BUHRM5912 Report: Environmental Factors Impact on BHP Billiton

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the human resource management practices within BHP Billiton, focusing on the impact of environmental factors, particularly technological advancements, on the company's operations. The report begins with an introduction to BHP Billiton, outlining its business operations and the significance of human resources in its success. It then delves into the technological environmental factor, exploring its influence on HR planning, job design, and work practices. The analysis includes discussions on hydraulic mining, X-ray diffraction, and the increasing use of automation and remote technologies. The report examines the multiple perspectives on the technological factor, highlighting its implications for HR planning and job design, as well as its impact on work practices, such as the use of autonomous trucks and underground excavators. Specific examples from BHP Billiton are used to illustrate the practical effects of technological changes, including the use of IT functions for data management and improved communication. The report concludes with recommendations for improving HR practices and adapting to the changing technological landscape, emphasizing the importance of efficiency and productivity. The assignment fulfills the requirements of the BUHRM5912 Human Resource Management course at Federation University Australia for the second semester of 2018.

Running Head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 0
BHP Billiton LTD
Human Resource Management
8/12/2018

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Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Technological Environmental Factor.....................................................................................................2
Hydraulic mining and X-ray diffraction............................................................................................3
Multiple Perspectives on the Technological factor................................................................................4
Impact on HR Planning, Job design, and work practices on BHP Billiton............................................4
Impact on the job design........................................................................................................................5
Technological advancement impacting the work practices....................................................................5
Implications/Examples from the company............................................................................................6
Remote and the autonomous technology as the key drivers of productivity......................................7
Recommendations.................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................8
References.............................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
The report discusses the analysis of the environmental factors in the organisation BHP
Billiton, and the impact of the environmental factors on the business HR practices, and job
design policies. In today’s scenario the success of an organisation largely depends upon their
human resource, and the effectiveness of the work practices in the organisation. For the
assessment of the factors, a study is conducted by taking an Australian based company, ‘BHP
Billiton Ltd.’ Founded in 1885; it is the trading entity of the BHP Billiton Ltd, or BHP
Billiton Plc. The multinational deals in mining, petroleum sector and considered as one of the
world’s largest mining company (Bell, 2017).
The headquarters of the BHP and the global headquarters of the combined group are
located in the Melbourne, Australia. The company has the mining operations in Australia,
North America, and South America and their petroleum operations in the Australia. The
report further brings about the description of the functioning of the organisation and the role
of various environmental factors (Wagner & Raymond, 2015). Also, it states about the impact
or the significance of the factors to the organisation’s working. BHP is a well-known
organisation with the large scale operations; therefore the impact of the factors will be to a
great extent. As employees or the human resource is the most valuable asset of an
organisation, hence there should be an effective evaluation of the factors which result in
improved organisational performance (Westerman & Bonnet, 2015).
Technological Environmental Factor
In an order to become competitively successful, an organisation must consider the
relevance of the environmental factors operating in the business environment. These factors
are categorised into external and internal taken from the Pestle framework which affect the
working of an organisation. For the purpose, external environment has been taken, in which
technological factors are considered with the company. External factors are those which are
outside the control of an business organisation, and which influences the organisation’s
strategy to achieve goals and objectives. There are various external factors operating in this
concern, these include political, social, legal, technological, and the economical. Amongst all
the factors, technological factors are considered here with the context of the chosen company.
Technological factors simply define the application of knowledge to control the environment,

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and to improve products or processes, or to launch new products in the market
(Subramanian, 2017).
Technological factors affect the business and they are an integral part of the pestle
analysis. Technology transforms the operations and impacts positively as the advancements
in technology enhance the communication process in an organisation. There is a major
contribution of the internet and the strong communication media to improve the operations
and communication system. Moreover, technological advancements help in building good
and sound business relationship with their investors, other organisations, and their business
partners. This facilitates in making the negotiations and conducting discussion with ease.
They need not to be present physically every time (Wheelen, Hunger, Hoffman & Bamford,
2017).
Hydraulic mining and X-ray diffraction
The technology used in the mining corporations include the Hydraulic mining which
is used for the placer deposit of the gold, tin and several other metals. Amongst all the
technologies and systems used by mining companies there is great significance of the
Automation. Autonomous trucks are more frequently used by such businesses. Also,
underground excavators are used by mining companies as safety is one of the major concerns
therefore; underground mobile miners are used especially for hard rock mines (El Bizri,
Macedo, Paglia & Morcatty, 2016). The business at mining industry is not considered as
environment friendly, so there are factors which include the emissions, and the climatic
change in the environment. Therefore, the use of electric vehicles is most common in these
industries. Mining software used in these industries, and one of the most basic example from
them is X-ray diffraction. To analyse the samples and to check their property densities, this
ultimately saves time and money (Jilcha & Kitaw, 2017).
Efficiency of operations in an organisation is achieved when the organisation is
updated in terms of human resource, technologies, methods, processes, and the production
activities. In today’s world technology has a major impact which ensures an organisation’s
competitive advantage among the competitors in the industry. Efficient manpower in an
organisation with the best practices and production methods helps in achieving the
organisational goals and objectives. When an organisation employs effective technology it
reduces the manufacturing and the other costs, relatively the cost of manufacturers, suppliers,
and the retail stores. However, this affects the employment level in the industry within the

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particular region or country. Use of technology or the trends in the mining and construction
industry includes the use of Smart/green construction, cloud mobile technology. With all the
possible efforts in this area, it ensures and improves the flexibility, accessibility and lowers
the overall cost of the operations (BHP, 2017).
Multiple Perspectives on the Technological factor
Technological factor is one of the most important factors in the organisational
context. Along with the benefits of technological advancements, in the business environment,
there are some of the implications of the same. The use of technology may affect the
environment and the organisation’s growth positively as well as negatively. Studying the role
of technological factor in the business environment from the multiple perspectives, it can be
analysed that the technology have affected the business in positive manner. Along with this, it
replaces the human capital from the business organisations also. Critically reviewing the
technological factor in an enterprise, it has been found that technological advancement is the
common problem or threat to the miners in the mining companies including cave-ins
(Brunow & Nijkamp, 2018).
Technology in this era can be understood from the multiple perspectives, relating
from the improvement in the equipment handling, processes, or methods of operations, to the
improvements or changes in the human resource management of the BHP. It specifies the HR
practices or planning to manage and increase the efficiency of the workforce in the
organisation. Most importantly, the technology had a major impact on the productivity and in
the improvement of the communication processes. Therefore, looking at the multiple
dimensions of the technological aspects of the environmental factors, it can be demonstrated
that technology in the field of mining play a dominant role (Boulter & Hall, 2015).
Impact on HR Planning, Job design, and work practices on BHP Billiton
The technological environmental factor in an organisational context is related to the
various dimensions of organisational performance. The external factors pose a great influence
on the organisation. The HR planning, job design and the work practices are often essential
for the organisation’s success. The changes in the external factors, impacts the work practices
positively. Employees are the main source of the organisational performance in the long run,
therefore the HR practices should be effectively implemented to obtain the desired outcomes.

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Advancement in technology, leads to the changes in the HR planning, of the company, as the
management enhances the process of the hiring of the applicants in the organisation.
Nowadays, the organisations have realised, that they cannot achieve the target of effective
recruiting and skilled employees without the help of IT and other technologies. People these
days are now aware of the online systems and the portals and they search for the job offers
and the recruiting organisations. Also, the data management in the organisations becomes
easier with the help of IT (Selvan, 2015).
Impact on the job design
It can be understood and analysed in the following manner. Job design also known as
task design or work design is an important function of human resource management. It relates
to the specification of the job content, methods, and the relationship of the job with respect to
the organisational requirements, as well as the personal requirements of the job holder or
employee in an organisation. It guides about how the nature of any particular job will affect
the employees behaviour or attitude towards organisation (Liphadzi & Vermaak, (2017).
The aim of the job design is improve the level of job satisfaction in an organisation,
therefore enhancing the human resource management practices in an organisation. For hiring
and retaining the human resource in an organisation, the management team must ensure an
effective human resource planning. It is described as a process of ascertaining the manpower
requirements, of an organisation which must be linked with the attainment of strategic goals
and objectives. Therefore, when there will be betterment in the policies of job design in an
organisation, then it will automatically improve the HR planning process of the organisation
(Perrott, 2015).
Technological advancement impacting the work practices
A number of work practices impacted by the technological changes include factors
such as sustainability and safety, technology integration, energy costs, financial performance,
and the factors affecting the people and their skilled performance. The technological changes
impacting the BHP Billiton also includes the HR management and the work practices. These
work practices may refer to the mining and automation practices, which with the use of new
technologies improve the productivity (Szczurek, 2018).

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With respect to the company, BHP Billiton uses the Escondido, as their IT function to
enhance their productivity. Also, it helped the company to achieve the strategic business
direction. The particular IT function helped them to attain the target of generating massive
amount of data. This assist the workers in the process of data mining, and the organisation
also, to have secured and accurate data which forms the basis of effective decision-making.
The improvements in the technology helps to improve the productivity therefore, overall
performance is thus improved (The conversation, 2018).
With the introduction of the advancements in technology, the company also aimed at
achieving better communication with their employees and the other stakeholders. This also
affects the HR practices, and the other activities in BHP. As IT improves the communication
process and BHP is a very large company, and if the communication system fails, then the
company would face the situation of loss. Enterprise communication and the network
solutions are used by the company that facilitates the communication process which further
leads their business processes bringing higher return on their investments. Thus, it can be
stated that there are a number of influences that technology has on the HR practices or
planning of BHP. Managers are now at ease effectively managing the functions of
procurement, maintenance, development and the utilization of the resources more efficiently
and effectively (Ramirez, 2016).
Implications/Examples from the company
From the above discussion, it can be stated that there are certain implications,
resulting from the technological changes or advancements include certain things. It mentions
about the business solution used by BHP Billiton, which ultimately helps them to manage
their projects effectively, that further benefits them gaining a competitive advantage
(Technology and Operations management, 2015).
BHP’s business solution refers to the inventory management that records each and
every inventory item in the business operations. Also, they include the use of other
methodologies and the ERP (Enterprise Resource planning) systems. Moreover, BHP has
their own IT department which helps them in maintaining their systems and processes to be
conducted smoothly. The company also used advanced sensors that further improved the
quality and the grade of ores delivered to their processing plants. Autonomous drilling system
is another example from the given context about technological advancements. Company uses

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IT for their supply chain management. This helps them to maintain sound relation with their
suppliers, and their clients and the customers (Chugh, Sharma & Cabrera, 2017).
Remote and the autonomous technology as the key drivers of productivity
BHP is the world renowned leader, in terms of the remote monitoring and the large
scale mines. Therefore, to improve the efficiency, safety, reliability and the consistency with
the business strategies, certain changes were made in this regard. In the year 2013, BHP
unveiled about the remote control centre which is called as the IROC (Integrated Remote
Operations Center). This helped BHP to monitor and control in real time sense, the BHP’s
Western Australian Iron Ore Network (The conversation, 2018). Therefore, it can be
understood that the IROC, helped BHP to enhance the overall system-wide availability,
utilization and the output rate of their assets. In a broader sense, it can be analysed that the
IROC assist BHP ensuring that the company remains as a world’s largest miner with the
competitive advantage (Lynas & Horberry, 2011). Also, it relates to the lowering of the per
unit production costs, largest scale and higher productivity. This helps in improving the
implementation and the achieving the desired outcomes of HR planning and effective human
resource management (Saunders, Timson & Desloires, 2015).
Looking at the whole perspective about the technological changes or advancements,
along with the positive impacts there are some of the negatives also, which impacted the
human resource management. Past few years the company reported a failure regarding the
BHP’s Brazilian dam which led to the safety issue. Hence, the above discussion states about
the influence or impact of the technological changes on the BHP’s work practices in both
positive and negative sense (St-Laurent & Le Billon, 2015).
Recommendations
As an HR practitioner, it can be recommended that there should be some changes
regarding the safety issue in the organisation. As safety is one of the major concerns in the
mining industries or organisations, therefore these should not be overlooked. And BHP is one
the globally leading company with large and complex projects, effective data management
becomes the major problem. The company should focus on the use of strong encryption for
the prevention of data and the intellectual properties. The top management of any company
holds the responsibility of effective decision-making and devising plans and strategies for the
organisational goals and objectives. Therefore, as an HR practitioner, the company should

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aim at devising new strategies and plans that would help them in ensuring about their workers
safety and security. In the terms of skilled and talented workforce, the company can develop
new and effective training programs so that they gain the necessary skills and abilities. These
include the training as on the job training programmes and vocational training must led to
their improvement.
Conclusion
To conclude the above discussion it can be analysed that an organisation operates and
functions in the environment or the society. The environment is categorised as external and
internal, which influences the working of any organisation. With respect to the environmental
analysis, considering all the factors external environmental factors has been taken to explain
their relevance in the chosen company. The technological environmental factors play a major
role in shaping the future success and performance levels. As today’s scenario mainly
describes about the rapid advancements in the business environment, every business
organisation has to develop new methods of working. There has been a great impact on the
organisation’s HR planning, job design and the work practices of the BHP. The major
changes or impacts were positive but, there were some of the negatives also, which impacted
the organisation negatively. There were issues regarding the equipment and their safety to the
people working in the industry. The company implemented several system of managing their
human resource, diversifying their operations, and the use of ERP and other advanced
systems. With reference to the description of the above mentioned technologies or systems
adopted, the company achieved a world-wide acceptance or popularity amongst other mining
companies in Australia.

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