Aruspex Helps Australian Mining Industry Ensure a Steady Workforce ''Heartbeat''

Mining Industry Skills Centre Gathers Insights From CAPTure
Software for Industry's "Heartbeat Project," Now Expanding Across
Australia
SAN FRANCISCO--(Business Wire)--While Australia's mining industry has enjoyed steady growth, it's
also been hampered by skill shortages, attraction challenges and
retention struggles. Using Aruspex's CAPTure software, a
government-industry partnership has gathered important insights about
workforce trends and is planning for the future.

Formed as a collaborative venture between the Australian
government and the mining industry, the Mining Industry Skills Centre
was founded in 1996 with the goal of addressing future training needs,
and developing and implementing skilling initiatives for the
Australian resources industry. The Skills Centre formed the "Heartbeat
Project" to identify role-, sector- and method-specific skills
shortages within the mining space. Before then, individual companies
tracked their own workforce data and no central clearing house
existed.

When the Skills Centre needed to input the information into a
software system that could handle industry-wide data, they turned to
Aruspex, a leading strategic workforce planning firm, and its CAPTure
(Capability, Availability, Productivity of Talent) software. The
Skills Centre chose CAPTure to run future workforce scenarios and
modeling based on external factors such as demographics, business
strategies, competitors' behavior, and other factors inside and
outside an organization.

Results from the first phase of the project have provided insights
into industry averages that haven't been available before. The next
phase of the project will provide more extensive data, spanning more
than 30 job roles, and incorporating more companies from various
locations across Australia. Once the right future is identified,
CAPTure will lead Heartbeat Project officials through comprehensive
action planning to set goals and track progress.

"Our primary mission is to develop a skilled and sustainable
workforce for the future," explains Jenny Neumann, strategic
development manager for Mining Industry Skills Centre. "We needed a
system that could automatically upload data from multiple companies
and provide an industry profile of our workforce, such as median age
and gender profiles by job roles. CAPTure presented current workforce
trends and showed us where the industry skill sets were going if
nothing changed. The scenarios explore the real world, and represent
the gap between the industry's current workforce and the workforce
they will need--and in turn how these trends could change, based on
the various actions we take."

To read the complete case study, visit the following link:
http://www.aruspex.com/knowledge_centre_casestudies.html.

"The critical insights gained by using CAPTure have helped the
mining industry not only plan for the future, but to build the
future," explains Tess Walton, co-founder of Aruspex. "This project
will allow the Skills Centre to map workforce demand against supply
and model it over the next three to five years--so the industry can
mitigate the risks of gaps by hiring staff, training existing staff,
or changing the way work is structured to suit available talent
pools."

The project is the first to apply such an approach to an entire
industry, not just individual businesses. The Skills Centre is now
expanding the Heartbeat Project to wider parts of the industry; by
helping competing companies to collaborate in the critical area of
talent shortages, the Skills Centre is helping the resource and mining
industries build a sustainable, affordable future.

About Aruspex

Aruspex delivers strategic workforce planning solutions that help
organizations design and attain their future workforce. Our intuitive
CAPTure planning software goes beyond simple reporting; it analyzes
internal and external demographic trends, identifies future workforce
gaps and guides executives and HR professionals to solve different
scenarios. The Aruspex model was developed through years of practical
experience, and we are passionate about workforce planning. For more
information, visit www.aruspex.com.

Fisher Vista for Aruspex
Elrond Lawrence, 831-757-9100
elawrence(a)fishervista.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008