Innovative approaches to building technical capability for a modern mining and metals organization

Rio Tinto has a large, globally distributed technical workforce and needs to ensure these employees have the requisite skills to not only manage technical risk and enable safe, efficient production but also ensure they are keeping pace with a fast-changing technological landscape. Traditional approaches to learning struggle with scale and an inability to respond to the extreme diversity of capability development needs. In response, Rio Tinto has successfully introduced innovative approaches to learning and employee engagement by leveraging the power of globally distributed networks for peer-to-peer knowledge transfer and providing mechanisms to recognize, reward and retain individual technical contributors. Table 1 Distribution of technical professionals by category. (Source: Rio Tinto) Introduction Like other mining and metals organizations, Rio Tinto is dependent on high-quality technical expertise to find, study, build, operate and close the mines and processing facilities that provide the metals and minerals that underpin modern society. Arguably, the caliber of the technical workforce together with the quality of the mineral resources represent the core sources of competitive advantage for any minerals company. As one of the largest minerals producers in the world, Rio Tinto employs a large global technical workforce, currently around 10,000 professionals, which consists of many engineers and scientists who make up approximately 20 percent of the total Rio Tinto workforce. Table 1 and Fig. 1 present some of the basic demographics of the technical professional workforce. In addition to the traditional mining and metals professions of geologist, mining engineer and metallurgist, Rio Tinto employs an array of scientific and engineering professionals. In the past decade, there has been a substantial increase in the number of “digital” professionals, including software engineers, data engineers and data scientists. Similarly, there has been a sizeable increase in the number of environmental and social scientists in response to increasing mine closure, community and other environmental, social and governance (ESG) obligations. More than 80 percent of the technical workforce is in Australia and North America, but Rio Tinto also has a substantial and growing footprint in Africa and Asia, with large development projects in Guinea and Mongolia (Fig. 1a). The age demographics in Fig. 1b are included to highlight the fact that approximately one quarter of the workforce will be at or approaching retirement age in the next decade. Drivers to invest in technical capability development Learning underpins the Rio Tinto purpose of “finding better ways to provide the materials the world needs,” and connects strongly with the company values of care, courage and curiosity (Fig. 2). The company’s objectives to be the best operator, with impeccable ESG and to excel in development all require a substantial focus on capability development to be successfully delivered. The drivers to invest in technical capability development span a broad range of business outcomes from ensuring that the organization remains legally compliant, to safe operating practices, through to innovating and redesigning business processes and technologies to transform operational and safety performance. Figure 1 (a) Geographic and (b) age distribution of Rio Tinto technical workforce. (Source: Rio Tinto) Figure 2 The Rio Tinto purpose, values and objectives. (Source: Rio Tinto) The learning needs associated with the different business outcomes cover a range from highly prescriptive (for example, employees need to understand their specific obligations to be compliant with antitrust regulations) to highly complex and difficult to define (for example, we need the skills to design a zerowaste, decarbonized and fully automated mine). In Fig. 3, these business outcomes are shown in order of increasing complexity from left to right. While training on the left side leans toward executing tasks, the right side shifts more toward being able to solve increasingly complex problems in an ever-changing environment. Technical knowledge alone will not solve this, and programs aim to enhance or amplify technical capability by building skills in creative thought, future vision and collaborative intelligence through community. The accompanying learning delivery methods range from traditional classroom or discrete e-learning modules to a more agile, creative and adaptive approach. Agility is the ability to solve all kinds of challenges as they present, which is not something typically associated with taskbased training. This article is focused primarily on the right-hand side of Fig. 3. In addition to the business outcomes described above, an investment in learning and capability development is widely recognized as a driver of improved employee engagement and retention. Meeting the learning needs of the Rio Tinto technical workforce There are several inherent challenges when defining an approach to satisfy the learning requirements of the global Rio Tinto technical workforce, starting with the diversity of learning needs given the breadth of technical disciplines represented and wide ranges of experience. An early career professional, fresh from university, will have a different learning needs profile from a 30-year industry veteran, possibly with multiple postgraduate qualifications. This is further complicated by: Geographic and language diversity and an audience distributed across numerous time zones, making it harder to deploy learning solutions contemporaneously at scale.Accelerated rate of operational technology change, meaning rapid obsolescence for learning content.Ongoing production demands competing for time allocated to learning, therefore requiring flexibility around when, how and where employees learn. Figure 3 Complexity of learning needs, and associated learning delivery method. Working with the constraints described, it is important that Rio Tinto adopts an expansive definition for what constitutes learning that leverages the inherent strengths of a global organization with access to extensive knowledge and experience across the workforce. Recent research by consultancy RedThread Research offers a picture of the diversity of learning opportunities available to organizations and their employees today (Fig. 4). Versions of many of the learning mechanisms described in Fig. 4 are in application across Rio Tinto today. However, this article focuses specifically on three programs that respond to the inherent learning challenges and leverage organizational strengths. The design of these programs needed to be: Adaptive to a vast diversity of learning needs.Available to a global audience with different cultural and language needs.Accessible across different work environments and able to fit within assorted demanding work schedules.Able to draw upon the vast expertise contained within the large global workforce of technical professionals. Innovative approaches to building technical capability In addition to responding to the inherent learning challenges, three initiatives — technical communities of practice, agile Technical Network and RioExcel/RioExperts — are designed to be mutually reinforcing, and to build and protect unique sources of technical capability that provide competitive advantage for Rio Tinto (Fig. 5). The networked technical organization — technical communities of practice. Rio Tinto is organized primarily around four product groups (iron ore, aluminum, copper and minerals), and employees typically identify strongly with their product group and receive management direction “through the line.” While this approach offers many benefits, it risks forming product group silos and therefore does not capture the potential value available from employees performing similar roles in different product groups collaborating and sharing knowledge. Rio Tinto has established several technical communities of practice, each with differing levels of maturity, across numerous technical domains including geoscience, surface mining, processing, geotechnical engineering, tailings management, asset management and several others. These forums have become powerful platforms for: Knowledge transfer and leading practice replication.Facilitating employee learning through an annual program of internal webinars, conferences and knowledge exchange through internal social-media platforms.Navigating career pathways, talent management for succession planning, and identifying mentors for those seeking development.Driving consistent global technical standards. While the concept of technical communities of practice is not new, the level of maturity, vibrancy and organizational impact achieved has been significant. The more mature communities have become self-sustaining and are maintained by groups of “volunteer” employees passionate about the benefits of thriving technical communities. Participation in these communities has become a source of pride and employee engagement, and is a unique part of the Rio Tinto employee value proposition. Although communities of practice are mostly low cost to maintain, they require a persistent investment of time, effort and leader sponsorship. One of the challenges in preserving leader support is being able to articulate the business value, which is mostly intangible. The agile Technical Network (aTN). Across the large population of engineers and scientists employed by Rio Tinto there is an enormous depth of experience, and very likely the expertise to solve almost any technical challenge. However, the ability to find that expertise when it is needed and release it to solve the challenge has historically been limited to an employee’s personal network and organizational reach. Confronted with the difficulty of finding the right expertise, many employees would seek an external solution with accompanying additional costs. Figure 4 Diversity of mechanisms that organizations apply to support learning in the workplace. (Source: RedThread Research, 2021) Adult education design principles emphasize the most powerful form of learning is experience based, giving employees the opportunity to be stretched and to solve new challenges. However, the lack of visibility about these development projects, and the difficulty in connecting with willing learners at the right moment, has meant these opportunities were hard to find. In response, Rio Tinto has established the agile Technical Network (aTN), an internal platform that allows employees to share their skills profile (current and for development) and allows employees to post short-term, ad hoc projects that call for expertise applying a consistent skills taxonomy. The aTN is effectively an internal version of the “gig” economy that applies matching algorithms to connect the supply of expertise with demand. This enables Rio Tinto to improve the level of collaboration, solve more challenges with the existing workforce, and provide greater visibility around internal personal development opportunities (Fig. 6). Employees have embraced the concept and are attracted by the visibility around development opportunities and interesting work outside of their substantive role responsibilities. Since launching in 2021, there have been more than 1,400 employee-skill profiles posted and 132 short-term projects submitted, with 327 employees offering support. Notwithstanding the obvious benefits, substantial change management and communication effort has been required to reassure the business that employees will not neglect their substantive duties in favor of more “interesting” work accessed through the aTN. RioExcel/RioExperts. Like most organizations with a large population of technical experts, Rio Tinto has a subset of the technical workforce that seeks career progression but is not motivated to become a “people” leader, instead preferring to focus on technical work. The RioExcel program provides a structured mechanism to assess and provide recognition and career advancement for deep technical experts while remaining an individual contributor (Fig. 7). Candidates for this recognition need to demonstrate not only the quality of their work and contribution to business outcomes, but to demonstrate their effectiveness at sharing their technical expertise through the communities of practice or as a mentor to the next generation of experts. Figure 5 Three mutually reinforcing initiatives for building and protecting technical capability. Figure 6 Concept of the agile Technical Network (aTN). Individuals that have been successfully recognized through RioExcel are referred to as RioExperts, and these individuals are considered the custodians of the culture of technical excellence at Rio Tinto. There are currently approximately 150 RioExperts distributed globally and representing the full spectrum of technical activity and a significant human capital asset for Rio Tinto. RioExperts are expected to become a source of internal expertise that can be accessed through an internal expertise directory, helping to ensure that Rio Tinto is fully leveraging these unique skills for maximum advantage. The RioExcel program has also provided improved attraction and retention of technical experts with attrition rates typically less than half the rate of the broader technical population. Conclusions While traditional forms of learning and development such as classroom and e-learning will continue to play a role, increasingly modern mining and metals organizations need to consider learning methods that are agile, scalable and adaptive to a fastchanging social, technological and regulatory landscape. In response, Rio Tinto has invested heavily in creating a networked technical organization both through the establishment of vibrant technical communities of practice and the creation of an internal expertise marketplace through the aTN. The strength of the networked technical organization has been enhanced by linking the RioExcel technical expert program as an incentive for candidates to provide leadership for the technical communities. In addition to being relatively cost effective, this approach offers the benefit of being: Adaptive to a vast diversity of learning needs — something for everyone.Available to a global audience with different cultural and language needs.Accessible across different work environments and accommodates assorted demanding work schedules.Able to draw upon the vast expertise contained with the large global workforce of technical professionals. Figure 7 The RioExcel pathway for recognition and career progression. Measuring return on learning investment is tricky; the ultimate measure is the quality of technical advice informing better decisionmaking and business outcomes. Rio Tinto undertakes employee engagement surveys every six months and collects data across a number of parameters including personal growth, which has steadily improved by approximately 15 percent in the past five years. This improvement is at least in part attributable to the three initiatives described in this article. Future plans for maturing the technical learning ecosystem at Rio Tinto include strengthening the linkages to technical knowledge management systems, using technology to curate customized learning pathways for employees, and the establishment of a broad-based capability maturity index as a measure of technical capability trends over time. Reference RedThread Research (2021) “Learning Methods: What to use, when to use, and when to cut them loose.” https:// edthreadresearch.com/learning-methods-report/.

Innovative approaches to building technical capability for a modern mining and metals organization

Authored by:
Brendan Howard

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