digital resilience program advantages

Dynamiq’s emqnet offers a digital resilience program that collects a comprehensive set of operations data. The centralised platform is easily accessible by stakeholders and staff regardless of location.

emqnet allows more parties to keep track of events in real-time, providing a clear understanding of the potential consequences of a disruptive event. The tech allows operators to build a database to enable an effective response. Data is required to determine benchmarks both internally and externally against other information from across the industry.

This is in direct contrast with a traditional resilience program that commonly uses manual processes, which have a much more limited scope, involves fewer people, and restrict the availability of data.

Traditional resilience programs are not centralised or measured. They are often hosted by separate business systems, where the information can become diluted and hidden away. In addition, there is typically no standardisation on how that information is correlated or stored.

In comparison, a digital resilience platform such as Dynamiq’s allows the standardisation of data, which informs decisions on responding to an event. Ultimately, the speed and efficacy of the response proves how effective an investment is. Data can also be used to identify where operations improvements are needed, for example, if more staff require training or communications need improvements. All of this adds significant value to a business and is easily measured.

“It’s having the right people in the right place, making the right decisions as quickly as possible to mitigate the impact of an event. And that’s rarely measured. So, that $10m example event with the necessary preparedness efforts and a quick response could significantly reduce the impact by millions of dollars by restoring operations faster,” says Jarrod Wilson, CEO of Dynamiq.

Supporting data is essential to highlight the effects of natural risks, insurance implications, and any environmental costs.

“When you boil it down, it’s collecting and analysing data to demonstrate return on investment and make better investment decisions,” adds Donovan.

Measuring value

One way of changing the perception of resilience is to measure the value of a program rather than the investment itself. Measuring risk under management and response efficacy are vital to understanding the overall value that a program is delivering.

An inadequate resilience program means a business is unprepared for disruption. Should a disruptive event occur, then this lack of preparedness will almost certainly lead to a failure on a much larger scale. Operations will be disrupted, and resources may be unavailable when they’re needed the most. As a result, operational downtime could last for extended periods and costs will continue to soar.

For example, major flooding events are common in Australia and have increased in frequency and severity in recent years. Flooding can cause significant disruption for both mining operations and local infrastructure. During one such event in the northern part of Australia, a significant part of the state was affected.

Dynamiq was dealing with many clients involved. And the team noticed a stark contrast between businesses that were prepared and those that were not.

“What we saw really clearly was that the clients that that sat and waited for the water to go down before they got together to work out what to do, they just got left behind,” explains Donovan.

“Whereas the people that got together while the water was still coming up and worked out their plans, they booked all the resources first. This meant that the people that waited for the water to recede had lost the opportunity to secure basic materials when they tried to book resources.

“When you consider the multiplier effect, they’re no longer waiting days or a week. They’re now waiting months before they can even start to execute a recovery plan.”

Many mining businesses still view this kind of disruption and downtime as an issue that insurance will solve, measuring the costs only in the aftermath of a severe event. However, as Wilson explains, this is a mistake.

“It’s nothing to do with insurance at all, and particularly with mining companies who have really extensive insurance programs, and they have significant self-retention exposures. So, every dollar beneath the self-retention excess they wear, matters,” says Wilson.

Measuring value

Linking resilience to business strategy

Regarding operational resilience, the business resilience program objectives are tactical and delivered to a narrow scope. Objectives do not always link to a strategic outcome.

Business leaders commonly fail to understand the value of resilience. They regularly make short term procurement decisions without understanding the need for capability development. In addition, board audit and risk committees need ROI measurements to support their role in guiding business direction. Yet all too often, they fail to ask for evidence.

By linking resilience to business strategy and objectives, leaders can understand the role resilience plays in communicating to internal and external stakeholders that the business can achieve its objectives regardless of the operating conditions.

“Almost all business resilience program owners think that measuring return on investment in this area is impossible. They just put it in the ‘too hard basket’ because they haven’t seen it done before. When in fact, it’s infinitely possible, and the leaders of most high-risk industries have been doing it for some time,” adds Donovan.

“The simplest approach is to record the cost of each event you manage over a year, then compare that to the publicly available average cost of events to similar-sized businesses. You can then estimate your annual savings. Given the infrequent nature of these significant events, it’s best to base your investment decisions on a longer timeframe like five years. “Dynamiq’s technology makes capturing data effortless, and over time provides great insights into the performance of the program.”

Towards Sustainable Mining framework is be introduced in Australia from 2025 to help improve the environmental footprint and accountability of mine operators. Credit: King Ropes Access via Shutterstock.

Mining companies seeking to improve their environmental performance and move to an ESG rating are adopting the Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) framework. And in Australia, mining businesses have just over two years to get their operations in order to comply with TSM requirements, which are being introduced in 2025.

Yet TSM is far from new. Introduced by the Mining Association of Canada in 2004, TSM provides companies with a series of performance tools to measure and manage the environmental impact and social responsibilities of their operations, while ensuring that risks are effectively managed. Crucially, TMS acts as a platform to drive improvements throughout mining operations.

The core aim of TSM is to allow mining businesses to fulfil the demand for raw materials required for minerals, metals, and energy in the most responsible ways. Examples of commitment to TSM leadership include: “Engaging with communities”, “Driving world-leading environmental practices”, and “Committing to the safety and health of employees and surrounding communities”.

While some governments around the world may be slower to act than others when it comes to environmental commitments, the TSM has been developed and implemented by the industry. In Australia, transparency requirements and the TSM framework are being pushed through by the Minerals Council of Australia and its members. Furthermore, using internationally recognised standards will ensure consistency in operations across numerous jurisdictions.

“Mining has had to clean up its reputation to have a licence to operate in the future,” says Jarrod Wilson, CEO of Dynamiq. “It’s almost like a reinvention of the industry. And the only way they’re going to be able to do that effectively is by being transparent in all aspects of their operations.”

Increased accountability for mining operators

TSM increases the accountability of mining operators. Performance indicators are publicly reported annually, with results verified independently every three years to ensure greater transparency and assure stakeholders and communities that there is no greenwashing taking place. TSM is different from ESG reporting in that it is measured at a local operating asset level. For local communities, the results offer an accurate insight into the operations footprint and the overall impacts of a mine. Many are using the TSM as a pathway to a future ESG rating.

“A company may be wanting to start its ESG journey, but it might not be ready yet. So, this is a framework to use to allow them to move to progress towards that goal,” adds Wilson.

TSM highlights the need for companies to demonstrate leadership in minimising the impact of mining and increasing the sustainability of resources throughout operations and supply chains while protecting the biodiversity where activities are taking place. Furthermore, TSM requires companies to engage in initiatives to increase the safe reuse of minerals and metals. Alongside this is the need to ensure that employees, contractors, and communities are protected from any potential risks encountered during operations.

TSM doesn’t stop at active mining operations. It also covers working alongside communities to tackle issues with the legacy of mining, such as abandoned or mothballed mines that have not been managed adequately.

It is believed that making operations more transparent will also help recruit an increasingly conscientious and eco-minded workforce.

“There has been a change in the profile of people who are joining the mining industry, many who are highly educated engineers, geologists, and data scientists. There is a real change of the guard generationally,” adds Wilson. “When you think about shared values, employees are looking for purpose-led organisations, and they’ll hold the company they work for to account.”

Data capture for TSM and ESG performance

To demonstrate performance for TSM requirements, operational data is required. The traditional method of paper-based of crisis reporting is simply insufficient to deal with the reporting demands across every facet of your operations.

“You need to be able to capture data across all your operations, and you need to be able to capture it consistently. Then use that data to tell your story on your own terms,” adds Wilson.

With data only increasing in importance, mining companies that avoid or delay adopting technology to capture and record operations data will only find themselves behind the curve. Crisis management is a key component of TSM, and you need a measurable program to demonstrate your credentials via regular auditing. And with ESG obligations increasingly linked to capital, an inability to verify performance will diminish profitability.

This is where a digital resilience platform such as Dynamiq’s emqnet can be used for important data capture and consistency of reporting. Through emqnet, companies can gain maturity assessments and a roadmap for where they need to reach with a gap analysis on areas for improvement and benchmarking for charting progression.

TSM also has requirements for crisis management and related training. emqnet was built specifically for businesses when supporting their crisis management activities, enabling advisory teams to access the same platforms as those involved in an event to deliver greater support services. The platform can also be used for training and performing After-Action Reviews to enable continuous improvements and maturation of programs.

With more than 15 years of experience working with some of the biggest mining companies in the world, emqnet has credibility throughout the industry and is a trusted resilience platform.

“We work with industry leaders already, particularly around ESG. We can benchmark performance within a business across operating assets and then holistically. We can also benchmark them against the market to understand what their performance looks like,” adds Wilson.  “From there, we can build a roadmap, which helps create a maturity pathway. But you can’t do everything all at once. That’s why we spend time to understand what their key priorities are and how to deliver them.”

After Action Reviews, whether done after training or real incidents, are a fundamental part of any operational resilience program. They identify areas of strength and areas for improvement. It is critical to dig into the preparation, response, recovery as well as stakeholder management aspects of the event to ensure regular improvement and adjustments to processes are applied, as required. Just as important in identifying areas of improvement is identifying areas of strength and building on them.

These reviews capture the quantitative and qualitative part of how a response is managed, assess what priorities need to be addressed for future events, and measure the return to normal operations while establishing how the process feeds into a continuous improvement cycle.

“It’s the discipline to make sure that you conduct reviews to continually improve your process,” says Jarrod Wilson, CEO of Dynamiq. “But it’s also ensuring that you assess all facets of it.”

After Action Reviews enable a business to understand what ‘good’ looks like, set expectations, and measure the outcome against both. When conducted properly, findings from the review feed positively into an organisation’s culture. If teams know what the goals are and what they’re trying to achieve, then it increases levels of engagement. Furthermore, After Action Reviews also enable learnings to be shared with other parts of the business and improve the entire system.

“If you think about in a mining environment where an incident might happen at a particular site level. How do you feed that back into the overall organisation, up the structure and across into other operating environments? Get it right and you’re actually getting that rising tide uplift,” adds Wilson. “And it’s the program level benefits where you see that force multiplier of impact.

“With data, it’ll help you communicate across your business but also externally about what’s happened, why it happened, and whether you can avoid it happening again or just get better in your response.”

Why After Action Reviews must take place

Despite the multiple benefits, too many businesses are skipping After Action Reviews in an attempt to save time and return to normal operations as quickly as possible.

Ultimately, this is down to the leadership. And one reason for avoiding After Action Reviews is that the leadership may be keen to keep criticisms and issues out of view. A failure to conduct an After Action Review enhances the likelihood of the same or similar incident occurring again as the issue wasn’t identified and the fix completed. Furthermore, a negative corporate culture can result in a lower ESG rating.

After Action Reviews also give a voice to personnel at all levels of an organisation. Anyone involved in a crisis response should have input to build a collective picture across all perspectives of operations, as not everyone’s experience, expertise or focus will be the same.

Teams must also have the confidence to speak honestly and constructively to each other, and the collective aim being to improve every aspect of business resilience. But if their voices are ignored, personnel will be less motivated to engage in future. While at the other end, if team members are listened to, it builds confidence and increases ownership of processes.

“It’s more than just tinkering at the edge and just trying to do small improvements. It’s looking for things that can structurally change and feed into an organisation’s overall performance,” adds Wilson.

“Everyone looks at that as a negative connotation. And if you’re doing the strategy side of it really well, what it actually uncovers is opportunities. The best businesses, particularly in those volatile times, all they see is opportunity.”

A platform for After Action Reviews

Dynamiq’s digital resilience platform emqnet enables simplicity with After Action Reviews following a real-life event or a training exercise. The platform logs all actions and interactions between the teams and stakeholders in real-time, providing a complete audit trail and the context behind decision-making.

“Even if an AAR is conducted immediately after the event, we’ve got the analytics there to be able to report on it,” says Adam Worsley, General Manager of Dynamiq.

“An After Action Review is based on our Teams-Based Approach cycle, and is applied to the four commonly accepted questions required of an AAR,” adds Worsley. “These are: 1: What did you expect to happen as a result of the event? 2: What actually happened in the event? 3: What went well and why? 4: What could be improved and how?”

Data from emqnet can be used to verify why certain decisions were made at particular times, with a record of what information was available to personnel and when. From there, captured data can be fed back into the overall program improvement cycle, helping individuals improve their roles and enhance the response capability of a business. Importantly, consequence management allows the system to be more adaptive and agile, often picking up the pieces where risk management doesn’t.

For mining businesses, the environmental, societal, and governance (ESG) dimensions matter like never before. Yet this is only a relatively recent development. Historically, the evolution of business sustainability struggled to drive business strategy.

What has changed is the greater awareness surrounding the environmental impact and corporate ethics, which has led to investors linking ESG performance to capital. And the importance of ESG ratings is only increasing.

ESG ratings are awarded annually through independent certification from a limited number of accredited organisations. To obtain an ESG rating, businesses must submit the necessary documentation and operations data across multiple specified areas to satisfy the criteria. Many companies later choose to make datasets public to increase transparency with stakeholders to avoid the greenwashing tag.

One of the main organisations responsible for ESG ratings for international mining companies is S&P Global Market Intelligence with its Metals and Mining index. To determine the rating, businesses are subject to a weighted scoring system across a broad set of categories. A high ESG score means that a business is understood to be a safer long-term option for investors. But given that companies with higher ESG ratings are considered better placed to handle future risks, it is perhaps a little surprising that Risk and Crisis Management is not weighted more heavily.

In S&P’s Governance and Economic Dimension section, Risk and Crisis Management is considered the third most important category with 12% of the weighting. This is behind Corporate Governance with a weighting of 24%, and Business Ethics at 21%.

Corporate Governance is the policies and procedures that define how a business should operate, and Business Ethics defines how a business will conduct itself during operations. While Risk and Crisis Management highlight any potential areas of concern, identify controls, and set the appetite for risk. Notably, Risk and Crisis Management is weighted more heavily than cybersecurity, which is getting much more attention within the industry.

However, there is a belief that the relatively low weighting for Risk and Crisis Management is misleading as it impacts virtually every facet of operations.

“Crisis management is the most tangible part. Whilst it’s 12%, it’s the third highest modifier,” explains Jarrod Wilson, CEO of Dynamiq.

A business may have quality governance, ethics, and risk identification processes. But it is the response capability that determines how quickly a business can return to normal operating conditions after a serious event. If there are any deficiencies in the crisis capability, it will hurt a business’ overall operating performance and potentially undermine stakeholder satisfaction.

“You can pat yourself on the back and say we have an excellent set of policies. But at the end of the day, your failure point will be in your response,” adds Wilson. “We work in such a volatile and complex operating environment, that there is a high likelihood that something’s serious will happen. It’s probably the thing that you don’t expect. Therefore, you need to invest in your response capability and make sure it’s mature and robust. That’s what will get you back into a normal operating environment.”

Building ESG ratings through crisis capability and datasets

To establish a credible crisis capability, a business must have a clear plan. Personnel must be trained to the necessary levels and routinely tested against key operational threats. Crucially, management must conduct regular after-action reviews to identify opportunities for continuous improvement within the team and the approach.

Crisis capability should not be viewed as a static process or a box to tick and put to one side. It is vital to regularly review and update processes wherever necessary and the data that results from these reviews are important inputs for an ESG assessment.

Implementing a crisis capability across every area of operations requires the right technology, which is central to linking different aspects of operations and divisions. A digital resilience platform enables greater consistency in the approach with each event, providing evidence of the crisis capability of a business to its stakeholders. Datasets need to be structured to support decision-making.

Multiple datasets from operations must be submitted to an accredited organisation to obtain an ESG rating. To achieve this, several major mining companies use their operations data from Dynamiq’s emqnet platform in their submissions for ESG ratings. emqnet is a digital resilience platform that provides comprehensive datasets across all operations to build a clear picture, with real-time reporting that is fully auditable. Crisis management can be performed remotely on the platform and accessed by teams operating all around the world.

“We understand how critical it is because we’ve done the research on our tool for all of this,” says Adam Worsley, general manager of Dynamiq. “Our technology will connect the dots in terms of being the final equation to build that ESG rating.”