Communities

Material Topic: Communities

Managing impacts of activities on local communities (e.g., local employment and skills development, infrastructure impacts, environmental, health, and well-being impacts), 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 where we operate is essential for safeguarding our operations for the future. In the interest of being a responsible international company, we contribute positively to the fulfillment of human rights in our immediate surroundings through a number of projects and initiatives. Investments in community relations and development respond specifically to identified community needs. They are designed to mitigate social risks that could result from company operations and initiate positive change in neighboring communities.

Our commitments to our communities are laid out in our Human Rights Policy Statement. Our 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 between 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’s Sustainability Strategy processes.

Steering ensures that the OMV Executive Board is informed in an adequate and timely manner 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 2022 and provided information on the major social or community investments planned.

Borealis Social Fund

In 2008, Borealis launched the Borealis Social Fund. A portion of Borealis’ net profit is assigned to the Fund each year, based on clearly defined allocation rules. 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. After reviewing, the CEO selects and approves projects with the greatest social impact. 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 toward the OMV Group’s overall social investments.

Having this kind of social fund in place, through which social investments are steered and operated, can help the business maintain its charitable mission focus and support the visibility of social engagement.

OMV Petrom Foundation

Launched in 2022, the OMV Petrom Foundation is building programs and supporting long-term investments in Romania. The Foundation provides resources and solutions that contribute to the creation of a sustainable and just society for everyone, for example by supporting education systems, environmental protection initiatives, and improving the health care system. In this way, the OMV Petrom Foundation aims to become an important pillar in society by building strategic long-term partnerships with other non-governmental organizations, and central or local public authorities in the three key areas mentioned.

Through the OMV Petrom Foundation, OMV Petrom is able to support an early education project that targets 60,000 pre-school children (aged 3–6 years) from underprivileged communities, with the aim of enhancing their school readiness. The educational project addresses the immediate needs of the most vulnerable pre-school children, mostly from rural areas, and aims to facilitate their access to educational resources, with early learning experiences managed by parents at home. This has resulted in increased enrolment in the kindergarten.