SUSTAINABILITY 
Psychosocial harm
Our aspiration for zero harm extends to protecting our people’s psychological and emotional health. We do not tolerate any form of harassment, bullying, discrimination or harmful behaviour, and are seeking to creating a safe workplace where everyone feels respected, valued and empowered to speak up. To achieve this, we need to build a culture centred on respect and care – one that values diversity, is inclusive and upholds the fundamental human rights of all our people. Therefore, in 2022, Gold Fields engaged EB&Co to conduct an expert independent review of our workplace culture.
The findings of EB&Co’s review were released in August 2023 and provided a better understanding of our people’s lived experiences in relation to harmful behaviour in the workplace, including bullying, sexual harassment and racism. The findings highlighted the need for significant efforts to create the secure, diverse and respectful work environments our employees rightfully expect and our leadership recognises as essential for our business to successfully execute its strategy.
A total of 2,855 employees responded to the online survey, amounting to 45% of employees across our regions. A far smaller number (7%) of our contractors participated, in part due to legal restrictions in certain regions.
While the review identified many strengths – including the directional change in culture, team collaboration and the Group’s focus on physical safety – approximately half of the respondents reported having experienced harmful behaviour at work in the past five years, mainly relating to bullying; gender inequality; sexual harassment; and racism.
The Board and management reviewed the findings and committed to the following principles:
Gold Fields is committed to making our Company a working environment free from harmful behaviours. We intend to take important steps to ensure we eliminate these kinds of behaviour and are actively implementing the remedial recommendations stemming from the EB&Co review. The dashboard on the following page shows our progress in our actions to build a more respectful workplace.
| Invested leadership | Prevention and early intervention | Dignity and human rights at work | Person-centred responses | Focus on high-impact actions designed for context | Rigorous tracking and course correction | |
OUTCOMES AND MILESTONES |
Measure leaders taking responsibility for team culture
Invest in specialist DEIB expertise and capability
Implement 360-degree assessment for all senior leaders
Create a focused Respectful Workplace Advisory Council to play a key role in implementing these recommendations
Prioritise people management capability in leadership recruitment and promotion practices
Set clear and quantifiable aspirations through clear policy statements
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Utilise risk assessment and management procedures to identify brand mitigate risks related to harmful behaviours
DEIB training – develop supervisors’ and leaders’ capability to identify, report and address harmful behaviours
Integrate psychological safety and the willingness of employees to voice concerns as preventive measures
Review all policy frameworks to create a simplified global framework
Review Group-wide training practices, ensuring trainers serve as culture influencers
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Senior leaders should engage with business partners and contract staff to understand their workplace experiences
In all contracting arrangements with business partners, include access to harmful behaviour data involving our people to develop interventions
Conduct facility audits to ensure safety, inclusion, respect and dignity for our workforce
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Establish a reporting mechanism for harmful behaviour
Conduct trauma-informed, confidential, fair and transparent investigations into harmful behaviours
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Take actions to address region-specific early findings
Roll-out ethical contracting framework to understand and develop interventions for harmful behaviour
Review and address structural barriers preventing disadvantaged groups from recruitment and promotion opportunities
Develop programmes to promote the advancement of disadvantaged groups
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Track DEIB dashboard quarterly
Redistribute the survey in three years
Run an annual DEIB survey that includes psychological safety
Expand ESG metrics beyond gender diversity to include inclusion, psychological safety and organisational culture
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Completed
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Started; not completed |
Not started |
Beyond the 21 remedial recommendations the Group has started to implement – including developing Respectful Workplace and DEIB Policy Statements – we continue to be guided by several important policies and programmes already in place. These include Group Harassment and Group Sexual Harassment policies; unconscious bias training; support for programmes that combat gender-based violence; training on diversity and inclusion; and ongoing communication campaigns.
Our mental health programmes are in place and continue to be an important part of how we provide employees with a psychologically safe and supportive work environment.
After identifying common potential psychosocial hazards across the Group – which include sexual harassment and assault; bullying; discrimination; fatigue and burnout; and workplace relations – our Australia region conducted an initial workshop in 2023 and developed risk assessment tools, which will eventually inform a systematic approach to psychosocial harm management in our other regions.
We track and report our progress against EB&Co’s remedial recommendations quarterly to our Executive Committee and the Board, and seek regular feedback from our employees to ensure we are making good progress. We will also commission another independent review within three years to assess our progress and are committed to full transparency with stakeholders in this regard.
For more information on the results of the EB&Co review, as well as the measures we are taking in response, refer to our 2023 Report to Stakeholders, or our Building a Respectful Workplace microsite.
Evolving the Gold Fields culture
Early in 2023, building on several months of consultation, we launched the Gold Fields Way to shape our actions and define our culture in our pursuit of being #StrongerTogether.
The Gold Fields Way details our culture aspiration and the behavioural attributes we expect from our employees. With this as our foundation, we will purposefully build a new culture based on four key areas: being one, caring, inclusive and empowered team; creating a respectful workplace with guaranteed dignity; working smarter together; and unlocking potential through learning and innovation. These key areas are further supported by ten behaviours that our employees identified as being critical to driving our aspired culture.
We launched a culture roll-out programme, which is supported by several initiatives: capability and skills programmes to reinforce the role of leadership within the Group; workshops and conversations across regions; talent and performance processes; and specific targeted interventions to drive the change. A key milestone on our journey was the Gold Fields Way Summit held in London in June 2023. This brought together 92 leaders from our business to align on the key actions our leaders need to own and implement to propel our culture journey. These leaders will act as change agents to drive the Gold Fields Way across the business.
We have already implemented several changes to help shape our journey going forward, including convening a Culture Guardian Committee, comprising regional Executive Vice-Presidents and General Managers (GM) to drive culture changes. Our GM Forum will also improve collaboration across the business. Through our culture future forum, comprising a representative group of Gold Fields employees and chaired by the CEO, we continue to identify practical ways to build the culture that Gold Fields aspires for. Over the next two to three years, Gold Fields will implement recommendations from the Culture Future Forum and the EB&Co review. We will measure the maturity of our culture journey based on five key elements, detailed hereafter.
