Rio Tinto is set to stand up a ‘lakehouse’ environment built with Databricks to consolidate siloed human resources data.
The mining giant disclosed plans for the project in a recruitment advertisement, which has since been removed.
A spokesperson for the company declined to comment on the project when contacted by iTnews.
The ‘people data lakehouse’ is to run on a Databricks platform, and “will allow Rio Tinto to move from a fragmented, siloed, complicated data web to a single accessible source”, the advertisement stated.
“Through the use of a Databricks platform, we will enable our People function to present and analyse data from a variety of different sources in a unified and controlled way – all in one place, simplified and historically accurate.”
Rio Tinto’s People function operates out of the company’s Perth, Brisbane and Montreal business hubs and is responsible for managing roughly 50,000 employees in 35 countries.
According to the job advertisement, the integrated platform will ensure the “accuracy, uniformity [and] consistency of People data assets, past, present and future.”
This will enable the people data lakehouse’s primary purpose: supporting Rio Tinto’s HR function to make data-driven decisions and generate actionable insights.
The miner is hoping to appoint a new ‘data management programme lead’ to oversee the lakehouse setup and operation.
The lead will assume responsibilities previously undertaken by the people lead for advanced analytics and data science, Kirsten Edwards.
Throughout much of last year, Edwards had been acting in an elevated role of global head of people analytics and insights, and she assumed a permanent global head of people data and analytics in October last year.
Bolstering the People function’s capability to drive efficient management of Rio Tinto’s workforce is the latest in a series of steps the company has taken to pursue its long-term goal of maintaining productivity in the face of the tech skills crisis and labour squeeze.