Our human rights policy was first developed in 2010, and in 2016 we reviewed it in line with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the UK Modern Slavery Act. The policy will be revised in 2017.
We require all relevant employees to undergo human rights training every three years. We focus additional resources on any areas where we see particular compliance risks. For example, in December, we held workshops on integrity and human rights for employees in Kazakhstan.
We provide our stakeholders – employees, contractors, community members – with the facility to raise a grievance of any kind with the company via a confidential grievance mechanism at site level, or country-level whistleblowing lines. We also have a central whistleblowing line on our corporate website. In 2016, our global assurance team received 80 complaints relating to workforce issues*, of which 22 were substantiated. During the year we resolved 63 complaints, some of which were received the previous year.
