People being at the heart of our business is fundamental to our vision, strategy and values. This speaks just as much to our employees and their families as it does to the communities that we call home.
Ensuring the safety of our employees and wider mine communities is our priority. Our aim is to achieve zero harm across our operations. Risk management and critical control modelling result in continued efforts to strengthen safety protocols and preventative measures.
Employee and community health are also central to our business, and have been given particular emphasis during the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. While the pandemic has continued to challenge our ability to operate safely and productively, our efforts to address direct and secondary effects of the pandemic have helped to improve collaboration with our social partners and strengthened some community health systems.
We work to build and maintain constructive relationships with employees and their union representatives based on our Company values, through effective line management, and by following the applicable labour legislation across our global footprint. Except for those in Australia and the United States, most employees in our operating jurisdictions are union members. On strike exceeding one week was reported for Córrego Do Sitio in Brazil.
Each of our operations exists within a broader social context, with host communities as our neighbours with whom we aim to develop lasting, symbiotic relationships. Contributing to resilient, self-sustaining communities is built on mutual respect, transparency and trust. We recogise that our social licence to operate (SLO) is granted by communities, and that this is something that we need to earn through our actions. Our community relations approach – aimed at securing our SLO – is based on inclusive stakeholder engagement, proactive and timeous impact management, and benefit management. All sites collaborate closely with local communities and their leadership on a range of matters of mutual interest.