Understanding Company–Community Relations Toolkit
2 December 2015
This toolkit provides a structured approach for companies to understand the basis for community support and how to measure perceptions of support. It enables companies to identify the reasons why community support may be lacking at a project or operation and develop targeted approaches for improving company-community relationships.
Summary
- Building and maintaining positive relationships with local communities is vital to the success of mining and metals operations.
- The Toolkit is designed to help companies understand the nature of their relationships with communities; irrespective of whether these are supportive or otherwise. Ultimately the emphasis is on helping companies achieve relationships that are supportive.
- It aims to help companies understand the factors that influence community support and measure the level of community support at a particular project or operation.
- It provides a tool to visualise the levels of community support that different stakeholders or stakeholder groups have for a project or operation and offers practical guidance on how this tool can be used to monitor and strengthen community support and, ultimately, community–company relationships.
- This approach outlined in the Toolkit recognises that a company's attitudes and behaviours towards host communities, and the context in which it operates, play a fundamental role in determining the degree to which communities support a particular project or operation and the quality of relationships between the company and the community.
- The Toolkit has been adapted into training materials for companies to use and adapt to support communication of key concepts and tools internally to different audiences, including senior leadership, non-community relations specialists and new community relations practitioners. The slide decks include speaking points and suggested facilitated exercises.