Twelve-hour shifts, remote sites and work you can point at.

What the work is actually like

Mining is physical, it is shift-based, and it happens in places most people would not choose to live. A twelve-hour night shift underground in a 34-degree wet heat is hard, and no amount of describing it as a career opportunity changes that. Anyone considering this industry should understand what they are choosing.

What is on the other side of that: the work is unusually concrete. At the end of a shift there is a measurable quantity of rock that was not moved before, a machine that was broken and now runs, or a circuit that was recovering 88% and now recovers 89%. People who need to see the result of their own work tend to like mining and stay in it for decades. People who need predictability, an unbroken family routine and a city tend not to.

Three of our operations are residential, meaning employees live in a nearby town with their families and commute daily. Three are roster-based, meaning employees fly or drive in for a block of shifts and then go home. The distinction matters more to quality of life than salary does, and it is stated in every job advertisement.

Rosters by operation

Pay and benefits

Quintel pays a living wage as a floor at every operation, benchmarked to an independent local calculation rather than to the statutory minimum, which in several host countries is below what a household needs. The lowest-paid employee in the group earns 3.1 times the applicable statutory minimum wage in their country.

Above the floor, pay is benchmarked annually to the mining sector in each country, with the group targeting the upper quartile for technical and supervisory roles because those are the roles it competes hardest for. Pay bands are published internally and any employee can see the band for any role in the group.

The group conducts an annual gender pay analysis at each operation, comparing like roles. The FY2025 gap on a like-for-like basis was 1.4% in favour of men, and the like-for-like figure is published alongside the unadjusted figure of 18.6%, which is driven by role distribution rather than by unequal pay for the same job. The second number is the more important one and it is the one the operational supervision target exists to address.

Standard benefits at every operation: medical cover for employee and dependants, life and disability insurance, a retirement contribution, paid parental leave of at least 16 weeks for the primary carer and 4 weeks for the secondary carer, and an annual medical examination. Three operations carry an employee share trust with a distribution history.

Safety, and what you are entitled to expect

You have an unconditional right to stop work you believe is unsafe. No approval is required, no reason has to be accepted at the time, and work does not restart until you or a safety representative agrees it is safe. There is no adverse consequence for exercising it in good faith, including if the concern turns out to be unfounded.

This right is meaningless unless it is defended, and defending it means acting against supervisors who undermine it. Two have been dismissed since 2019 for pressuring employees who stopped work. Six hundred and twelve stoppages were exercised across the group in FY2025 and the number is treated as a health indicator rather than a cost.

You are also entitled to know your own exposure data. Personal dust, noise and diesel particulate monitoring results are provided to the individual as well as to the company, and medical records are retained for forty years and given to you on request after you leave.

Mobility

Working across assets and countries is the normal route to senior operational roles here. Five of six general managers were promoted internally, and four have worked at three or more Quintel operations. The Chief Executive was general manager at Asankran; the Chief Operating Officer ran Lubumba and then Mbengwe.

International assignments are supported with relocation, schooling and language training where needed. French is a working requirement at three operations — Lubumba, Nyanga and Bagoé — and the group funds language training for employees moving into those roles rather than restricting the roles to existing French speakers.

Where we fall short

Roster-based work at three operations is hard on families and the group has not solved it. Eight weeks away is a long time and no amount of camp wi-fi changes that. The group has shortened one roster from 10 and 4 to 8 and 4 and is studying a further reduction at Fatala, which carries a cost in flights and productivity that has to be justified.

Camp accommodation at two operations is single-status, which effectively excludes people with primary caring responsibilities from those roles regardless of policy. That is a structural barrier and it is one of the two identified causes of the group’s failure to hit its operational supervision target for women.

Career progression for operational employees without formal qualifications is slower than it should be. The technical institutes exist partly to address this, and 340 current employees have completed a certificate through them, but the pathway from operator to supervisor still takes longer here than the group would like.