South32 looking to AI to predict employee outcomes

South32 is hoping that AI can enhance predictions on safety, performance and cultural aspects of its employee experience.

The Western Australian-based mining and metals company has staff spread across the globe including Perth, Singapore, London and Vancouver, and in more remote locations.

In 2021, the company overhauled its employee engagement and measurement platforms.

Prior to this, South32 was using traditional practices of measuring its employee experience, including standard surveys, before the pandemic exposed a need for more real-time insights.

Speaking at the Qualtrics X4 conference in Sydney, South32’s principal of culture and capability Dave Vile, principal of culture and capability at South32 said while “everyone’s talking AI … what can it tell us that we don’t already know?”

“We want to know what can we expect next? Some of those lead indicators, what can it tell us? That’d be great to see across that [employee] life cycle,” Vile said.

Lincoln Cox, general manager for HR strategy performance and culture, added that South32 is focused on becoming a “high-performance, values-based business.”

“We measure a lot of things. We put a lot of filters in there. The next step for us is to say, out of all of the things we measure, what actually shifts the needle?

“How do you genuinely get a metric that quantifies performance to then go back and work out what are these indicators that proceed or drive that performance?” Cox said.