Vale Base Metals employees at the organization’s Voisey’s Bay operation in Newfoundland and Labrador.SUPPLIED
David Kolari carries the same metal lunch pail to work every day that he used when he first started as an underground miner with Vale Base Metals (VBM) in Sudbury, Ont. in 2001. “It’s that humbling reminder,” he says. “I remember where I came from. It definitely is a time I cherish. I want to make sure to respect the people that do the work for us.”
Kolari was fresh out of school when he was hired to join Vale Base Metals’ front lines underground. Within five years, he’d become a supervisor. Today, after multiple rounds of training and many promotions, Kolari works Monday to Friday in an office role as a specialist focusing on operational and third-party efficiencies. “I came in green underground, but they trained me up,” he says. “At Vale Base Metals, you get the opportunity to spread your wings.”
Vale Base Metals is a global supplier of critical minerals, including nickel, copper, cobalt and platinum group metals and employs more than 13,000 people across its global operations in Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Japan and Indonesia. In Canada, with its global operations centre based in Toronto, it employs more than 7,000 people with multiple mines in Manitoba, Ontario, and Newfoundland and Labrador including three processing plants, a smelter and three refineries. This breadth of sites and functions allows employees like Kolari to gain experience in different roles in various operations or in corporate functions.
There’s value in training staff to take on new roles, says Tina Gauthier, chief commercial officer (CCO). With a deliberate strategy to foster cross-functional experiences, the company creates opportunities for its employees to grow their careers. VBM supports that with internal training programs, on-the-job training, stretch assignments, and flexibility for employees who want to move to new areas of the company, both in terms of work function and geography.
“Moving people geographically, moving people from operations into corporate roles, moving people within different areas and operations helps the company,” says Gauthier, who is herself a model of using stretch assignments to grow her career. Hired four years ago by VBM as head of nickel sales, two years later she became the company’s first female CCO. She was also the first female chair of two influential global organizations in the mining world: the Nickel Institute and the Nickel Board Steering Committee at the London Metal Exchange.
The mining industry today is at a critical juncture with the global focus on critical minerals, notes Gauthier. “We’re an important Canadian company and an important Brazilian company in a world where critical minerals are the future. We have a big job to do and it’s not easy,” she says. “We are trying to make our Canadian nickel mines competitive in an environment that’s extremely difficult right now.”
That’s why it is vitally important to bring in different perspectives from across functions to help solve tough problems, she says. “It’s about getting that variety of experiences working together for the best outcome.”
Kolari agrees that Vale Base Metals has important work ahead. “We’re changing people’s lives. We’re producing the critical minerals of the future that are necessities in everyday life,” he says. Both as a fourth-generation Sudbury miner and with his varied experience, he intends to make a difference. “I’m proud to say I’m helping build a future for future generations, just like my grandparents and great-grandparents did.”
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Advertising feature produced by Canada’s Top 100 Employers, a division of Mediacorp Canada Inc. The Globe and Mail’s editorial department was not involved.
