Shortly before becoming Rio Tinto chief executive in July 2016, Jean-Sebastien Jacques fronted a town hall staff meeting in Brisbane where he was asked about his approach to dealing with “deadwood” among the mining giant’s 50,000 employees.

Jacques replied that when it came to workers who didn’t pull their weight he was a firm believer in FIFO, a term commonly used in mining circles to refer to the fly-in, fly-out method of employing people in remote locations.