CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND COMPLIANCE

Aligning business systems and business improvement

The Aligning Business Systems (ABS) Programme is a business improvement initiative within Rio Tinto to establish leading global business processes and a single business system for Rio Tinto’s businesses. It is one of the initiatives that make up Rio Tinto’s Improving Performance Together (IPT) Programme for its businesses and is a key enabler for it.

The ABS Programme is about building common ways of working and having a single business system across Rio Tinto. The combined business processes and the SAP (Systems Applications and Products in data processing) business system are known as the Rio Tinto Business Solution.

The Business Solution has already been implemented at a number of Rio Tinto businesses, and currently has close on 20,000 users worldwide. Rössing Uranium is one of the business units that started using the Business Solution from March 2008 onwards.

The Business Improvement Department was established in 2007 with the task of focusing on key business challenges regarding strategy execution and continuous improvement. The first step was to align company strategic goals with the Operational Plan. Doing so meant revising the Rössing Strategy concept, and setting new strategic goals for the company (see the Rössing Strategic Goals diagram).

These strategic goals are the value-drivers of the company, and Management have decided to introduce the Balanced Scorecard concept to exe-cute them.

The Balanced Scorecard is a performance measurement system. Strategic objectives and initiatives were identified and assigned to various champions. The focus was on strategic investments and post-investment reviews, together with continuous cause analysis of all operational processes.

“The process of mobilising and involving all employees is still a major challenge for the company. This year, the Business Improvement Department will focus on introducing ways to embed the process of participation and empowerment. A major programme focusing on continuous improvement will be embedded, and all employees will be encouraged to become creative and innovative in their work, and live up to Rössing’s values.”

STOFFEL SWARTZ
Manager: Business Improvement

“The biggest challenge during 2007 was to re-establish Business Administration as one of the supporting functions in the company.”

NOËL MOUTON
Manager: Business Administration

“The key challenge for 2008 is to draw up a compliance risk register to ensure that Rössing meets not only all Rio Tinto’s standards and requirements, but also takes into consideration all relevant legislation of the Republic of Namibia such as the Companies Act, the Mining Act, and the Labour Act, to name but a few. A documented plan will then be put into place to train employees in those areas of legal risk relevant to their duties.”

GLYNIS LABUSCHAGNE
Manager: Compliance

Business administration

The main objective of this department is to manage and provide administrative supporting services to internal customers to ensure that the company optimises its capacity and production. The services provided by Business Administration include –

• security services for the mine site and offices elsewhere, including emergency and access control
• contractor management, which is a one-stop service for on-site contractors, and
• records management and archiving services of important documents for all departments.

Internal controls

Rössing subscribes fully to principles of good corporate governance, as espoused by Rio Tinto’s corporate governance policies and procedures.

Oversight compliance is reinforced by an independent Board of Directors who meet four times per year to ensure that the company conducts itself in a responsible manner and remains accountable to its stakeholders.

The Board has established sub-committees consisting of Board members that are tasked to enforce fundamental functions in line with good corporate governance. These include the Board Audit Committee, the Sales Committee, the Nominations Committee, and a Rössing Environmental Rehabilitation Committee dealing with closure and social and environmental accountability.

The Board members are collectively responsible for the effective and efficient operation of the company to maximise shareholder value. In 2007 the Board consisted of 17 members, of whom four are Executive Directors, eight are shareholder representatives and three are Non-executive Directors.

In May 2007, the Rio Tinto Compliance Training Centre embarked on an upgrade by introducing new administrative functionality with two major changes in the process, being automated module assignment and improved reporting.

Automated module assignment allows campaigns with pre-selected training modules to be assigned to different groups, i.e. Managers, Superintendents, etc. All training modules are to be completed once every two years and notices will be sent when it is time for users to repeat completed modules.

Improved reporting allows reports to be customised and scheduled for regular e-mail delivery. Reports are based on three sets of data, namely users, assigned campaign completions, and module completions.

Campaigns are designed to be business-unit- specific, with four mandatory modules to be completed by all users. The growth phase in which Rössing currently finds itself requires the assignment of a wide spectrum of modules to all the campaigns in order to ensure the promotion of principled behaviour and to address key risk areas.

Non-executive Directors were also required to complete the training, and they were provided with CDs to enable them do so. The completion target as required in the 2007 Internal Control Questionnaire was 85% within the last two years. During the course of 2008, campaigns will be developed to include all employees at Rössing.