We are committed to providing a safe and healthy workplace for our employees where their rights and dignity are respected. We set out to build enduring relationships with our neighbours that demonstrate mutual respect, active partnership, and long term commitment.

In 2009 we set new five year targets for a range of social wellbeing metrics which are discussed in the following sections.

Safety

Our goal is to achieve zero injuries and zero fatalities. We believe that all injuries are preventable and our aim is for everyone to go home safe and healthy at the end of each day. We strive to create a culture where everyone feels that they can make a difference in an environment where all employees and contractors have the knowledge, competence and desire to work safely.

Regrettably we did not meet our goal of zero fatalities in 2009. Four people were fatally injured while working at Rio Tinto managed operations. The fatal incidents occurred at the Lugo di Vicenza aluminium packaging operation in Italy, the Palabora copper mine and the Richards Bay Minerals titanium dioxide feedstock mine in South Africa, and at the Awaso bauxite mine in Ghana. We continue to provide support and counselling to the families and workmates who are impacted by these incidents. We shared the lessons from these and other serious incidents across our business.

We measure progress toward our goal of zero injuries through the all injury frequency rate (AIFR) which includes data for employees and contractors. At the end of 2009 our AIFR was 0.82, an improvement of 16 per cent from 2008. Over the last five years we have reduced our AIFR by 46 per cent. Our lost time injury frequency rate has also improved and was 0.43 per 200,000 hours worked in 2009.

Low injury rates do not mean that serious incidents will not happen. Our Semi Quantitative Risk Assessment (SQRA) process provides a rigorous approach to the identification and evaluation of higher consequence / lower frequency hazards. The risk reduction resulting from application of the SQRA process is used as a Group wide leading indicator for safety performance. Additionally we undertook seven process safety reviews of our higher risk facilities in 2009.

We have also implemented a significant potential incident reporting measure which promotes identification, investigation and sharing of lessons learnt from critical incidents and introduced streamlined root cause identification training for leaders to reinforce our incident investigation processes.

Contractor safety was a particular area of focus for us in 2009. Following a review of internal and external best practices, we strengthened our health, safety, environment (HSE) and quality management systems for supplier and contractor management and met with senior leadership of major contract companies to raise the profile of our HSE management expectations.

Our Safety Leadership Development Programme continued to be a pillar of our sustainable safety process. An updated programme focused on developing HSE skills within the Group was launched in 2009.

Rio Tinto has taken an active role in the Flight Safety Foundation, the world’s foremost independent aviation safety organisation. We co-championed development of new aviation standards for the global mining and onshore resources industry. These new standards are being supported by a growing number of major mining companies and are expected to improve aviation safety for everyone involved in our industry.

We also support the Australian Royal Flying Doctor Service. The Rio Tinto Life Flight provides free of charge emergency jet services to patients in need of evacuation when time and distance are critical.

We are developing a framework to ensure new projects are managed safely and in line with our sustainable development requirements throughout their development life cycle. This framework will define our expectations for implementation of Group standards and systems, requirements for and training of leaders, and the assurance process for health, safety and environment engagements.

Health

Our goal is no new cases of occupational illness. Whilst we have significantly reduced the number of occupational illness cases reported over the last five years, we have set a new Group target to further reduce the rate of new cases of occupational illness per 10,000 employees by 30 per cent between 2008 and 2013. The 2008 baseline for this target excludes operations that were divested or flagged for divestment during 2009. In 2009 we achieved a 21 per cent improvement.

Reported illnesses are mostly related to stress, musculo-skeletal disorders, and noise induced hearing loss. Therefore ongoing reductions will require further improvements in the management of risks posed by manual handling and noise exposure, as well as supporting healthy lifestyles through workplace wellbeing programmes.

We have also set a new Group target of a ten per cent reduction in the number of employees exposed to an eight hour noise dose of more than 85 decibels by 2013 from a 2008 baseline. In 2009, the number of employees reported as exposed increased by six per cent per 10,000 employees, primarily due to further improvements in monitoring programmes and operational changes such as moving from surface to underground activities, leading to changed exposure profiles at a number of our operations.

Assessing major noise sources and then implementing practical and cost effective noise controls is complex, particularly for heavy mobile equipment and noise sources in smelters. We have therefore established a community of practice to share learning and assist with the development of more effective noise reduction methods, including engineering solutions and alternative ways of working.

During 2009 our Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Plan was revised to incorporate the lessons we learned from the first wave of the H1N1 pandemic virus. Our European and North American sites were affected by the second wave, and the plan assisted them to manage the situation with minor disruptions to their daily activities.

We believe that supporting healthy lifestyles will reduce health related risks such as fatigue, stress and obesity, with resultant improvements in health and safety performance and productivity.

Our new health and wellbeing strategy will result in greater support for our employees to lead healthier lives. We have continued to roll out our “Achieve Health” programme at our Australasian businesses and more than 3,000 of our people around the world signed up for our Be Active challenge in 2009. Four months after the challenge ended 65 per cent of people surveyed rated their health as above average or excellent, compared with only 33 per cent before the challenge started.

Rio Tinto operates in countries where the prevalence of HIV, tuberculosis and malaria is high. We are working closely with the international community engaged with these problems not only in Africa, but globally. Where we have operations located in regions with a generalised HIV epidemic (as defined by UNAIDS) we actively encourage all employees to know their HIV status through voluntary testing. We also require that all employees and their nominated partner have affordable access to treatment, care and support, including antiretroviral drugs.

Our people

Rio Tinto employs on the basis of job requirements and does not discriminate on grounds of age, ethnic or social origin, gender, sexual orientation, politics, religion or disability. Group companies employ disabled people and accept the need to maintain and develop careers for them. If an employee becomes disabled and, as a result, is unable to perform his or her current duties, every effort is made to offer suitable alternative employment and to assist with retraining. We do not employ forced, bonded or child labour and we actively favour local employment where local candidates meet job requirements and laws allow. We recognise the right of all employees to choose to belong to a union and seek to bargain collectively. We strive to build a workforce that is aligned with our values, and that represents the diverse communities and geographies in which we operate.

In 2009, we employed 102,000 people, including the Group’s proportionate share of consolidated companies and equity accounted units. Of these approximately 28,000 were located in North America, 28,000 in Europe, 20,000 in Australia and New Zealand, 8,000 in Africa and 7,000 in Latin America.

As a result of the impact of the global financial crisis on Rio Tinto, we reported a planned reduction of 14,000 roles globally (8,500 contractor and 5,500 employee roles) in 2008. The workforce was reduced by around 16,000 with careful monitoring to ensure no discrimination occurred and that the organisation has the talent necessary to deliver shareholder value in the future.

A diverse and skilled workforce is critical to our business success in the long term. Excluding the chief executive, 20 per cent of the chief executive’s executive committee are women. However, we have not met our target of 20 per cent representation of women in senior management by 2009, achieving a 13 per cent representation. In 2010, our diversity focus will be expanded to address ethnicity and nationality.

By engaging with our employees about the business and their career aspirations, implementing individual development planning, coaching and feedback processes and valuing each individual’s contribution, we position the organisation to achieve change and improvement in this key risk area.

Our total rewards strategy is designed to attract, retain and motivate our workforce. Base pay is reviewed regularly and adjusted taking into account the individual’s role and local market trends as necessary. We also offer allowances, bonuses, share plans and healthcare benefits appropriate to the local markets. Short term incentive plans allow individuals to participate in the financial success of the business, while long term incentive plans help align individual objectives with shareholder interests.

As a result of the first Group wide employee engagement survey in 2008, targeted actions were implemented across the Group to increase levels of employee engagement in the areas of business leadership and direction, image and corporate social responsibility, and safety. The impact of these actions will be measured in a further survey in 2010.

Approximately 380,000 attendances were recorded for training courses in health, safety, environment, sustainable development and technical/operational skills in 2009. This is a significant increase on 2008 and is primarily due to increased availability of technology based learning.

We employ graduates from many disciplines including mining and process engineering; geology and geosciences; finance; human resources; health, safety and environmental sciences. In 2009, 200 graduates attended our Graduate Development Programme and we employed over 600 apprentices. Our targeted representation of women in the graduate intake fell slightly to 29 per cent in 2009.

Our local employment commitments are often managed through directly negotiated community benefit agreements. For example, in 2009:

• We remained the largest private sector employer of indigenous Australians and maintained our proportion of indigenous Australian employees at eight per cent of our Australian workforce.
• In Madagascar a transparent job seeker database was developed to assist with employment of local people. We now have 512 local employees and a Malagasy managing director.
• In Oman, where there is not an established pool of highly skilled potential employees, we almost met our five year commitment to locally hire 70 per cent of the Sohar Aluminium smelter workforce within its first year of operation.

Rio Tinto expects all employees to treat each other and external contacts with integrity, fairness and respect in line with our values. Our Speak-OUT programme was revised and reinforced in 2009, providing employees with an independent and confidential means of reporting concerns to senior managers.

Community engagement and regional economic development

By understanding our socio-economic interaction in the regions where we operate, we optimise benefits and reduce negative impacts for communities and our operations alike. This interaction includes relationships with local suppliers, training and local employment, support for small to medium enterprises, optimal distribution of taxes and royalties, and support for multilateral socio-economic programmes. Infrastructure developed for our mines or processing plants can also benefit local communities and local businesses and governments.

Increased cash availability and wealth resulting from our presence in regions where there was previously little can inflate the price of goods and services locally. We manage such scenarios to avoid these negative outcomes. At our mineral sands project in Madagascar, for example, we developed and implemented influx and inflation mitigation strategies together with the local community.

Women in communities often disproportionately bear the burden of change brought about by mining and other developments. In recognition of this, we have launched Why gender matters, a guide to better incorporate gender considerations in our communities work. The guide is available on our website, www.riotinto.com.

To enable us to target the delivery of socio-economic programmes reflecting the priorities of local communities, we conduct community baseline, social impact and social risk assessments to identify potential positive and negative impacts of our presence, including human rights impacts. We use this information along with community input to develop multi-year communities plans at each operation.

During 2009 we completed 19 site managed community assessments, and we improved how we monitor progress of findings and corrective actions identified through these assessments.

We have systems that actively involve communities in decision making processes about issues affecting them. At our Weipa bauxite mine, land management processes ensure that all relevant traditional landowners are consulted and their inputs sought together with our staff about land clearing on the mining lease.

In 2009, Rio Tinto businesses supported 2,479 socio-economic programmes covering a wide range of activities including health, education, business development, housing, environmental protection and agricultural development.

We spent an estimated US$119 million on community assistance programmes in 2009 and payments into benefits receiving trusts set up in directly negotiated community impact benefit agreements. This is in addition to direct and multiplier economic contributions.

Without a planned approach to local enterprise development, local and sustainable supply chain opportunities can be eroded by a global approach to procurement. Accordingly, Rio Tinto Procurement developed a strategy to specifically nurture local business linkages in 2009. Similarly, Rio Tinto Alcan’s regional industrial development programme seeks to facilitate downstream and diversified economic development.

In 2009 we established a Communities target, which requires all operations to have in place by 2013 locally appropriate, publicly reported social performance indicators that demonstrate a positive contribution to the economic development of the communities and regions where we work, consistent with the Millennium Development Goals.