Human Resource Management Report: Rio Tinto Challenges and Solutions

This report delves into the fundamentals of Human Resource Management (HRM), emphasizing its crucial role in organizational success within the context of globalization. It explores the core principles of HRM, including social, organizational, functional, and personal objectives. The report uses Rio Tinto, a major mining company, as a case study to illustrate these principles, analyzing its organizational background, demographics, and strategic frameworks. It identifies key challenges faced by Rio Tinto, such as labor supply issues, and proposes practical recommendations to address them. The report also examines the correlation between HRM, work culture, and diversity management, highlighting the importance of creating a positive and inclusive work environment. The analysis covers the four key elements of Rio Tinto's strategy: portfolio, performance, people, and partners, providing a comprehensive understanding of the company's approach to HRM and its overall business strategy.

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HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
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Executive summary
Globalization has invoked some of the most important aspects about the worldwide economic
conditions where distinct organization have turned and twisted some of their rules and
strategies to make the work environment more effective and efficient to help it gather better
opportunities in terms of competitive advantage. Human Resource management in one of the
crucial tool of an organization that is instrumental to help achieve the organization to reach
better heights in terms of business and growth. With the help of this report, the fundamentals
and the principles of Human Resource Management has been explained with relevance and
the major concerns related to it. To help in better understanding the fundaments, an
organization has been taken into account. The different features of the organization have been
explained with accordance to the topic of discussion that includes some of the key challenges
faced by the organization and the recommendations to avert and rectify them. The
organization taken into consideration is Rio Tinto, a mining company based in Australia by
the help of which the topic has been justified. The purpose of this report is to help understand
and analyze the organizational environment, the specific issues and recommendation of
practical solutions with reference and relevance to the topic.

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Table of content
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Human Resource Management..................................................................................................3
Objectives of Human Resource management............................................................................4
Social Objective.....................................................................................................................4
Organizational objective........................................................................................................4
Functional objective...............................................................................................................4
Personal Objective.................................................................................................................5
Characteristics of Human resource management.......................................................................5
Correlation of human resource management with work culture and diversity management.....6
Organizational background........................................................................................................7
Organizational demographics.....................................................................................................8
Portfolio..................................................................................................................................8
Performance...........................................................................................................................8
People.....................................................................................................................................9
Partners...................................................................................................................................9
Challenges faced by Rio Tinto...................................................................................................9
Recommendation......................................................................................................................10
Conclusion................................................................................................................................12

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References................................................................................................................................13
Introduction
The major globalization has invoked some of the most important and interesting
speculations about the global economic conditions where distinct organization have turned
and twisted some of their rules and strategies to make the work environment more effective
and efficient to help it gather better opportunities in terms of competitive advantage. Human
Resource management in one of the crucial tool of an organization that is instrumental to help
achieve the organization to reach better heights in terms of business and growth (Hendry,
2012).
With the help of this report, the fundamentals and the principles of Human Resource
Management has been explained with relevance and the major concerns related to it. To help
in better understanding the fundaments, an organization has been taken into account. The
different features of the organization have been explained with accordance to the topic of
discussion that includes some of the key challenges faced by the organization and the
recommendations to avert and rectify them. The organization taken into consideration is Rio
Tinto, a mining company based in Australia by the help of which the topic has been justified.
The purpose of this report is to help understand and analyze the organizational
environment, the specific issues and recommendation of practical solutions with reference
and relevance to the topic.

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Human Resource Management
The key to drive an organization towards a specific goal is its successful management
strategies. One of the important strategies to control an organization is achieved through
effective management of Human Resource (Bratton & Gold, 2012). Human resource
management as the name signifies is the procedure of effective and maximized utilization of
the available resources along with the skilled workforce. The principle purpose of human
resource management is to make proficient utilization of the existing workforce in an
organization (Jiang et al., 2012).
Objectives of Human Resource management
Human resource management of every organization performs with accordance to
three important achievable objectives as per a new perspective (Storey, 2014). They are as
follows.
Social Objective
The social objectives of the organization includes the social responsibility of meeting
the needs and the challenges of the society as well as minimizing the negative backfires of
demands upon the organization such as the failure to use the resources for the benefit of the
society may result in limitations.
Organizational objective
The organizational objective of human resource management is to understand about
the subsistence of it and the steps that are necessary to be taken for the sole benefit of the
organization. Human resource management is not only limited to itself but to help assist the
organization achieve its objectives and goals.

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Functional objective
The functional objective of human resource management is to retain the respective
department’s involvement to an optimal level to the organizational needs and demands. The
resources become useless whenever the human resource management functions at higher or
lower levels than the level of the required demands or needs. In other words, the functionality
of human resource management is to maintain the required efforts and prevention of the
resource depletion.
Personal Objective
Personal objective involves the meeting of the needs and the demands of the
workforce in order to keep them motivated and retain their dedication as well as involvement
towards the organization. Failure to meets the demands or the needs might result in
discontentment amongst the employees as a result of which they might start exhibiting under
performance or desert the organization might as well contributing to the organizational
failure.
Characteristics of Human resource management
Human resource management involves strategic management function such as
planning, organizing, directing as well as controlling.
 It includes the development and the maintaining of the human resources in an
organization.
 It is instrumental and fundamental in the achievement of the organizational, social and
the personal objectives.
 Human resource is a multiple disciplinary department that functions of the
fundaments and theoretical practices of psychology, management, communication,
economics as well as sociology.

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 Human resource management is a continuous and never ending process whose
success lies in ignition of team spirit amongst the employees and help them
understand the strength of team work, in turn helping the organization achieve its
goals and objectives (Anderson, 2013).
 Determination of the labor demand and the supply
 Determining of the labor demand and supply through matrices showing the proportion
of employees in different service categories at different period.
 Effectively reducing or downsizing the labor shortage or surplus by effective strategic
planning.
 Identification of potential candidates and their count for the respective positions along
with the recruiting sources such as internal and external recruiting, image advertising,
direct application or referrals, public or private employment agencies (Taylor, 2014).
 Human resource is instrumental in the selection process as well where the
organization gets to decide the best recruit fit for the job or position, which is decided
by the organizational history in its ability to adapt, survive and grow. The selection
methods are based on the factors like reliability, consistency, validity, utility and
legality.
Correlation of human resource management with work culture and
diversity management
Human resource management is a management strategy that is instrumental and
influential in the functioning of the various activities of an organization. Human resource as
previously explained is directly linked in accordance with diversity management of an
organization, which in turn in influential in controlling the work culture of the organization.

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Diversity management in short is the management strategy that helps manage the similarities
and the differences amongst the employees in an organization. Diversity management is a
strategy that is specially formulated to impart a unity amongst the employees and effectively
ripping off discrimination within an organization (Harvey & Allard, 2015).
This key principle of this management strategy is to accommodate and unify the
workforce irrespective of the diverse cultural attributes in a workplace. Human resource
management along with diversity management works side by side to induce a healthy and
beneficial work culture by efficiency reducing the discrimination on grounds of caste, class,
color, sex, chronological age, interpersonal attributes, corporate backgrounds, educational
qualifications and individual personality (Sabharwal, 2014)
In this manner a healthy and flexible work culture can be induced that would enhance
the workplace and positively reinforce the employees towards maximum productivity which
would in turn be beneficial for the organization not just in terms of productivity but in terms
of good reputation as well.
Organizational background
The organization that has been taken into consideration is Rio Tinto. It is an
Australian- British multinational organization and one of the largest mining and metals
corporations of the world (Pellegrino & Lodhia, 2012). This organization was formed when a
international association of investors purchased a mine in Rio Tinto in Spain from the
Spanish government. The company has merged and placed itself as one of the largest mining
companies in the world that excavates natural minerals such as aluminum, iron ore, copper,
uranium, coal and diamonds. Rio Tinto not only operates in the extraction of these minerals
but is also functional in the refining process of these minerals especially bauxite and iron ore.
The company mainly operates in six major continents, primly concentrating in Australia.

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Rio Tinto has developed the world’s some of the best high graded mines and
operations. It operates through around 35 countries across six major continents all around the
globe. The industry has entered into collaboration with new customers and partners as well as
local communities. The minerals that are being extracted are not just for industrial purpose
but they are essential for daily innovations, purposes and utility, which is fundamental in
economic and communal growth and prosperity.
Organizational demographics
Organizational demographics refer to the factors that are responsible for the growth
and the sustenance of the organization. Rio Tinto has a clear and effective strategy that
follows the principles of four Ps. Portfolio, performance, People and Partners (Yakovleva,
2017).
Portfolio
The portfolio involves around the approach of possessing world class assets that
includes the multiple decades of essential minerals that delivers huge revenue returns
throughout the activity cycle and materialize a long term growth. A clear and strategic
framework has been used to calculate the existing assets as well as built newer ones. This is
achievable by taking into consideration of the competitive advantages and the uniqueness of
the assets to ensure a strong and stable return.
Performance
The performance is based on the factor of safety, that being the most important
concern and foundation of everything that is incorporated. The main revenue is generated
through the transition from the mine to the international market. Hence, the priority is shifted
from volume to values that are implemented on all the decisions related to the operation and
investment. Latest technology and innovations are well introduced to cater intense and

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complicated geological and environmental pressures. The main aim of the marketing teams is
to focus and collaborate to maximize the values from the activities and keep the resources
fully channeled towards the business building.
People
Human progress and priority is the core purpose of Rio Tinto. This is instrumental in
terms of attracting, developing and retaining the best people that would be crucial for the
future success. Establishment of enthusiastic centers of distinction to reinforce the
technological and commercial capabilities and is committed towards building a diverse and
comprehensive workforce throughout the organization. A diverse workforce and environment
is fundamental in terms of creating a better workplace that would be crucial in the longer run.
Rio Tinto works in agreement with the legal implementation of the Workplace Gender
Equality Act 2012 that enforces every employee to work with equal dignity and respect,
without any kind of indiscrimination, thus encouraging a diversified work culture.
Partners
Partnerships influence every phase of the value sequence and mining activity life
cycle. To linger competitive, effectively supervise the sole risk profiles of the business and
secure admission to newer source of essential supplies, collaboration with an assortment of
exterior stakeholders, customers, suppliers, investors, governments and local communities
needs to be followed.
Challenges faced by Rio Tinto
The most crucial challenge that is faced by Rio Tinto is in terms of labor supply. Rio
Tinto a sole believer in the values of Accountability, Teamwork, Integrity and Respect.
However, Rio Tinto has a few shameful incidents and cases that has been alleged against it
(Hossain et al., 2013).

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 Shameful incidents have taken place under the organization that mostly
violated the company’s claims regards its principles. There are countless
claims of human and labor rights violations are a result of which there is
always a shortage and high demands in terms of labor due to grievances and
strikes (Hebdon & Noh, 2013).
 With respect to the tainted past Rio Tinto faces major concerns with respect to
recruitment since some of the projects have been banned due to the violation
of the rights resulting in the loss of livelihood of many workers (McDonald,
Mayes & Pini, 2012). As well as lack of proper communication, regarding the
recruitment also is fundamental in less keen employees working in the
industry.
Recommendation
 Several strategies can be used to rectify and improvise the older strategies to
meet with the challenges. Proper ways of advertising and recruitment
information dissemination needs to be implemented to successfully spread the
word and gather fresh recruits (Raufflet, Cruz & Bres, 2014).
 Proper way of applying for the post needs to be mandatory for the better
understanding capability of the applied candidates.
 Exceptional attention should be given while short listing of the resumes and
cross examining them to understand better about the candidates regarding
skills and knowledge (Bakker & Shepherd, 2017).
 Selection process should be rigorous to evaluate the capability of the
candidates and their respective skills for the post applied. Clear justification

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needs to be made regarding the job responsibilities and the wages to prevent
future conflicts with the organization (Kowalska, 2014)
Conclusion
With the help of this report the fundamentals of human resource management and
recruitment has been discussed with reference to Rio Tonto, a large mining corporation. As
per the report it can be concluded that Rio Tinto faces several issues related to workforce,
since most of the employees either back our from their duty or they lose their lives due to
working under harsh working conditions or due to the violation of the company norms that
was initially stated to be maintained. In terms or recruiting and selection of workers it is a
liability since proper selection of candidates are not being made in terms of employment
Recommendations have been provided to ensure the rectification of the errors that are being
committed in terms of recruitment and selection of candidates for the mining industry and
job. Proper clarification regarding the job responsibilities and the wages should to be
provided to prevent future employment disruption or loss.