The management of non-available labour in a platinum mine in the North West Province

Abstract

The term ‘non-available labour’ at a the platinum mine can be best described as labour or employees not available for work due to employees being absent, employees on annual leave, employees on training and employees being on sick leave. Provision is made in the annual business plan for non-available labour, where employees on annual leave, employees on sick leave, absent employees and employees on training must be managed at acceptable percentages as set out in the business plan to ensure sufficient labour at work throughout the year. It is significant important to manage non-available labour effectively at business plan percentages as mining at a platinum mine is labour intensive and not managing non-available labour effectively will have a direct impact on employees available for work, which will have an negative effect on the organisations bottom line. Disselkamp (2009) argued that productivity suffers because of absenteeism and illness disrupts and waste time of managers and supervisors as they have to re-plan their activities for the day and have to adjust their staffing. Productivity losses related to employee absenteeism have negative business implications for employers and these losses effectively deprive the business of an expected level of employee labour (Bankert et al., 2015). Any type of absenteeism, due to illness or unplanned absenteeism, increases cost and impedes productivity because other employees have to work overtime, other employees have to work at jobs in which they are not properly skilled and who are more likely to have accidents and poor health as a result (Disselkamp, 2009) The framework of the study is based on the reforms of human resource processes on non-available labour management at Impala Platinum Limited, a mining company that forms part of the platinum mine industry in the North West Province in South Africa. The aim of this study was to determine the influence of non-available labour at the platinum mine for management, the HR department and supervisors.