What it does: Gold Fields is a globally diversified gold producer with a focus on mechanized underground and open-pit mining. At present, it is the world’s seventh-largest gold producer.
Mission: To ensure that we meet current societal expectations and create value for all stakeholders through our business activities, Gold Fields commits to these charters.
Size and presence: We have nine operating mines in Australia, Peru, Ghana (including the Asanko JV), and South Africa, where you will also find our head office and where the company has its origin. The construction of our new mine in Chile is set to start later in 2020.
Best known for: Our people may be based around the world, but we are united by a vision of global leadership in sustainable gold mining – and a commitment to living the Gold Fields Values: Safety, Integrity, Respect, Responsibility, Innovation, and Delivery.
The good bits: Great company, great colleagues, fantastic labor relations.
The not-so-good bits: Mining is hard work, and hours are longer than in other engineering locations.
Gold Fields Limited (formerly The Gold Fields of South Africa) is one of the world's largest gold mining firms. Headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, the company is listed on both the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The firm was formed in 1998 with the amalgamation of the gold assets of Gold Fields of South Africa Limited and Gencor Limited. The company traces its roots back to 1887 when Cecil Rhodes founded Gold Fields of South Africa Limited. As of 2019, Gold Field was the world's eighth-largest producer of gold.
The company owns and operates mines in South Africa, Ghana, Australia, and Peru. Growth efforts are focused mainly in the regions where it currently operates, and are mainly driven through brownfields exploration on its existing land positions and mergers and acquisitions in the same regions.
Gold Fields' chairperson is Cheryl Carolus, and the CEO is Chris Griffith.
We focus on building a culture of collaboration, flexibility, and fairness, and we recruit diverse, qualified candidates to fulfill this objective. We have a strong performance culture that is balanced by a focus on living our values, and we assess our employees against both elements.
Innovation and technology will be critical in improving safety, volumes, and costs at our mines – we recognize the need to modernize, integrate and optimize existing systems and processes as we align ourselves with automation and new digital trends in the industry. Building a pipeline of innovation and technology skills, and business culture to support the transition is an area of growing importance in the company.
We actively monitor our engagement levels and conduct extensive engagement surveys every two years, with shorter pulse surveys in between, to help us work on key elements of our culture and ensure that we maintain an actively engaged workforce. We also monitor voluntary turnover and the reasons people leave to ensure that we constantly adapt and change our approach.
If you want a new and varied role, Gold Fields has a broad range of operations, projects, and experiences to make your career a rewarding one.
We continually look for people who have a high-performance attitude and can grow with us. We work hard to ensure our current employees are placed in roles where they are challenged and fulfilled.
As global leaders, we offer you a rare opportunity to expand your skills as we grow, both geographically and technically. We have a strong focus on on-the-job learning and can offer great learning experiences as you grow in your role
As global leaders, we offer you a rare opportunity to expand your skills as we grow, both geographically and technically. We have a strong focus on on-the-job learning and can offer great learning experiences as you grow in your role
We have several modernization projects that will challenge the boundaries of how work will be done in the mining industry
We have a strong partnership with our local communities and focus on employing from those areas
In Australia full-time and part-time permanent employees are provided with annual increases, redundancy, pension, health care allowance, Group ‘life benefits’, salary continuance, and annual or quarterly production bonuses/benefits with part-timers receiving a pro-rata entitlement. Casual and most fixed-term employees are not entitled to annual or quarterly production bonuses, an annual increase, or redundancy benefit. Casual employees are also not eligible for the health allowance.
Employees can join any Superannuation Fund (pension fund) of their choice in Australia. The default fund for Gold Fields is Plum. Other typical employee benefits in Australia include: Private Health Insurance, loyalty (long service) awards, life insurance, salary continuance insurance, employee referral reward program, professional subscriptions, educational assistance, annual/carers leave, long service leave, paid parental and partner leave, purchase annual leave.
Gold Fields is committed to sound environmental stewardship, and we aim to responsibly use the natural resources our business depends on, care for the environment in our operational and surrounding areas, and limit the impact of our operations on our host communities.
To guide this commitment, we developed five Group environment-related policy statements – on environmental stewardship, water stewardship, tailings management, materials and supply chain stewardship, and climate change – which, together with mine closure, highlight our key focus areas. Our policy statements are further supported by six guidelines relating to environmental incident reporting, biodiversity, water management, tailings management, integrated mine closure, and energy and carbon management. Our Stakeholder Relationship and Engagement Policy Statement also commits us to engaging with communities and governments on environmental matters that could potentially impact them.
Our approach to environmental stewardship requires that we first and foremost consider local legislation and regulations, as well as relevant external standards. Additional local priorities are identified through stakeholder consultations. Our overriding policy guide is the Group Environment Policy Statement, which was updated and approved by the Board in February 2021.
All our operations are certified to the ISO 14001 (2015) environmental management standard. Our newest mine, Gruyere in Western Australia, obtained certification to both the ISO 14001 standard and the International Cyanide Management Code (ICMC) in 2020. In South Africa, South Deep expanded the scope of its ISO 14001 certification to include underground operations in 2020. All our managed mines – except for Cerro Corona, which does not use cyanide – are currently certified by the ICMC, which assures their responsible handling and transportation of cyanide. While our operations are recertified every three years, as required by the code, we identify and address potential gaps continuously.
In August 2020, Gold Fields formally committed to implementing the GISTM over five years (see Environmental stewardship).
In 2020, we launched our inaugural Company-wide EHS scorecard to ensure that our Group, regional, and operational management teams are held accountable for successfully managing EHS issues. The scorecard includes both leading and lagging performance indicators to improve performance at an operational level. Pleasingly, all regions exceeded their target of an 80% score – a substantial achievement for the Group in 2020.
Gold Fields recorded no serious environmental incidents (Level 3 – 5) during 2020. This is the second consecutive year we achieved this, our sound environmental stewardship but also the limited impact of our operations on neighboring communities. Recording zero serious environmental incidents is a strategic priority for the Group and are included as a key target on our management teams' performance scorecards.
In addition to the above, and continuing a downward trend from 2019, the number of Level 2 environmental incidents decreased significantly by 68% to 12 in 2020 (2019: 37). Of these incidents, eight related to loss of containment or spillage-type incidents (2019: 12), and three related to blasting and vibration (2019: 23). We managed to contain these incidents to our immediate mining footprint or vicinity, and the mitigating actions taken ensured the incidents resulted in limited to no environmental impact.