An analysis of the Human Resource practices in the mining industry in Zimbabwe’s Midlands Province: A relook at the Resource Based View of managing Human Resources.

Abstract

The mining industry across the globe has always made use of large stocks of labourto achieveorganizational objectives. It is against this background that the study was conducted to determine the HR practices currently being implemented in the mining sector in Zimbabwe. The Results Based View approach to the strategic leadership of organisations was adopted to act as a benchmark against which the current HR practices can be compared with. The research data was gathered through a non-random, convenient sample of HR managers from 8 mining entities in the Midlands Province of Zimbabwe. Convenience sampling was necessitated by the limited finances and time at the disposal of the researcher. However, the relatively large size of the sample would ensure a high degree of generalisability of findings for the mining industry in the Midlands Province in Zimbabwe. The findings of the study revealed that in the mining industry in Zimbabwe, employees are treated as valuable, rare and inimitable resource which they deploy in various ways to achieve organisational objectives. As such the mining companies have come up with innovative methods of managing their human resources which includes providing job security, competitive rewards, and social welfare services amongst other methods. These findings confirm that HR departments in the mining industry in Zimbabwe's Midlands Province are practising the RBV approach to the management of human resources in their organisations and by so doing manage to resource their mining entities efficiently and effectively.