ABSTRACT
Good workplaces, employee well-being, safety, high performance, and productivity depend on good work organization and management. Work is always organized in some way, even if much thought has not been put into the issue. The problem is that if no or little effort is spent on work organization, there will be several negative outcomes. Contractors are common in mining and over-represented in accident statistics. The alternative, using in-house personnel, would mean the workforce is not equipped for work in other sectors. Another aspect that speaks in favour of the use of contractors is the development and ownership of competence. Contractors with a certain variety of activities have the opportunity to gain experience in different contexts that they can transfer and use productively in mining. A related issue is whether to live on-site or use fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) solutions; for the individual, it is an issue of choosing where to live, and for the company, which option to work towards.
