Training And Development Environment At Rio Tinto: A Detailed Analysis

Problem/Purpose

Discuss about the Training and the Development Environment.

This particular report provides a detailed analysis of the in-house training for the employees of the organization Rio Tinto –A mining organization which deals with world’s largest and best quality mines and operation. As the organization deals with an on-going and in-depth mining operation, its staff members require proper training and development needs. The report aims to develop an in-house training program for the organizational members of Rio Tintu, especially, the workers who are involved in the upstream operation of mining. Thus, to achieve this aim, the report is conducted based on the objective of assessing the current training and development needs and developing a suitable training plan for the employees. The objectives set for the report is relevant because training and development programs often help organization to develop their overall productivity. So, this is certain that enhancing the skills and knowledge of employees or the enhancement of overall workforce is positively reflected on productivity.

The major purpose of the report is to design and develop an in-house training program for the employees of Rio Tinto.

The report presents the importance of training and development needs in the organization Rio Tinto and based on the importance, the report provide a detailed training and development plan supported by training and development theories. To design the training program, the appropriate PowerPoint presentation containing a set of activities related to training will be provide to the employees. The design of the training program may involves a systematic procedure such as selection of people requiring the training program, the selection of total number of employees, rescheduling the roster of employees who will be receiving the training. The overall time period of training program is around 90 days and 3 house in each day will be allocated for training.

As the number of employees is around 50, a large hall room located inside the organization, premises will be used to reduce the cost or avoid the cost of hiring a new room from outside. In addition to this, a digital projector along with a proper computer system will be required to show and explain the content of the training program such as the user guidelines of using the new machines for mining operation. The estimated budget for the training and development program is around AUD$5000. However, the major barrier for the proposed training and development program is budget because if the allocated budget was little higher than the estimated amount of budget, few more element in the training program such as few more employees from other department, a new hall room with required equipment would been added in the program. In addition to this challenge, the entire training program requires consistent support from the management which may not be in place.

Scope

Rio Tinto is known as an Australian-British multinational and one of the world’s largest metal as well as mining corporation. The organization was established in 1897 with the focus of dealing the extraction of minerals but the company also has some significant in some other fields such refining, iron ore  and others (riotinto.com, 2018). According to the annual report of 2017, the total operating cash generated was around of US$ 13.9 billion. In addition to this, the organization achieved US$0.4 billion of additional free cash flow from the mine to market productivity programme (riotinto.com, 2018).

In order to conduct the research, the current internal workforce scenario of the organizations has been evaluated with the recent training and development program proposed by the marketers and the analysts. While performing the evaluation of existing training programs, different theories and models proposed by the scholars have been reviewed. On the other side, an industry analysis was conducted considering the peer reviewed journal articles, annual reports of few organizations belonging to mining sector, newsletter of the organisations. Conversely, primary data has been collected by applying qualitative data collection technique, which further involves the interview method.  The collected has been analysed by comparing them with the findings found in the scholarly journals. The interview among the organizational members have been conducted on the basis of the simple random sampling method. The population size derived from the chosen sampling technique is around 10 people.

1. What is the importance of training and development program at Rio Tinto?

According to HR executive of Rio Tinto, the organization deals with many large and long-term mining operation and simultaneously, the employee base of the firm is also increasing but the process of managing the overall operation has not been improved for long. The executive has also mentioned that several new technologies have been adopted but the present workforce of the firm is not aware of the use of the technology. The employees are following the same existing method which is slowing down the operation and creating a negative impact on the productivity. According to the executive, the technology is rapidly developing; so, the organisation is considering to adopt innovation in the operation. Thu, to innovate the entire process of mining operation, the organization first needs to brush up the skills and knowledge of the employees.

1. How do you assure the safety and security of the employees at Rio Tinto? Is there any plan for safety improvement?

According to the manager at the safety and security department, Rio Tinto’s commitment to safety is the foundation of the way the organization operates as well as at the heart of its corporate culture. One of the common but significant fact is that when an individual starts working on the site, he/she becomes so cautious but eventually or at some point during the work, the person relaxing and think nothing can go wrong but it certainly it can. The laidback attitude of employees often lead to accident and the blame is imposed on the organization. Thereby, from the response of the manager, it is derived that Rio Tinto is currently planning to design a formal training containing safety and security features. The program will be treated as the formal training method with the purpose of awakening employees to be cautious about the safety norms and regulations.

Organization

As discussed in the previous assignment that training need evaluation is usually referred to the strategic step for discovering the program for the employees and the organizations. The evaluation of training needs are necessary because it gives information regarding the level of knowledge and skills of the workforce.  According to Kraiger (2014) training needs assessment is a crucial stage in the training development program. So, the training assessment helps organisations to identify the existing knowledge strength and weaknesses. Based on this assignment, the training program is developed. In addition to this, training needs also helps to identify the areas that need to be developed for increasing the productivity of the organizations.  On the other side, Wilson (2014) mentioned that training needs analysis is typically undertaken for recognizing some particular areas of behaviour that should be developed by providing appropriate training.

The major participants of the training program are the employees of Rio Tinto, especially, the members who are directly involved in upstream mining operation. In addition to this, corporate training will be provided to the general employees. Furthermore, the employees at the senior level such as the supervisors, managers, and HR executives will also be involved in the training.

Based on the training need assessment, the employees at the operational level should participate in the training and development program but there are other employees in functional department such as the supervisors, assistant managers, managers, facility managers, the personnel at the safety and security department should take part in the training and development program.

As put forward by Ford (2014), any training program comes with appropriate purpose and desired outcome and if it implemented properly, the result is inevitable. Thus, the developed and proposed training program could help the employees who are at the operational level to learn about the new techniques and procedure of using new machines designed for mining. As technology is rapidly developing, the collection of new knowledge and skills will help the employees to adapt to the new system. On the other side, in the internal environment, the managers and the supervisors can guide the workface and manage employee work duties and responsibilities with new software applications.

This is an important stage in the training and development process and there are few important points derived from the theories need to bear in mind. The training should be provided to the particular number of people considering them as a team rather than considering them as an individual. The theory of scenistic method, indicates that the training would be more appropriate for team training instead of making instructions for each individual (Milhem, Abushamsieh & Pérez Aróstegui, 2014). The theoretical and conceptual base of this particular theory may include learning, constructivism experimental learning, transformative learning and action theory.

Methodology

ISD helps to design and develop the training program and the process for the proposed training and development program includes the following steps (Hodell, 2015).

Systematic: This is a step by step process in which, first the name of the employees of Rio Tinto will be categorized. Thereafter, in the step 2, the training instruction and details such as name of trainers, time, and venue will be sent to personalized email id of the employees. In the step 3, the employees will be briefed about the importance of the training and development plan- such as the benefits which the employees may receive by attending the sessions. When the employees know about the purposes and benefit of training, they may pay attention to the program ad take the session consciously.

Flexibility: This systematic process is flexible because organizational operational goals and employee performance gaps have been assessed and based on the assessment, the training plan have been designed. The following table shows the performance gap observed in Rio Tinto.

Figure 1: Identifying the performance gap

(Source: Made by the student)

Figure 2: Performance Gap designed in the training and development plan

(Source: Made by Student)

Hence, the disruptive-tech.bmp mentioned above in the training action is about the use of internet technology which is expected to enhance the worker productivity as well as service delivery. This enhanced technology enhances the mine site safety and the converts the way the safety is managed. The maintenance of safety and security grounds would reduce the time for productivity.

• To enhance the productivity in mining using newly adopted technology
• To maintain safety and security of employees by using advanced technology
• To enhance employee performance by guiding them appropriately when required
• To reduce the cost and time of mining operation

The major learning theories that have been adopted to design the training plan is Instructional System Design, process of identifying performance gap and Training Action Plan model.

Conclusion

This report presents a large training and development program designed and developed by incorporating organizational goals and objective. From the data collection techniques, it has been found that presently, Rio Tinto is in the need of an appropriate training and development program, which shapes their future operational needs. The proposed training and development program has been considered to provide a desired outcome but the as the process is long, training program needs further evaluation to identify the scoop for improvement.

Table 1: Training and development programs for the employees at Rio Tinto

(Source: Made by Student)

The entire training and development programs will be delivered to the employees through face to face learning session in the hall room residing in the organization’s premise. However, there are certain methods which will be followed to deliver the learning program such as web-based training delivery. This web-based learning delivery has a number of names; it is usually called e-learning or computer based learning in which, the employees will be provided with all documented instructions conveyed verbally in the face to face learning program. This means the participants can go through the learning materials in their leisure time when they are at home in their personal computer. On the other side, mentoring method will also be followed in the training and development program at Rio Tinto. In mentoring method, the employees can be trained as well as developed by an expert. This method will be applied because it is different than on-the-job coaching, which is short term requiring appropriate skills to conduct a particular task (Dean, 2014).

Findings and Discussion

The instructor needs to be aware of the fact that the employees are the significant stakeholders of the organization (Bun?ia?u, 2014). Therefore, the trainer must not get into any personal aspect of the employees. Here, the goal of the trainer is to share knowledge with the participants and make them confident that their learning efforts will provide them with desired outcome.

Cleveland and Fisher (2014) categorized evaluation in four types such as evaluation of planning, process evaluation, terminal evaluation and impact evaluation. However, the stakeholders of training evaluation involving participants (employees), trainers, training organizers as well as curriculum developers. Thus, to evaluate the training and development program of Rio Tinto, the following diagram has been followed, in which the entire process starting from the organizations f training to end-busies result has been process with a two-way communication.

Figure 3: Evaluation method of training and development program

(Source: Cleveland and Fisher, 2014)

The major objective of training and evaluation is to validate training and development as a significant business tool by justifying costs incurred in training and development. The evaluator of the organization will assess the impact as a whole. The overall business impact influenced by training program is supposed to be measured through direct correlation to firm’s goals and objectives. When evaluating the overall program, the evaluator should look at the benefit of a particular element of the program. If no benefit is achieved, the evaluation should create the scope for further modification for gaining the desired benefit.

References

Bun?ia?u, C. M. (2014). Strategic Directions Regarding Trainers’ Instruction in the Field of European Curriculum’s Planning and Implementation. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 116, 1121-1126.

Cleveland, B., & Fisher, K. (2014). The evaluation of physical learning environments: A critical review of the literature. Learning Environments Research, 17(1), 1-28

Dean, J. (2014). Big data, data mining, and machine learning: value creation for business leaders and practitioners. John Wiley & Sons.

Ford, J. K. (2014). Advances in training research and practice: An historical perspective. In Improving training effectiveness in work organizations (pp. 13-28). Psychology Press

Hodell, C. (2015). ISD from the ground up: A no-nonsense approach to instructional design. American Society for Training and Development.

Kraiger, K. (2014). Looking back and looking forward: Trends in training and development research. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 25(4), 401-408.

Milhem, W., Abushamsieh, K., & Pérez Aróstegui, M. N. (2014). Training Strategies, Theories and Types. Journal of Accounting, Business & Management, 21(1)..

riotinto.com. (2018). Global home. Retrieved from https://www.riotinto.com/default.aspx

Wilson, J. P. (2014). International human resource development: Learning, education and training for individuals and organisations. Development and Learning in Organizations, 28(2).

Ford, J. K. (2014). Improving training effectiveness in work organizations. Psychology Press.

Ford, J. K. (2014). Improving training effectiveness in work organizations. Psychology Press.

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Lau, R. W., Yen, N. Y., Li, F., & Wah, B. (2014). Recent development in multimedia e-learning technologies. World Wide Web, 17(2), 189-198.

Noe, R. A., Wilk, S. L., Mullen, E. J., & Wanek, J. E. (2014). Employee Development: Issues in Construct Definition and Investigation ofAntecedents. Improving Training Effectiveness in WorkOrganizations, ed. JK Ford, SWJ Kozlowski, K. Kraiger, E. Salas, and MS Teachout (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997), 153-189.

O’Neill, R. E., Albin, R. W., Storey, K., Horner, R. H., & Sprague, J. R. (2015). Functional assessment and program development. Nelson Education.

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Posavac, E. J. (2015). Program evaluation: Methods and case studies. Routledge.

Stewart, C. (2014). Transforming professional development to professional learning. Journal of Adult Education, 43(1), 28.

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