Companies news

Sia explores how GenAI is reshaping frontline roles and unlocking major value across the mining industry in Australia

The 30 August 2025

Sia explores how GenAI is reshaping frontline roles, unlocking major value across mining, healthcare, and engineering sectors.

GenAI Beyond the Back Office

Whilst significant research has focused on generative AI and agentic AI application in customer service and back-office functions, the impact on operational and frontline roles remains relatively underexplored. Yet, this is where GenAI may create the greatest value, supporting high-risk, high-criticality activities across some of the largest and most stretched segments of the workforce.

Assessing the Workforce Impact of Generative AI

Using Sia’s AI OrgReview, fifty occupations were investigated as part of a targeted whitepaper analysis and supported by deployments from a range of Sia clients in the mining, healthcare, biopharma, and oil and gas industry in Australia and internationally. Our key findings from our study were that:

36% to 46% of reviewed activities (or tasks) were found to be “exposed” to GenAI automation; 
79% of the occupations assessed could have at least 10% of their work activities impacted by the introduction of LLMs; 
Approximately 28% of occupations will have 85% or more of their underlying activities impacted, indicating significant change for this portion of the workforce; and
No occupation was spared, inclusive of front-line workforces. For instance, 59%, 47% and 37% of a maintenance planner’s, surveyor’s and civil engineer’s time respectively were found to be either replaceable or augmentable by AI.

The benefits for Australia’s mining sector are profound.

An in-depth analysis with a leading gold mining company in Australia revealed a range of AI-powered work and workforce optimisation opportunities. This included:

Processing Operators: Automated review of processing log sheets ensuring for accuracy and completeness, alongside the preparation of concise handover notes.
Maintenance Planners: Automated generation of maintenance requests based on prompts and templates, alongside variance detection between rosters and timesheets to streamline timesheet approvals.
Health & Safety Coordinators: Integration with safety databases to automate incident reports, assign and track actions, as well as provide front-line workforces a live means of querying work and safety instructions.

The analysis covered ~3,700 underlying activities based on available position descriptions, finding:

33% of total activities were “exposed” to GenAI automation, with a similar 28% of total activities exposed across front-office operational roles.
This could result in a 14% workforce productivity gain across this mining organisation should GenAI be applied to optimise exposed tasks by 50% and before counting the qualitative and quantitative benefits across safety and reliability capturable through work and workforce optimisation.

Implications for Organisations

GenAI can no longer be confined to corporate and back-office functions, with impact extending deep into operational, engineering, and frontline roles that sit at the core of critical industries like mining in Australia. Organisations that act now to understand and prepare for GenAI’s workforce impact will be best positioned to unlock its full potential. Is your organisation ready?

Source: Sia