-0,32%Communities & Corporate Citizenship
Sustainability in Governance
We aim to achieve best practices in governance with benevolence and transparency. These are the keys to building trust with our customers, our employees and the communities we work in, to protecting our market position and license to operate, and ensuring our ability to thrive.
Relationship with Communities
Maintaining a close relationship with our stakeholders is both fully consistent with our values and sound business management. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most of our usual community events were canceled or went virtual in 2020. However, many of our sites mobilized in an effort of solidarity to help local communities. For instance, during the first phase of the pandemic, the Gueugnon site donated stocks of masks and hydroalcoholic gel to local health professionals. Timoteo also made a special donation to the local hospital so it could expand its intensive care unit.
Aperam also continued investing in social development in Brazil, primarily through our Aperam Acesita Foundation (Foundation). Aligned with the interests of the communities where we operate, the Foundation’s initiatives directly benefited more than 40,000 people, with a total financial investment of 2.7 million reais. The COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing requirements meant that the majority of our actions had to be held online. But using Aperam’s pre-existing channels in Brazil, we were able to achieve over 265,000 views – thus still having a major impact even in these most challenging of times.
In Europe, our community actions are less structured, more opportunistic and local. As a result, they are even more prone to crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. In normal times, each of our European sites oversees its own community initiatives, in line with local expectations. As a result, a variety of approaches can be reported:
- The more or less systematic sponsoring of local sports and charity events and/or associations
- Partnerships with local schools and universities
- Actions in the area of urban integration and aesthetics to improve the looks and ease of use of our sites’ surroundings
- A range of Open House Days gathering different members of the public, from families-only events to a full Stakeholders’ Day combining neighbors, authorities, academics and local television stations
- Local communication initiatives, such as the “Bulletin” that is issued by our Isbergues unit together with the other hosts of the shared industrial site
We also have a number of cohesive plans, such as the award-winning Corporate Social Responsibility programme run at our Ústi unit (Czech Republic)!
Communication & Transparency
To structure our relationships, we approved a policy to propose specific complementary tools to arrange efficient communications and interactions between our main sites and the surrounding communities.
On top of our Sustainability Report, which provides extensive information in English about the way we manage our impact and our sustainability strategy, our reporting also includes:
- Country supplements for the three countries of operations that comprise more than 80% of our staff: Belgium, France, Brazil, with key metrics regarding our social and environmental performance (calculated on the same basis as the Group report that receives an external assurance) and with explanations about the year’s projects and achievements.
- It is in this same spirit that we decided to integrate elements traditionally included in our “Country Supplements” into our Group report. This decision ensures that key metrics are conveniently available in one place.
- Posters at the entrances of our main sites with a selection of the same key metrics to provide a view of site-specific Environmental and Social performance.
- Access to a simple online form (via QRCodes from the same Posters) to facilitate 24/7 exchanges in the form of questions, complaints or suggestions and to give us the opportunity to resolve any issue in its early stage.
Latest Recognitions
