Employees

Attracting, engaging and retaining a skilled and diverse workforce is critical to business performance, making our organisation more rounded and adaptable to new situations. We believe that our approach to attracting and retaining people is one of the most competitive in the industry.

We recognise every individual's contribution to our business, and provide clear direction and context on our objectives to help people develop within our organisation. Our global approach to talent management includes performance management, development and career planning, and providing regular feedback to employees. This enables us to provide technical, professional and leadership development opportunities for career progression and development across Rio Tinto, locally, regionally, and in some cases, internationally.

We recruit based on skills and experience, to meet the requirements of current - and potential future - roles. We do not discriminate on grounds of age, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, politics, religion or physical abilities. We do not employ forced, bonded or child labour.

Our employees' diversity of skills, ideas and experiences diversifies our thinking to ensure that we respond innovatively to the challenges faced by our business. We encourage collaboration within and across our businesses, cultures and countries to build cohesiveness and raise performance.

Our longer term diversity goal is to have a more balanced and representative workforce across all demographic dimensions, which more closely mirrors our geographical footprint and the local, national and indigenous communities in which we operate. In the short term, however, we are committed to increasing representation and balance in both gender and ethnicity/nationality.

Externally, we aim to recognise, appreciate and respond to the diverse interests of our stakeholders, who include customers, markets, communities, governments and suppliers.

We actively favour local employment where local candidates meet job requirements and laws provide. Many of our agreements with local communities include local employment targets. 

Where local capacity requires support to meet our employment standards we, in partnership with communities and government, implement programmes to develop skill levels and work readiness.

We help indigenous people engage in the local economy through various strategies, including direct employment.  Each operation develops indigenous employment programmes to suit their local situation. With all these programmes, we carry out research to understand the candidates' community; we support indigenous people to be work ready; and we prepare our workplace for them.

Our indigenous employment programmes succeed because of senior leadership support, strong relationships with local communities, and our affirmative employment policies. We continue to face challenges along the way, but our focus has created benefits such as improving staff retention levels, developing harmonious and cohesive workforces and attracting high quality candidates to our company.

We also develop local people for employment in the broader community to enhance the local economy, build local capacity, and help generate a more vibrant and stable community. This creates a good environment in which to carry out our business.

Transparency is part of our everyday work ethic. We conduct and act upon formal surveys that give our employees the opportunity to provide feedback on their experiences of the business and working environment. We also have Speak-OUT, a confidential, free telephone line for our people to bring any concerns to the attention of senior management.

If you are thinking of joining us, and are interested in seeing our latest job opportunities, please visit the careers section of our website.