I will say that mining as a whole tends to be a misunderstood profession. Unfortunately, I don’t think Hecla has enough people in leadership positions who understand what it means to lead, not just with people but in an intelligent and innovative way. Their answer to anything was, “Well, it’s always been done that way.” If you question anything or anyone in management prepare yourself for the consequences because you will receive blowback. The company as a whole has a very traditional/conservative “good ol’ boys club” mentality, and I get the feeling they like it that way. Is it a shocker that almost everyone at their Corporate level of management is a middle aged white man?
I was in the position of seeing unsavory interactions between supervisor and subordinate in various mining departments and let’s just say the supervisor always won. Always. To this day I’m not sure if people just were oblivious to it or if they just didn’t want to see it, because they were warned. Multiple times by multiple people. After a certain point you just gave up. Of course, the fact that there were positions in departments that had a terrible churn issue was apparently of no concern to them either. I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason nothing was done was to cement / further certain people’s careers; which just makes the whole thing worse. The sad thing is, sometimes nice people got promoted then drank a little too much of the koolaid and got a little too big for their britches.
They seem to suffer under the impression that if you’re technically proficient at your job it means you’ll understand how to lead. Sadly, this is not the case. Certain people at certain levels were protected to the detriment of others, plain and simple.
Proceed with caution.
