Community training

Our investment in local communities is conducted through a variety of initiatives that may include scholarships, donations and internships. But perhaps our most important investment in communities is in training.

While training programmes benefit our operations by providing us with a larger pool of skilled employees, training provides people with new knowledge that stays with them for life. In many cases, trainees go on to work in other businesses in the community or the region, or even to start their own.

As such, training is an important part of our work towards sustainable development.

How we establish training in the community

Our primary reason for training, of course, is to meet our business requirements. With our philosophy of working closely with local communities, we focus on local employment whenever possible. Where skills are lacking, we target training to build those skills.

We liaise closely with our Human Resources staff to establish employment needs when developing training initiatives. We sometimes seek partnerships with outside agencies and governments to help develop, and even to deliver, training programmes.  Where necessary, we may even coordinate with local communities to establish skill registers to help with candidate selection.

To help to build the number of professionally qualified indigenous workers at our Australian operations, we also sponsor indigenous students to attend university and take degrees.  In addition, under our National Indigenous Cadetship Programme, we offer the cadets employment during their summer breaks, to provide them with industry experience in their chosen field of study.

Our results

Our work in 2007 included progressing 23 Guinean staff from entry level positions to positions of higher responsibility at the Simandou project and donating 130 computers collected from various Rio Tinto operations to local civil society organisations.  In Mongolia, we sponsored nine students to study in mining related fields including: finance, law, geology and accounting in Mongolia and other parts of the world.

By 2006, ten students had graduated and gained employment in their area of study since the cadetship programme began in 1999, and five have found permanent positions in our businesses.