Human Resources & Safety Manager

THE BUSINESS 

We supply underground mining consumables and services to mines across Australia, Africa and South East Asia. We are privately held, Perth-headquartered, and we have grown quickly — our people work on client sites in multiple countries, alongside some of the most demanding operators in the industry.

We are not a corporate. We are a business that has grown faster than the infrastructure supporting it, and we are honest about that. Which is exactly why this role exists.

THE ROLE 

This is our first dedicated HR appointment, and it carries safety with it. You will own the employment relationship and the safety management system across the group, reporting directly to the Chief Commercial Officer with a seat at the table from day one.

Two things define the job: getting the right people into the business quickly and lawfully and building a safety management system that stands up when a client audits us. Everything else supports those two.

This is a build role, not a maintenance role. You will not inherit a mature function with established processes and a team to run them. You will create the first proper version of our people and safety infrastructure, then run it — hands-on, with part-time administrative support, at pace.

Your three defining accountabilities and what ownership actually means:

1 - Recruitment and onboarding

Own the pipeline end to end — role scoping, advertising, direct sourcing, screening, interviewing, offers, contracts, medicals and induction. You will run searches yourself rather than coordinate agencies doing it, and you will build a structured onboarding experience that delivers productivity rather than headcount. Some searches are confidential and run while the incumbent is still in the seat; discretion is a condition of the role.

2 - Safety management system, SafetyIQ and JESI

Design, document and embed the group safety management system — policy, procedure, registers and evidence — mapped to the WHS Act 2020 (WA), equivalent legislation in the other jurisdictions we work in, and the HSE standards of the tier-one miners we supply. SafetyIQ and JESI are your platforms to configure, roll out and drive adoption of, including journey management, fatigue and lone-worker arrangements for a workforce that travels constantly. You will own incidents, investigations, corrective-action close-out, workers' compensation and client audit readiness.

3 - Employee relations and employment risk

Contracts, awards and compliance, performance management, investigations, terminations and psychosocial and positive-duty obligations — run to a standard that survives scrutiny, with procedural fairness documented every time. You will coach managers to hold the hard conversation themselves rather than becoming the escalation route for everything.

And alongside these accountabilities:

•   Remuneration and people-cost discipline — build salary bands with real benchmarking behind them, run the annual review cycle, and become the custodian of the group people-cost ceiling that gates every future hire.

•   Systems and records — scope and implement an HRIS. We do not currently have a single system of record for people data, and establishing one is an early deliverable rather than a long-term ambition.

•   Performance, capability and training — a performance framework applied consistently, a training and competency matrix that is actually current, and development for a group of newly appointed managers.

•   Culture and wellbeing — Code of Conduct, engagement measurement, exit analysis, and a practical wellbeing approach suited to a travelling, site-exposed workforce.

•   Reporting to EXCO and the Board — monthly people and safety reporting, including the leading indicators that let officers discharge their due-diligence duty.

•   International mobility — visas, work rights and expatriate arrangements across our operating theatres.

WHAT ARE WE SELECTING FOR 

Essential 

•   Recruitment you have delivered yourself. You have filled multiple concurrent roles in a lean business, sourcing directly rather than briefing agencies. You know your time-to-fill and your cost-per-hire, and you can walk us through a hard-to-fill role end to end. This, with safety system ownership, is what decides this appointment.

•   Full generalist depth, single-handed. You have personally covered contracts, employee relations, performance, remuneration, policy and records. Not a specialist in one slice of it.

•   Employment law confidence. You can run a performance process, a workplace investigation and a termination properly, without needing external advice for routine matters.

•   Systems capability. You have implemented HR or safety software and driven genuine adoption — not just entered data into someone else's configuration.

•   A builder's temperament. You have been the only HR person in a business, with no precedent, no template and no team, and you found that energising rather than exposing.

•   No surprises. You raise employment and safety risk early, with a recommendation attached. You do not smooth, and you do not wait.

Highly desirable

•   Mining, mining services, construction or industrial contractor background, with exposure to client-site HSE regimes and contractor pre-qualification.

•   Experience with a multi-country or expatriate workforce.

•   Workers’ Compensation and return-to-work coordination across more than one Australian scheme.

•   Certificate IV or Diploma in Work Health and Safety. If you do not hold one, we will fund it — but you will need to commit to completing it within your first year.

WHAT YOU GET 

•   A genuine first-appointment mandate. You are not inheriting someone else's framework or working around an established way of doing things. You decide what good looks like here and then build it.

•   A direct line to the Executive Committee. Your reporting is read and acted on. There is no layer between you and the decision.

TO APPLY 

Apply through this advertisement with a current CV and a short covering note. In your note, tell us about:

•   A recruitment pipeline you personally owned: how many roles, how you sourced them, and your time-to-fill.

 We would rather read 200 specific words about one thing you did than a general statement of capability.

 Applications will be reviewed as they are received and we will move quickly for the right person. All applications are treated in confidence.

Applicants must have unrestricted working rights in Australia. A pre-employment medical, national police check and reference checks form part of our recruitment process.