PeopleTray is pleased to announce it has developed systems that combat major issues facing FIFO workers in exploration and mining organisations and their contractor partners.

PeopleTray is a Mining and Contractor Management Software company that specialises in workforce and production reporting software systems for miners, explorers, and contractors.

PeopleTray’s Managing Director Tony Hampton is a mining software veteran and has developed a fully integrated cloud/mobile onboarding, compliance, training, safety, and FIFO roster management software with flexible integration with other management and reporting systems, including Power BI.

“Our software helps manage people that work in remote locations, working away from their homes and families, away from their hobbies and interests and away from their support network.”

“They work around heavy plant and equipment, in hot conditions, with bushfire, lightning and cyclone risks, often with limited or intermittent supervision and limited communications.”

“FIFO workers are responsible for the production and financial performance of Australia’s mining projects and for ensuring personal and project risk management is aligned with community expectations.” said Hamton

Various studies (involving the Australian Government, Universities and Australian Mining Organisations) have concluded that working away from home and family, often in FIFO roles is harmful.

The industry pays people well, but the human and social costs are real despite being difficult to measure and report. Managers in these organisations have told us that these are the issues that have risen to senior management and board levels of their businesses:

• A persistent morale issue – Persistent morale issues for employees and contractors, created by the inability to accurately forecast the demand for flights and accommodation based on future maintenance and construction commitments. This means changes to agreed plans and flight bookings that hurt our contractors and our people.
  
• Plague of spreadsheets that impact our ability to plan and report – Administrators compensate for fragmented, siloed, and duplicated data by producing a ‘plague’ of spreadsheets, all of which create errors and travel change requirements that impact workers’ FIFO experience.
  
• Logistics constrains our production – Right now production is constrained by people, logistics, and morale. Production should be constrained by the capacity of the plant, equipment, and assets, hence better systems to manage our people are a priority.

Workers describe those issues in similar ways:

• One way communication: I feel like there is one way communication with my employer. My employer demands daily reports and checklists from me, but there is little or no response to the safety or production issues I raise.
  
• Out of date compliance and training records: My employer’s records of my compliances and training are often incomplete or out of date and I must resubmit documents. They are not visible to me and it affects my ability to travel or enter the site. 
  
• Last minute changes to my travel:  Flights to and from site are sometimes cancelled or changed at the last-minute, affecting commitments I make to family and friends.

PeopleTray began working on ways to raise morale, achieve higher productivity with reduced risk and harm by focusing on Cloud and mobile systems that support the people that drive exploration and mining success. The goal was to build morale through systems that guide, support and partner with the workers that deliver the success of exploration and mining projects.

PeopleTray provides integrated Cloud with a unified mobile app to give administrators and managers better visibility of issues, better travel decisions, and reconnects managers with their workers by seeing and acting on the issues they raise.

Its goal is to raise morale of mining teams through better FIFO planning and communication and improving the relationship between miners and their workers.