Ethical Business Practices | Conducting business fairly & honestly

Community Relations

We believe that being a responsible neighbor is key to the long-term success of our operations. That’s why we place great importance on being transparent, building trust, and establishing cooperative relationships with local communities.

We understand that our business activities can have significant effects on local communities. We therefore regularly engage with local stakeholders to build relationships based on mutual trust and respect. Investing in local development, safeguarding of human rights, and ensuring that our local suppliers follow our Code of Conduct and pursue sustainable practices, are key aspects of our approach to community relations. For more information, see Human Rights and Supply Chain.

Our community relations and development management process begins with a Social Impact Assessment (SIA), which is conducted whenever we enter a new area or there is a material change in our operations. The purpose is to ensure that the views of local communities, especially of indigenous peoples, are considered at every stage of the project lifecycle. These assessments include a baseline study, evaluation of community needs, stakeholder analyses, and identification of any social risks. Where possible, SIAs are conducted in a participatory manner, involving direct consultation with potentially affected communities or their representatives. 

Based on the outcome, local social responsibility teams develop and implement site-specific strategies for community relations and development. Local stakeholder engagement plans and Community Grievance Mechanisms (for more info see Community Grievance Mechanism) are also developed and followed to ensure open channels of communication throughout the project lifecycle.

Our community relations and development management approach are based on centralized policies, standards and targets, and implemented by locally responsible persons with local resources. At a group level, this is managed by our Corporate Affairs team, who are responsible for ensuring adherence to our group-wide principles as well as the overall effectiveness of our social responsibility actions.

Community Grievance Management

We understand that our business can impact the communities in which we operate in both positive and negative ways. For example, our operations create new opportunities in terms of employment and the growth of local suppliers, but can also cause issues such as dust, emissions, land use concerns, privacy concerns, and the creation of a dependency culture. 

To address this, we’ve established a grievance mechanism system to handle community concerns methodically, recording and resolving grievances in a manner that’s fully aligned with the IPIECA’s best practices. We’ve also committed to assessing the CGMs at all of our sites against the UN’s Effectiveness Criteria for Non-Judicial Grievance Mechanisms by 2025.