3A.4 Tools

3A Tool 1 – Establishing Local Accountability Mechanisms

Overview

This tool defines the steps sites should take to establish a local accountability mechanism, if the analysis conducted (under Task 5) to support definition of the Local Accountability Strategy determines that a new mechanism is required.

Step 1: Identify external support required to facilitate the process

Consider the need for independent facilitation in the process of co-designing local accountability mechanisms through which to engage. A facilitator should be viewed as independent and objective by all stakeholders; have experience in community engagement and establishing multi-stakeholder working groups or committees; be familiar with mediation and facilitating dialogue; and have knowledge of the local context. In some cases, at least to begin with, it may also make sense for an independent facilitator to moderate local accountability mechanism meetings.

Step 2: Identify the need for capacity building support

Capacity-building of internal and external stakeholders should be provided as needed to support effective participation in local accountability mechanisms. Consider the following needs and ensure the necessary skills (internal or third-party) and resources are in place to address them:

Administrative and logistical
Technical – e.g. to enable participatory monitoring or to allow local accountability mechanism participants to understand business processes, financial and budget information, technical reporting
Communication and presentation: to allow local accountability mechanism participants to meaningfully participate in meetings, but also to enable effective communication between local accountability mechanism participants and the wider community
Facilitation
Managing conflict or disagreements.

Step 3: Co-design vision, scope, representation and mandate

Use a participatory process to co-design how affected communities should be represented, the objectives of the local accountability mechanism and how it will function. Be open-minded, flexible and willing to change an approach based on stakeholder input. Consider how local accountability mechanisms will support our willingness to be answerable to locally affected stakeholders for our responsibilities and actions to foster mutual trust-based relationships with communities through:

Providing and receiving transparent information and feedback on a broad range of mutually relevant priorities including environmental and social performance, operational and proposed project activities, and socio-economic development opportunities.
Meaningful engagement to integrate stakeholder views into site decision making and provide feedback.
Joint monitoring and evaluation of site’s responsibilities and reporting of results.
Acknowledgment of legacy issues and grievances, their mutual resolution and reporting of feedback.

Depending on the context, existing mechanisms could be strengthened and/or new local accountability mechanisms may be required. Consider if the local accountability strategy objectives would be most effectively achieved through sub-groups on specific issues (e.g. environmental monitoring, social investment, cultural heritage, local employment). These may be permanent or linked to a specific time-bound commitment or initiative.

Step 4: Governance and management arrangements

Through consultation and co-design processes establish the practical arrangements for the governance and management of local accountability mechanisms. This will be context-specific and defined on a case-by-case basis, depending on whether the site is working through existing mechanisms and/or establishing new mechanisms. Governance and management discussions could focus on:

Community representation and how information received through local accountability mechanisms will be disseminated to broader community members;
Frequency, duration, location of meetings and how they will be chaired;
How meetings will be recorded;
How the effectiveness of the local accountability mechanisms will be assessed and changes made where needed;
Timescales for reviewing monitoring and evaluation data as well as anticipated timescales for receiving community feedback on issues of concern;
How disputes will be managed and resolution sought.

3A Tool 2 – Conducting Perception Analysis

Introduction

Perception analysis is a systematic assessment process used to understand how community stakeholders in the area of influence around the mine site perceive our activities, practices and levels of performance. It is used to:

understand and track issues and trends that matter to communities within our area of influence;
identify opportunities to inform engagement approaches and site decision making;
inform the development/ revision of site social performance related management plans and processes;
provide feedback to support monitoring and evaluation processes; and
hear about issues of concern before they escalate.

Community perception of an Anglo American mine site will be informed by the beliefs, perspectives and experiences of stakeholders across the site’s area of influence. There will be a variety of perceptions and one purpose of analysis is to understand how perceptions vary between community stakeholders and the factors that influence the varying views of the site.

This tool sets out the steps sites should undertake to understand and analyse the perceptions of community stakeholders towards the mine site.

Third-party support

The site may wish to procure third-party support at any stage in the process of trying to understand and analyse stakeholder perceptions, depending on the level of site expertise and experience in conducting perception analysis. The site may, therefore, look to involve third-party expertise in any or all of the below steps.

The third-party organisation could include social performance consultancies, university groups or socio-economic data research institutes. Sites should define a Terms of Reference for a third-party organisation to support perception analysis and the tasks included in the Terms of Reference should include (as appropriate to the site’s needs):

Question writing, i.e. to define what the site wants to understand about its stakeholders;
Definition of approach to collecting data;
Development of a sampling frame (see below);
Collection of perception data;
Data analysis, particularly for statistical analysis; and
Development of accurate and accessible reporting for a variety of internal and external audiences

To help select a suitable external service provider to support perception analysis, sites should consider the following factors as part of the tender evaluation process:

Look for evidence of past experiences with similar samples and similar content, particularly those that understand the site’s area of influence – do they have experience accessing those stakeholders that may be considered vulnerable or challenging to access?
Consider their proposed approach – does it allow for building rapport with participants when conducting face-to-face perception surveys and do they allocate a realistic amount of time to do this respectfully?
Explore the robustness of the company’s approach to data management and analysis – how will they handle missing or incomplete data? Do they set out a clear methodology for handling data privacy? The Anglo American Group Data Privacy Policy (Policy Hub - Group Data Privacy Policy.pdf - All Group Documents (sharepoint.com)) should be shared with potential service providers and their approach to compliance detailed in their proposal.
Look for experience of not just data collection but also analysis. Does the potential external service provider understand what the site wishes to achieve from the work? Will they be able to report data in a way that resonates with an internal site audience, e.g. through SPMC presentations?

Step 1: Define Purpose of Perception Analysis

It is important for the site to determine what it hopes to achieve from perception analysis, in order to structure the approach, geography covered and content. Sites should consider addressing the following questions to help define perception analysis purpose:

What overarching question(s) are we seeking to answer and what do we intend to do with the information we collect to ensure that it is used strategically? The outputs from the site’s SHIRA processes, analysis of previous engagements, grievance register and issues register can all be valuable sources of information to help define the scope for perception analysis.
Who from the site senior management team could sponsor this work and how should the information analysed be shared at SPMC to inform current activities and the design of new activities?
Should we conduct perception analysis across all communities within our Area of Influence in the same way?
What existing engagement processes, including local accountability mechanisms, can we leverage for data collection and dissemination of results?
How can the information we collect support monitoring and evaluation of impact management measures?

Step 2: Decide which stakeholders should be included in perception analysis and how to sample

Perception analysis is used primarily to understand the views of communities within the site’s area of influence, including vulnerable groups. To support analysis, sites should consider the appropriateness of complementing the focus on community stakeholders, including vulnerable groups, with the following:

Local business associations;
Elected members of local government;
Non-elected local officials, e.g. chair of local water association, local administrators, etc;
NGOs and other advocacy groups (local, national and global);
Local media groups; and
Academics and research organisations working within the site’s area of influence

It is not feasible to understand each individual stakeholder’s perspective of the mine site and therefore a sampling approach is used. The intent of sampling is to ensure that the views expressed are sufficiently representative of all stakeholder views across the site’s area of influence. A suitably qualified third-party provider of perception analysis services will be able to define an approach to ensure that a representative sample of site stakeholders are included. They should draw from:

The site’s external context review, including definition of the site’s area of influence;
Site stakeholder identification and analysis, including how stakeholders are grouped, as defined in the site’s stakeholder engagement plan; and
Systemic vulnerability assessments, which should define stakeholders that struggle to have their voices heard in formal engagement processes and how the site accesses their views.

A third-party provider should be able to advise the site on the most appropriate sampling frame to use in order to ensure the results are drawn from a representative sample of the population. Obtaining a representative survey sample is crucial to ensure that the results of perception analysis accurately reflect the opinions, characteristics, and behaviours of the larger population within the site’s area of influence. Approaches to sampling that could be considered are included in the following box.

Step 3: Define which methods to use to understand community perceptions

Sites should draw from the available methods detailed in the following table to understand community perceptions, as appropriate for the site’s context. As general guidance, it is anticipated that sites will use a combination of desktop reviews, media monitoring and focus group discussions to understand perception. As necessary for the site’s context, it may be beneficial to include interviews, surveys and/or workshops to the list of techniques used.

Table 3A.16 Methods to understand community perceptions

Approach	Description	Strengths	Weaknesses
Desktop	Involves accessing existing materials including academic articles, relevant reports (produced by industry, company, NGOs and government) and websites.	Simple to access information on perspectives. Can be informative about context and data limitations. Generally low cost.	Restricted to the nature of the existing information and the information is often originally collected for an alternate purpose. Therefore, evaluating the relevance of sources and scope can be challenging.
Media monitoring	Review and summary of media publications, including print, online and broadcast sources. These sources are primarily qualitative.	Readily available through subscription services, including analyses of key themes and trends. Allows early and/or ongoing detection of trends.	Information is derived from media reports, not directly from stakeholders. Media reports may over represent or exaggerate the importance of particular issues.
Focus Groups	Relatively unstructured discussions among a small group of stakeholders, guided by a facilitator, yielding primarily qualitative data.	Allows a range of perspectives to be accessed. Ideas and perspectives may evolve through discussion.	The quality of information relies on the facilitator to ensure a range of perspectives are sought throughout the focus group. Sensitive issues may be difficult for stakeholders to discuss in group context.
Interviews	Interviews usually involve a single stakeholder engaged by a skilled interviewer. The interview process can be guided by a well-defined structure or open-ended and depending on the context can vary in length. Interviews can access detailed information about stakeholders’ perceptions of the mine, both qualitative and quantitative.	Provides detailed information. Can be adapted to suit the context and/or participant, including vulnerable groups. Personal and effective in demonstrating interest in stakeholder perspectives.	Can be time-consuming to conduct and resource intensive to analyse.
Workshops	Similar to focus groups as they are typically discussion based and yield qualitative measures of reputation. However, workshops are generally more structured, involve more people and are held over a greater period of time, for example a day-long workshop.	Can involve a range of stakeholders and collect a range of perspectives.	Can be resource intensive to prepare and requires a skilled facilitator. Majority group or high-power voices may dominate discussion, making it harder to hear a range of perceptions. Sensitive issues may be difficult for stakeholders to discuss publicly.
Surveys	Typically, these yield quantitative measures that are representative of a large population by asking direct questions through a questionnaire. Surveys can also be undertaken on smaller groups and include qualitative measures.	Standardised quantitative measures of perception Can access large samples of stakeholders efficiently. Allow for tracking over time and comparison within and between groups.	Requires site input to help inform the issues that should be explored through pre-determined questions. Some stakeholders may be excluded due to the time it takes to complete a questionnaire, access to the questionnaire or capacity to participate.

Quantitative and Qualitative Data

The optimal approach for creating a baseline and continually evaluating changes in community perception towards the mine site involves gathering quantitative and qualitative data.

Step 4: Detail approach to understand community perceptions of mine site

The approach defined in this step is informed by the ICMM Stakeholder Research Toolkit⁵. Section 3 of the ICMM Toolkit includes a template with questions that could be adapted for site context. Using a range of survey instruments, the site should gather perception data following four sequential categories:

demographic – information about participants themselves, including information that will identify what stakeholder groups they are linked with;
issue and impact – aims to understand how the site is perceived to affect – both positively and negatively – the external human and physical environment in which it operates;
engagement relationships – measures how the company is perceived to interact with its stakeholders; and
overall site perception of trust – measures how much stakeholders trust Anglo American in relation to various components of a site’s activities.

The arrangement of these four categories is deliberate. The approach begins with demographic measures, which are questions site stakeholders can easily and comfortably answer. This initial section helps participants become accustomed to the structure and the types of responses they will provide. Following that, the approach addresses content related to issues and impacts, their interactions with the mine and its personnel, and finally outcome-related items at the end.

An explanation for each of these four stages is provided below.

(i) Demographic data

Demographic data describes who participants are. Demographic data collected may include (subject to context): age, gender, education, income, location of work and of home, language, employment status, type of accommodation, number of dependents, marital status, nationality, etc.

Collecting demographic data is vital for:

checking that a range of stakeholder perspectives have been captured including vulnerable groups;
ensuring that a representative sample approach has been taken; and
for later analysis where different views and perspectives within and between stakeholder groups can be assessed.

(ii) Perceptions of site impacts

This category seeks to understand community perceptions regarding how the site impacts them – both positively and negatively. When designing the approach to collecting data on community perceptions of impacts it may be challenging to narrow down the number of issues and impacts the site hopes to understand within the limited time available. It is suggested that the site draw from existing processes and knowledge to help define a list of topics that are anticipated to inform stakeholder perceptions of the site. For example, the outputs from the site’s SHIRA process as well as the grievance register should be reviewed to understand potential negative impact topics. Similarly, consultation logs should be reviewed to understand areas of priority importance to community stakeholders, which could include employment and procurement opportunities. The outputs from site discussions through local accountability mechanisms may also help identify topics that drive stakeholder perceptions of the site.

(iii) Perceptions of site’s relationships with external stakeholders

ICMM’s Stakeholder Research Kit highlights four engagement-related areas that influence community stakeholder’s perceptions of the site and that should be understood. These are engagement quality, engagement quantity, procedural fairness and distributional fairness.

Engagement Quality

This component relates to the positive feeling that stakeholders may – or may not – experience from interactions with site personnel. During collection of perception data community stakeholders can be directly asked how positive their interaction with mine site personnel has been. An example question to consider asking is included below:

Thinking about your interaction with the personnel from Anglo American, please rate how positive your experience is?
(1 = very negative, 5 = very positive)

Engagement Quantity

Engagement quantity looks to understand the number of times the mine site’s personnel have engaged with community stakeholders. An example question to consider asking is included below:

Thinking about your interaction with the personnel from Anglo American how much contact do you have with them at the following:

community meetings or events?
informally in your local area?
at other social situations?

(1 = none at all, 5 = a great deal).

Procedural Fairness

Procedural fairness encompasses stakeholders' perceptions of their meaningful participation in site decision-making processes. It is an important indicator of Anglo American’s commitment to valuing and respecting its stakeholders throughout the planning and the execution of decisions that impact them. Additionally, it gauges the degree to which stakeholders believe they have been listened to, treated with respect, and had their concerns addressed by Anglo American. Within this category of questions sites should try to understand if communities have confidence in how the community and the site participates in local accountability mechanisms and progress towards Anglo American’s 2025 Local Accountability milestone: "key social performance processes are planned and monitored with local communities through accountability mechanisms."

An example question to consider asking is included below:

Thinking about how Anglo American has conducted its business, please rate the extent to which you agree that:

people in your community have opportunities to participate in the decisions made by Anglo American
Anglo American listens to and respects your opinions
Anglo American is prepared to change its practices in response to community views

(1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree)

Relating to local accountability mechanisms, a further example question to consider including is:

In reference to how the community and site participates in local accountability mechanisms specifically, please rate the extent to which you agree that:

Anglo American is answerable to local communities for its responsibilities and actions through its participation in local accountability mechanisms
Anglo American communicates openly and transparently with our community on issues that affect our lives⁶
Community representatives participating in local accountability mechanisms with Anglo American speak for me and represent my concerns and issues accurately

(1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree)

Distributional Fairness

Distributional fairness centres on stakeholders' perceptions regarding the equitable distribution of socio-economic benefits arising from mining activities, e.g. employment positions, procurement opportunities and social investment projects. It also assesses whether stakeholders believe they have received a just and proportionate portion of these benefits.

An example question to consider asking is included below:

Thinking about the financial benefit of Anglo American’s activities in your community, please rate the extent to which you agree that:

generally speaking, the economic benefits of mining are distributed fairly in the community
people like me receive a fair share of the benefits from mining

(1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree)

(iv) Perceptions of Trust

For Anglo American, trust is defined as the fundamental belief or confidence of local communities in the reliability, honesty, integrity, and intentions of the site. It refers to the level of confidence that community members have in the company's commitment to act responsibly, fulfil its promises, and consider their well-being and interests. An assessment of community perceptions of trust in Anglo American will help measure progress towards the site’s long-term stakeholder engagement objective(s)..

Sites should tailor questions in this category to suit their external context, specifically focusing on the components that drive levels of trust as determined in the site’s Local Accountability Strategy. An example set of questions to consider asking are included below:

Considering Anglo American, please rate to what extent that you:

Trust the company to manage its site activities and associated impacts with consideration of how communities could be affected
Trust contractors working for Anglo American to manage their activities and associated impacts with consideration of how communities could be affected
Trust that Anglo American will fulfil its promises and responsibilities
Trust that Anglo American will be open and transparent with local communities on issues that affect their lives
Trust that Anglo American will be consistent and reliable in how it engages with communities including providing feedback when issues are raised
Trust that Anglo American will be consistent and reliable in how it manages negative impacts

(1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree)

Step 5: Perception Analysis

The collection of stakeholder perception information is only valuable if it is analysed, shared with site leadership team (e.g. through the SPMC) and used to answer the questions posed by the site under Step 1.

Analysis of perception data should look to understand:

Do we understand the views of all our key stakeholder categories, including vulnerable groups? In other words, has the coverage of our perception studies been sufficient in terms of geography and range of stakeholders?
How have perceptions towards the site changed since the last time the survey was conducted? And what are the factors that are driving this change?
How do some of the variables understood through the survey correlate with each other, e.g. do younger people report a higher degree of trust in the site than older people? Do people on lower incomes report that they experience higher levels of negative impact?
Can levels of trust (Step 4, (iv)) be predicted based on the results of other measures, e.g. levels of engagement quality? If stakeholders have positive experiences of procedural fairness? Do positive economic impacts, e.g. employment benefits increase levels of acceptance even in the presence of negative environmental impacts, i.e. what weight do communities place on the relative positive and negative aspects of the mine’s activities?

The site should work with the third-party provider of perception analysis support to apply both descriptive and inferential statistics techniques. Descriptive statistics detail the basic features of the data collected, for example the average level of satisfaction with engagement quality across participants surveyed within each community. They are a useful tool to narrow down the key topics that you want to analyse further through inferential statistical approaches. Inferential statistics seeks to understand the relationship between measures within the data set, e.g. do stakeholders that report they have benefited from the mine’s presence also report higher levels of trust? Do stakeholders express greater satisfaction with the site’s approach to engagement due to engagement quality or engagement quantity?

Sites should consider visual presentation of data wherever possible in the form of dashboards and GIS mapping. For example, levels of trust and acceptance in the site could be mapped across the site’s Area of Influence to demonstrate how ‘fenceline’ impacts such as noise, dust and blasting affect community perceptions of the site. Crucially, the information gained from perception analysis should be used as a key input to inform revisions to the site’s approach to engagement, impact management and approach to benefit distribution. For example, the analysis may indicate that community stakeholders would prefer less frequent engagement but that when it does happen it is more meaningful, with site key experts attending, and with follow up feedback provided to issues raised. Alternatively, the analysis may identify that vulnerable groups in particular do not feel able to access information from the company on key topics that concern them.

⁵https://www.icmm.com/en-gb/guidance/social-performance/2015/stakeholder-research-toolkit

3A Stakeholder engagement

3A Stakeholder engagement

3A.4 Tools

3A Tool 1 – Establishing Local Accountability Mechanisms

3A Tool 2 – Conducting Perception Analysis

3A Stakeholder engagement

3A Stakeholder engagement

3A Stakeholder engagement

3A.4 Tools

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3A Tool 1 – Establishing Local Accountability Mechanisms

3A Tool 2 – Conducting Perception Analysis