Chrysos' chief people officer talks about rolling out major changes to company’s HR tech amid diverse workforce
It has been a major year of growth with mining technology company Chrysos Corporation.
Chief people officer Kimberly Boland told HRDTV how her main area of focus for the company has been building a global team and bringing diverse cultures together.
“We’ve expanded into a number of countries – five in just one year,” she said. “We currently have over 26 people identifying as [having] different cultures in our operations team alone. So there’s a massive complexity in how we integrate those local customs with our existing Chrysos ethos, you know, what makes us great as a place to work, but also acknowledging the local nuances around the world.”
Chrysos developed the PhotonAssay, which provides a safer, environmentally friendly, and more accurate analysis of gold, silver, copper and other elements. Boland added that it served as a replacement for traditional fire assay.
“Fire assay traditionally involves utilising high volumes of lead, which can be quite toxic to both the environment but mainly to the operators that were using it,” she said. “Research has shown that, more so for women, it can result in fertility challenges, miscarriages and sometimes birth defects which hits a strong string for me.
“So it creates a safer working environment for everyone but specifically women. PhotonAssay opens up the workforce to be more diverse and inclusive. It's traditionally a male-dominated workforce with strict rostering requirements. So our product enables miners to access a greater percent of the population to diversify their workforce and create more work opportunities and greater work-life balance, which can be tough in those industries.”
In the 18 months since Boland joined Chysos, the company has deployed a full HR tech stack consisting of six systems. It’s a process she described as “almost unfathomable” given the tech that is available for HR.
“I'm very lucky that I'm surrounded by people that are very passionate about technology and open to adopting new things,” she said. “When we were looking at our full HR build, so right from the foundations, we wanted to really set an ethos that aligned with our product PhotonAssay: better inclusivity, better connectedness, ease of use, greater flexibility, and of course, efficiency, which may sound a little odd for HR tech stack. But when it comes down to the fundamentals, we all know as HR professionals what a system needs to do. So we were more focused on the how it's achieved.”
With Boland on board, Chysos integrated systems such as Bamboo HR, Culture Amp for its performance culture, and LifeWorks for its employee assistance program.
“When it came to our employee assistance program…this is one that had to tick a few more boxes for us, especially in that inclusivity bucket,” she said. “It is something that, as you all know, people access it for those more deeper, closer to home, personal issues. And we wanted to make sure that while a lot of our team members do speak a level of English, they weren't being required to translate it into a second language when it came to those more sensitive issues. And some of those things just get lost in translation.”
So the company selected LifeWorks, which had information in different languages.
“They do your Chinese, French, Spanish… they also did Swahili, which was a big piece for our African workforce, especially in Tanzania,” Boland said. “Because it means that the Tanzania team can have those deeper conversations in their more native language and are more likely to utilise that product, which creates a greater sense of inclusivity as well, even just the rollout – whether they use it or not, they felt seen and heard.”
When it comes to the key learnings Boland has had throughout her time at Chrysos, she described a saying she uses that she adapted from an Austin Powers film.
“I’ve kind of rebranded that to be ‘When a problem comes along, you must pivot. Pivot, good’,” Boland said. “So my team are very used to me pivoting things along the way. And so we learn from those lessons and we adapt and course correct.
One of the examples of that is in the first round of the performance review process using Culture Amp, she said.
“We actually realised partway through that it's not landing and people are confused about the instruction. We're finding there's a degree of duplication. So we iterated, we stopped, we parked our confidence and our egos at the door and we revisited and problem solved, pivoted and landed on a great outcome.
“So I think it's important to not be committed and fixated on the original concept, you have to be open to the fact that you might need to iterate along the way.”
