Partnering with communities

Community engagement and research provides us with valuable insights into actual and potential impacts from our activities on local communities, as well as risks and opportunities. This engagement and research includes:

• Baseline and social impact assessments, which are updated periodically to understand the social, cultural and economic characteristics of communities where we operate;
• Engagement forums, such as face-to-face meetings, community consultation committees and workshops, where we can discuss community interests, expectations, priorities and concerns; and
• Community perception surveys which provide valuable feedback on our approach and insights into levels of community support and trust.

The information and feedback we receive through these mechanisms helps to inform our operation-specific stakeholder engagement plans and social performance plans, which are reviewed regularly. This flexibility in our approach means that these plans can be adapted for the unique and evolving operating context of each location where we operate.

Our complaints and grievances mechanisms are available for members of the community, who can use these services anonymously. We aim to develop activity specific, locally appropriate and culturally sensitive complaints and grievance mechanisms.

Our community complaints and grievances process is aligned with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the UN’s Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework, specifically to:

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

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

Our stakeholders are individuals or groups who may be affected by or interested in our decision-making and activities. Proactive engagement helps us to understand their interests, priorities, and concerns and helps to inform and guide our sustainability approach.

We continue to mature our approach to managing stakeholder relationships and in FY24 commenced implementing a new stakeholder relationship management (SRM) system that enables us to easily record and analyse our engagements with stakeholders, including community, government, industry, and non-government organisations.

The SRM system was rolled out to our Australian operations in FY24, with implementation for other jurisdictions to follow. Once fully implemented, the SRM system will provide a detailed view of stakeholder engagements across our business, enabling us to map trends and sentiment and proactively manage risks and issues associated with our relationships. Data captured in the system will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of our operation-specific stakeholder engagement plans.