Critical to the achievement of Anglo American’s Purpose, values and culture is the leadership of the operational teams: General Manager, operational and support direct reports, Superintendents and Supervisors.
Supporting Operational Leadership Excellence (as part of the module related to Role and Organisational Design), the General Manager should support the following key tasks related to social performance:
- Delivering the social performance activities set out in the Life of Asset Plan to improve social performance over time. The plan should address the social performance impacts of any new developments (e.g. expansions, projects, new technologies), operational impacts (legacy, current and future) and be consistent with the site closure plan. It should also enable the site to:
- Deliver Sustainable Mining Plan commitments.
- Lead site-specific cross-functional integration on social performance to manage relevant risks/impacts and implement management plans.
- Ensure compliance with social performance requirements, including commitments to stakeholders.
- Manage social performance impacts and risks as part of the asset risk management approach in a way that is aligned with Anglo American's purpose and sustainability commitments.
- Manage social performance opportunities to create an enabling environment for the operation and improve people's lives.
- Ensure site operations are in line with site closure plan to hand back the lease of the asset at the asset’s end of life.
- Ensuring processes are in place to build relationships with key local stakeholders:
- Establish site-level local engagement forums.
- Identify high-priority engagements to manage external facing risks and opportunities.
- Participate in high-impact engagements which create a platform for the (within the context of broader stakeholder engagement plan) that establish the as the face of Anglo American with local stakeholders.
- Ensure alignment of site-specific engagement with long-term and Group Social Performance initiatives.
- Provide feedback to local stakeholders regarding the Social Performance components of the Life of Asset Plan and wider performance as required.
Considering the following points will support efficient and effective delivery of the site’s social performance objectives:
- Leadership’s role in balancing site priorities. Site leadership need to integrate a variety of factors into decision making. Consideration of the sustainability and social performance consequences of decisions, as well as the scheduling, budgeting and production factors, is critical to understanding the full impact of our decisions and aligning with our Purpose and values and to achieving safe, responsible production.
- Leadership’s role and behaviours inform the culture of a site. Site leadership sets the tone for how departments approach and prioritise social performance. Integrating social performance into the Anglo American Purpose, values and culture will help to promote this. Leaders should consider the following questions to understand the ethos at their site as it relates to affected communities:
- How are local communities discussed during site meetings? Are they seen only as a risk to the business? Is there a ‘them versus us’ culture or are local communities seen as partners and neighbours?
- Is the Social Way understood across the site and widely referenced?
- Are social performance considerations embedded into the Life of Asset Plan and strategic long-term planning?
- Does the site aim to generate goodwill or resolve tensions through ad hoc social investments or promise of jobs or procurement opportunities, or are community programmes a part of jointly-developed, long-term initiatives?
- What behaviours and priorities are being promoted, e.g. is a production-focused culture creating undesirable community consequences?
- Defining accountabilities drives cross-functional integration. Other departments should be held accountable for identifying and managing potential social and human rights impacts and risks associated with their activities, including timely corrective actions in response to grievances. Without a multi-disciplinary approach, social performance teams are sometimes assumed to be responsible for managing all interactions with communities. This often results in continual ‘firefighting’, with underlying issues left unaddressed, e.g. employment terms, management of environmental impacts, behaviour of security staff.
- Active participation communicates importance. Leaders, especially the site , should communicate that social performance is a priority. They can talk about the social performance objectives of the site in public and staff forums, attend and support site-based training sessions and play a visible and proactive role in the .
- Ensuring robust social impact and risk identification and management. Site leadership should challenge and scrutinise social impact and risk management through Operational Risk Management and insist on regular updates regarding effectiveness of mitigation measures (i.e. successfully achieving the desired impact of a control). This should include ensuring social performance considerations are included in site operational and project planning and schedules and giving adequate time for community engagement.
- Insisting on clear performance metrics for all relevant functions and teams. The social performance team and other relevant functions should be appraised against robust performance objectives, to the same level of rigour as the rest of the business. Leadership should follow Operating Model (OM) principles and require teams to track their activities, outputs and outcomes using a management system approach. The integration of social activities and outputs in the management routines and operating master schedule can help to integrate these activities into business planning. Social performance activities should be included within staff performance targets and appraisals. Shared accountabilities and performance targets related to social performance, utilising platforms like the scorecard and operations’ Teams+ shared objectives, should help to develop cross-functional performance metrics.