We aim to be a good neighbour in the communities in which we operate. This means not only running our facilities cleanly and safely but also working with local people to help them benefit from our activities.
Earning the trust of our neighbours starts with listening to the different points of view in a community. We typically use contributions from community panels, open days, surveys and local governments to understand what our impacts are, and what matters most to the community. We then aim to work closely with communities to reduce the negative impacts from our operations and produce local economic benefits through our business activities and social investment. We have a structured company-wide approach to working with our neighbours.
our policies
Company-wide requirements include:
- Environmental, health and social impact assessment before we develop a major new project or facility, or make major modifications to existing ones.
- Social performance plans at major refineries, chemicals facilities and upstream operators where impacts could be high.
- Social performance skills in leadership training programmes and the curriculum of our Commercial and Project Academies.
All our major refineries and chemicals facilities and upstream operations where social impacts could be high, have social performance plans in place. Implementing these plans requires facilities to identify and work with their local stakeholders, and assess and manage their impacts on the community in a systematic way. At our major refineries and chemicals facilities, our global social performance advisers review the implementation of these plans every three years.
At Geelong refinery, for example, a review was held in 2007 to check the progress made in implementing its social performance plan. The review found significant improvements in the quality of engagement with the community and that the trust with its neighbours was being rebuilt. It recommended that the next plan focus on addressing the issues the community will face in the future.
Last year, we strengthened our efforts in our distribution business, which runs the storage facilities, pipelines and trucks that deliver our products to customers around the world. This business has smaller sites – depots rather than refineries or production platforms – so we have adapted our standard social performance reviews for these locations.
Across Shell, the priority now is to improve the engagement skills of our staff and increase their commitment to social performance, particularly in teams developing major new projects. To help, our social performance advisers, working with external experts, provide project teams with coaching and support. Social performance skills are part of leadership training programmes and the curriculum of our Commercial and Project Academies. Specific training programmes are being developed for the executives making decisions about new, very early stage, upstream projects.
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