Partnering with communities

Stakeholder and local community research provides us with valuable insights into the social, environmental and cultural aspects of the local regions near our operations.

To understand and manage our social impacts we undertake socio-economic baseline assessments of the social and economic context of host communities to identify important issues. Social impact assessments are also undertaken to identify risks and impacts from our activities on local communities, with social risks assessed and managed as per the South32 System of Risk Management. Community perception surveys support these assessments and allow us to receive valuable feedback and evaluate levels of community support and trust.

Respectful relationships with our stakeholders underpin our goal of creating and protecting social, economic, and environmental value. We have identified our main stakeholders – these being individuals or groups who may be affected by or interested in our decision-making and activities – and developed stakeholder engagement plans at an operational and country level to help build strong and mutually beneficial relationships.

Engagement with stakeholders can take many forms and is critical in helping us understand their interests, expectations, and concerns. We use the outcomes from stakeholder engagement to help inform and guide our sustainability efforts. Our engagement with stakeholders varies depending on the location of the operation and the nature and impact of South32 activities on the stakeholder, in accordance with our stakeholder engagement plans.

We seek to understand stakeholder concerns and facilitate engagement in a way that considers potential barriers such as language or cultural differences. This is especially important when engaging with minorities and vulnerable groups.

Our complaints and grievances mechanisms are available for members of the community, who can use these services anonymously.

Given our diverse operating locations, we aim to develop activity specific, locally appropriate and culturally sensitive complaints and grievance processes. We listen to and report community complaints or grievances we receive, anonymously or otherwise, through our complaints mechanisms and address them as a priority.

Our community complaints and grievances processes are aligned with the United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGPs) on Business and Human Rights and the UN’s Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework, specifically to:

• Acknowledge, investigate and document all complaints;
• Allow for anonymous reporting of complaints;
• Complete appropriate remedial action; 
• Communicate transparently with complainant; and 
• Be readily accessible to all members of host communities. 

We externally report our recorded complaints and grievances annually as part of our sustainability performance data.