Communities

Material Topic: Communities

Managing impacts (e.g., local employment and skills development, infrastructure impacts, environmental, health and well-being impacts) of activities on local communities, including through targeted social investments.

Key GRI

• GRI 413: Local Communities 2016

NaDiVeG

• Respect for human rights
• Employee and social concerns

Most relevant SDGs

For OMV, transparency, trust, and partnership-based relationships with local communities are key to ensuring we are a responsible and welcomed neighbor wherever we operate. Adding value to the communities in which we operate is essential to safeguarding our operations for the future. In the interest of meeting our responsibility as an international company, we contribute positively to the fulfilment of human rights in our direct surroundings with a number of projects and initiatives. Investments in community relations and development respond to identified community needs: They are designed to mitigate social risks resulting from company operations and initiate positive change in surrounding communities.

Our commitments to our communities are laid out in our Human Rights Policy. The Sustainability Directive documents processes and accountability internally, and covers social responsibility, which comprises community relations, development and social investments, human rights, volunteering, and NGO relations for the OMV Group. A special Community Relations and Development handbook is available for all of the OMV Group’s CSR focal points.

Governance

The Community Relations and Development function governs and steers community relations at Group level and implements development activities in the countries in which we operate. It also receives regular reporting and feedback from social responsibility teams and local teams, and monitors and ensures adherence to the Group’s guidelines on community relations and development. We hold regular structured alignment meetings with our local social responsibility managers to monitor and steer local implementation of our site-specific global community relations and development commitments. We also organize regular exchanges among all countries in order to share challenges and best-practice experiences as a supplement to the guidance provided. According to our Sustainability Directive, each business area and all subsidiaries can act as initiators of community development investments and social investments within the framework of the OMV Group Sustainability Strategy processes.

Steering ensures that the OMV Executive Board is adequately and timely informed about the entire community and social investments portfolio, plans, and performance KPIs. For example, the Group’s social responsibility officers submitted the total budget for community and social investments in 2021 and provided information on major social or community investments planned.

In 2008, Borealis initiated the Borealis Social Fund. A portion of Borealis’ net profit, based on clearly defined allocation rules, is dedicated to the Fund each year. Projects can be submitted by any external or internal stakeholder to the sustainability team, which evaluates the proposal and makes recommendations to the CEO, who is responsible for the Fund. The CEO selects and approves all projects. Sponsorships over EUR 0.5 mn per project per year need the additional approval of the Chair or Vice Chair of the Borealis Supervisory Board. Investments from the Borealis Social Fund count towards the overall OMV Group social investments.

Having such a social fund in place through which social investments are steered and operated can help the business maintain its charitable mission focus and to support the visibility of social engagement. OMV Corporate is therefore considering setting up a similar fund in the coming years.