The International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) has published a set of practical tools to strengthen approaches to managing social performance within mining companies.

These tools have been designed to support companies to strengthen these capabilities and to build and maintain positive relationships with local communities and broader society.

The ICMM explains that social performance is the outcome of a company’s engagement, activities and commitments that directly and indirectly impact on stakeholders, particularly the local communities that live close to mining operations.

“Good social performance requires companies to have robust management approaches and systems in place that avoid harm to people and the planet, while contributing to social and economic development,” ICMM CEO Rohitesh Dhawan points out.

He adds that mining-related activity affects local communities and often takes place on indigenous land. The ICMM deems it critical that industry play its part in creating lasting positive impacts for those affected by mining operations, which can only be achieved through consistent approaches to social performance.

“This isn’t something that our industry has always got right, and we have seen the devastating impact it can have when it goes wrong. Just as financial and environmental risks are integrated across business decision-making, these tools support companies to better integrate social risks and impacts to manage their social performance more effectively.

“The ICMM’s social performance tools are available to the entire industry. They will support business leaders and social performance practitioners assess the maturity of social performance in their business, build competence, integrate social performance across the business and contribute to the organisational culture required to consistently avoid harm and deliver business and societal value,” Dhawan explains.

The tools have been developed to support leaders, nonexperts and social practitioners as they work to better integrate social performance throughout their businesses.

The individual tools include an accessible introduction to social performance, the value it delivers and how to achieve good performance; a maturity matrix to establish where a company is on its social performance journey and guidance on developing an action plan; and a competence framework to help build the experience, skills and knowledge needed to manage social performance successfully.

The tools also offer guidance on how to integrate community engagement across site-level activities, how to integrate social performance across the business as a whole and support for leaders and decision-makers working to embed social performance into their operating model.

The social performance aids build on the ICMM’s existing bank of guidance and resources on social performance.

These include the council’s Partnering for our Common Future tool, which helps companies to partner effectively to better contribute to community resilience; a Grievance Mechanism Guidance, which sets out ways companies can handle and resolve local community grievances; and a Community Development Toolkit that provides practical guidance on how companies can support community development across the life of a mine.