In addition to courses run by Group businesses on getting to know other cultures, a course to teach generic cross cultural skills was started in 2003 for Group wide application.

The idea is to help build an organisational competence in managing cultural difference. This is part of an emerging suite of initiatives that aim to create a workplace environment that reduces the likelihood of discriminatory behaviour and creates one that values different backgrounds, abilities and perspectives.

All over the world, Rio Tinto sites have staff transplanted from a familiar cultural environment to one which may be very different, or one that is supposed to be similar but does not feel like it. Culture shock can be brought on by the anxiety that results from losing all our familiar signs and symbols of social interaction. These signs or cues include the thousand and one ways in which we orient ourselves to the situations of daily life. When an individual enters a strange culture, all or most of these familiar cues are removed.

The cultural awareness course is designed to help employees to be sensitive to the need to adjust to other cultures. Every culture possesses unique strengths and those strengths are needed in the workplace. Diligence, persistence, tenacity, truthfulness, generosity and fair play are not things that come from a business plan. Rio Tinto assumes that all employees are accountable for starting and maintaining good relationships with the Group's neighbours.