Senior Adviser – Capability Development

The Senior Advisor – Capability Development is responsible for shaping and executing the capability, career and talent development strategy for the location.

The role acts as the bridge between employees, leaders and the business, ensuring the organisation has the functional, behavioural and leadership capability required for current and future needs. The role owns the capability agenda for the location, builds strong relationships with employees and leaders, understands workforce sentiment and translates business needs into scalable capability, career and development solutions.

What would you be responsible for: 

1. Capability Strategy & Business Partnership

Outcome: The location has the capability it needs today and is building the capability it will need tomorrow.

Responsibilities

• Partner with functional leaders to understand business priorities, capability gaps and workforce requirements.
• Develop and execute the location capability strategy aligned to Group Services priorities.
• Translate business challenges into targeted development and capability-building interventions.
• Serve as a trusted adviser to leaders on capability, talent and organisational development matters.
• Ensure capability considerations are embedded into business planning, transitions and growth initiatives.

2. Career Development & Capability Architecture

Outcome: Employees understand what success looks like, where they can grow and how to get there.

Responsibilities

• Own the competency architecture, career pathways and capability framework for the location.
• Build and maintain structured career development pathways for employees across bands and functions.
• Drive adoption of Career Compass and related career resources.
• Partner with leaders to improve quality of career conversations and development planning.
• Establish capability assessments and proficiency frameworks to support objective development decisions.

3. Learning, Leadership & Development

Outcome: Employees have access to meaningful development opportunities that improve performance and prepare them for future roles.

Responsibilities

• Design and deliver learning and leadership programmes aligned to business and employee needs.
• Own leadership journeys across different career stages and leadership levels.
• Facilitate workshops, leadership forums and development conversations.
• Drive mentoring, coaching and peer-learning initiatives.
• Ensure learning programmes are linked to measurable business outcomes rather than training activity alone.

4. Employee Engagement, Sentiment & Growth

Outcome: The capability team maintains a strong understanding of employee needs and actively improves the employee experience.

Responsibilities

• Maintain regular connection with employees across functions and locations.
• Gather and analyse employee feedback, sentiment and development needs.
• Identify emerging capability, engagement and retention risks.
• Support initiatives that strengthen employee experience, inclusion, wellbeing, psychological safety and leadership effectiveness.
• Act as an advocate for employee growth and development opportunities.

5. Talent & Workforce Development

Outcome: The organisation builds sustainable capability pipelines for future growth.

Responsibilities

• Support succession planning and talent identification activities.
• Partner with Talent Acquisition to understand future workforce requirements.
• Design development pathways for critical talent segments.
• Support onboarding and capability integration of new teams, functions and service lines.
• Build capability solutions that enable future expansion into new functional areas.

6. Governance, Measurement & Continuous Improvement

Outcome: Capability investments are governed, measured and continuously improved.

Responsibilities

• Define and track capability, talent and employee development metrics.
• Monitor programme effectiveness, participation, capability uplift and business impact.
• Manage capability budgets, vendors and external partnerships.
• Lead reviews of capability programmes and continuously improve the portfolio.
• Report capability and talent insights to senior leadership forums.

7. Digital Capability & Future Skills

Outcome: The workforce is prepared for new technologies and ways of working.

Responsibilities

• Drive adoption of digital learning and capability platforms.
• Build awareness and capability around AI, automation and emerging technologies.
• Partner with business leaders to identify future skill requirements.
• Ensure employees have access to development pathways for future-focused capabilities.
• Use learning analytics and workforce insights to inform future capability strategy.

What makes this role different?

This role is not primarily an L&D programme manager. It is a Capability Business Partner for the location, responsible for:

• Understanding business priorities
• Understanding employee sentiment
• Driving career development
• Building leadership capability
• Creating future talent pipelines
• Connecting people strategy to business strategy

What experience, skills and qualifications are required: 

• A Bachelor's/ Master's degree in Human Resources, Business Administration, Organisational Psychology or related field 
• A Bachelor’s/Master’s/Professional Degree in Technical/IT/ITES or related field will be preferred (Engineering etc.)

• 12-16 years of experience in learning and development, capability development, talent management or organisational development, with demonstrable experience leading enterprise-scale initiatives 

• Proven experience designing competency frameworks, career architecture or capability models at organisational scale 

• Experience leading programmes across multiple geographies and cultures, ideally within a global shared services or capability centre environment 

• Any L&D, assessment or coaching related certification: DiSC/BELBIN/Hogan/MBTI/ICF or equivalent will be preferred

• Deep understanding of adult learning principles, instructional design methodologies and behavioural change approaches 

• Strong commercial acumen — including budget ownership, vendor management and building investment cases for capability spend 

• Advanced stakeholder management and influencing skills, with credibility at senior leadership level 

• Strong analytical capability — able to define meaningful capability metrics, interpret learning analytics and translate insight into strategy 

• Proven project and programme management skills, managing multiple complex initiatives simultaneously across competing priorities 

• Experience coaching or developing others within a team, formally or informally 

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to simplify complexity for senior audiences 

Our Contribution to greater common good – Our Sustainability Programs: 

• Sustainability considerations are deeply embedded in the way we run our business. We have put climate change and the low-carbon transition at the heart of our business strategy. We are decarbonising our assets, helping our customers decarbonise by developing new products and technologies, and growing in materials essential for the energy transition. 
• Our sustainability framework focuses on the 2 lead goals: responsible consumption and production (SDG 12) and decent work and economic growth. Our business operations also contribute to 8 supporting SDGs 
• Climate Change – Our strategy and approach to climate change are supported by strong governance, and we are building our processes and capabilities to enable us to reach net zero emissions by 2050. 
• Talent, Diversity, Inclusions – Everyday Respect and Pay Equity are our focus areas. Only safe, respectful, and inclusive workplace can ensure happiness 
• Human Rights – Freedom from slavery is a human right and we incorporate our work on preventing and addressing any involvement in modern slavery into our broader human rights programme. 

About Rio Tinto
 

Rio Tinto is a leading global mining and materials company. We operate in 35 countries where we produce iron ore, copper, aluminium, critical minerals, and other materials needed for the global energy transition and for people, communities, and nations to thrive.
 

We have been mining for 150 years and operate with knowledge built up across generations and continents. Our purpose is finding better ways to provide the materials the world needs – striving for innovation and continuous improvement to produce materials with low emissions and to the right environmental, social and governance standards. But we can’t do it on our own, so we’re focused on creating partnerships to solve problems, create win-win situations and meet opportunities.

Respect and Inclusion

At Rio Tinto, we particularly welcome and encourage applications from Indigenous Peoples, women, the LGBTQ+ community, mature workers, people with disabilities and people from different cultural backgrounds.

We are committed to an inclusive environment where people feel comfortable to be themselves. We want our people to feel that all voices are heard, all cultures respected and that a variety of perspectives are not only welcome – they are essential to our success. We treat each other fairly and with dignity regardless of race, gender, nationality, ethnic origin, religion, age, sexual orientation or anything else that makes us different.

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