(14a) Advancing Process Safety and Inclusion: Rio Tinto’s Strategic Competence Management in a Competitive Landscape

In today’s world of intense global competition and swift technological advancements, it's crucial to keep process safety skills sharp, especially in high-risk industries. This paper presents Rio Tinto's initiative to enhance process safety management through a comprehensive competence management program.

This paper presents a program to strengthen process safety expertise while promoting diversity and fair compensation based on Rio Tinto’s Everyday Respect initiative. It focuses on recruiting, onboarding, developing, and retaining skilled professionals.

By identifying and closing workforce skill gaps, the program bolsters Rio Tinto’s ability to manage major process safety hazards. It likewise emphasizes continuous professional development and underscores the critical role of senior leadership in fostering a respectful, improvement-driven culture. Leadership's commitment is demonstrated by the allocation of resources and active participation in establishing and supporting the program’s diverse objectives. These include advancing the company’s process safety skills assessment, supporting safer, more inclusive workplaces, establishing a process safety competence management subcommittee, implementing leadership accountability measures, launching branding initiatives for process safety, improving representation and remuneration, and introducing extensive internal coaching opportunities, among others. By unifying these efforts, Rio Tinto ensures alignment between process safety objectives and the Everyday Respect framework while striving for long-term organizational growth and resilience.