Our approach

We recognise the importance of treating our communities with respect and aim to build trust through open and honest relationships. This helps us achieve a clear understanding of the context and impacts of our activities and informs how we can make a meaningful contribution to economic and social development. Our Code of Conduct and BHP’s Our Requirements standards, including Our Requirements for Community, govern our purpose to bring people and resources together to build a better world. We strive to make a positive contribution to communities where we operate and minimise adverse impacts where these cannot be avoided. 

 
BHP understands that we all have a role to play in understanding and managing social impacts and building resilience through all phases of an operated asset’s life cycle. Our approach has been developed based on standards from the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), the United Nations (UN) Global Compact and frameworks such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Performance Standards. 
 
We define communities as groups that may be directly affected or impacted by BHP’s activities. This includes individuals and communities not living directly in a project area but who rely on the area for a particular reason (such as for sustenance or income), or who have a significant connection to the area (such as for cultural, religious, spiritual, historical or family reasons). We recognise our exploration, projects, operated assets, activities, closed and legacy assets (legacy assets refers to those BHP-operated assets, or part thereof, located in the Americas that are in the closure phase) can affect communities, but also create opportunities for BHP to contribute to social value. 
 
The Our Requirements for Community standard requires all our operated assets to implement actions to better understand communities, effectively plan and implement our commitments and evaluate and measure our performance (refer to the diagram below). This standard outlines the mandatory minimum performance requirements for regularly reviewing potentially affected communities; community and human rights due diligence, including baseline research and impact assessments; due diligence around engagement activities; and complaints and grievance mechanisms. This work is overseen by the Chief Legal, Governance and External Affairs Officer. The day-to-day implementation of the requirements is managed by Corporate Affairs team members across BHP. The Our Requirements for Community standard applies to all employees and contractors. 

Through regular engagement and social research, we seek to understand the expectations, concerns and interests of the communities affected by our operated assets and identify their areas of priority. We recognise the significance of two-way dialogue in highlighting concerns and perspectives and considering stakeholder perspectives is a core element of our approach. 

By assessing the social, economic, political, security and environmental factors affecting communities, we aim to identify and monitor emerging social trends, better manage social impacts and risks (including reputational risks) associated with our operations and contribute to social value. We work with communities to identify social needs and how we can better use existing resources. We then partner with appropriate organisations to deliver community projects and monitor progress and performance consistently. 

We engage regularly with investors, civil society, communities, Indigenous stakeholders, human rights experts and industry associations to enhance our understanding of current social expectations, trends and perceptions relating to stakeholders, human rights and the real or perceived impacts of our activities on communities. We also engage with other industry participants to understand our collective impact and how to more effectively address it together. 
 
We recognise our responsibility to contribute to and avoid adverse impacts on the health, safety and wellbeing of communities. With no significant community events recorded as resulting from BHP operated activities in FY2022, our five-year target of no significant community events between FY2018 and FY2022 has been met.¹ Our 2030 goal is to partner with communities and stakeholders to co-create and implement plans that deliver jointly defined economic, social and environmental outcomes. To read more about out 2030 goals, refer to the BHP Operating and Financial Review 2 – Delivering value and on the Sustainability Approach webpage.   

BHP’s Board oversees our approach to sustainability. The Board’s Sustainability Committee assists the Board in its oversight of the Group’s health, safety, environmental and community (HSEC) matters. The Sustainability Committee advises the Board on the adequacy of the Group’s HSEC Framework, HSEC management systems and governance of HSEC matters, along with the Group’s HSEC performance under those systems. This includes consideration of both existing HSEC issues, such as climate change, safety and Indigenous and human rights, as well as emerging areas of HSEC risk for the Group.  
 
Our internal audit processes periodically check compliance with the Our Requirements standards. We regularly review our approach to working with communities and our understanding and management of the risks and impacts on communities. Updates on emerging social and community issues and trends are provided to the Sustainability Committee. Our Risk team reports biannually to a joint meeting of the Board’s Risk and Audit Committee and Sustainability Committee on the Group’s material risk profile, including HSEC risks. 
 
The Board’s Risk and Audit Committee monitors and, at least annually, reviews the effectiveness of the Group’s systems of risk management and internal control. 
 
To understand and manage the risks BHP may be exposed to, we use our Group Risk Architecture, which is a tool to identify, analyse, monitor and report risk. Community and human rights, which includes Indigenous rights, are represented in the Group Risk Architecture, supporting the identification of new exposures and the assessment of community and human rights impacts on existing exposures. We assess risks, then apply appropriate controls at an operational, functional or Group level and review performance to enable risks to be appropriately managed. For more information, see Operating and Financial Review 9 - How we manage risk.   
 
Our internal audit processes periodically check compliance with the Our Requirements standards. 

^{1 A significant event resulting from BHP operated activities is one with an actual severity rating of four or above, based on our internal severity rating scale (tiered from one to five by increasing severity) as defined in our mandatory minimum performance requirements for risk management.}