Social Performance
For us, meaningful community engagement is a continuous process of contacting, dialoguing and interacting with local stakeholders to ensure they are adequately informed and have an opportunity to participate in decisions that affect their future.
Our Approach
Social acceptance — the willingness of stakeholders to accept our business activities — is never guaranteed and evolves over time. It is also an essential component of sustainable development. We are committed to empowering sustainable development and believe that sharing the value created by Great Panther’s activities contributes to the social and economic development of our host communities. This topic is considered one of the most material by the communities and governments where we operate.
Social Investment
We invest in developing and supporting our communities, so they can be the best places to live and work for our people, their families and friends, our suppliers and local citizens. As outlined in our Social Investment Policy, we prioritize projects that help improve the quality of life in the surrounding communities. These initiatives are determined through active and frequent, two-way stakeholder engagement to identify local priorities, including meetings with community members and surveys.
Informed by community input, our investments generally focus on three main areas:
- Socio-economic development
- Public health and safety
- Natural and cultural heritage
Local Hiring and Procurement
We apply local hiring and procurement practices across all our operations, which provide considerable economic and social benefits to our communities.
Great Panther’s success hinges on the efforts of our employees and contractors who work on the frontlines of our operations across the Americas. We must therefore ensure that we attract the best local talent, retain them with fair compensation and motivate them to give their best every day. By sourcing workers from within our host communities, we can maximize the benefits that flow into, and stay within, those communities. This topic is considered most material by our employees and contractors, supply chain, and the communities where we operate.
Our Approach
We prioritize local hiring in our mining operations. These include full time, permanent employee positions that fulfill key management, professional and technical roles, including contractors. They generally work in the technical areas of mining, exploration, equipment maintenance, laboratory and analysis, masonry, welding, private security, haulage. At times we may need to recruit employees or contractors from outside the community when it is not possible to find necessary qualifications within the local workforce.
To ensure our local workforce is fairly rewarded for their work, producing a positive economic impact in the host community, we provide competitive salaries and benefits that meet or exceed relevant national or state employment laws.
Training and Development
To create and sustain a skilled workforce, we are developing the current and future capabilities of our employees and contractors.
Our Approach
In the mining industry, workforce knowledge and skills are essential to developing and maintaining a productive, safe and sustainable operation. By investing in the capacity and competency of our employees and contractors, both our company and the local communities are well positioned for long-term success. A workforce that is equipped with strong skills, expertise and experience is able to strengthen the community’s economic potential, access new opportunities at the end of a mine’s lifecycle and achieve fulfilling individual growth. This topic is considered one of the most material by our employees and contractors.
Investing in our People
Great Panther delivers training and development in a number of forms, customized to the individual’s role, ranging from management and leadership programs, to in-class safety and equipment activities, to on-the-job, technical skills-building. Training for employees and contractors focuses on key themes including safety, environmental, rescue brigade and personal development. Each mining site has an annual training plan to set out priorities, plans, and budgets for the year.
Also, employees at our mine sites receive an annual performance review. It is based on their individual performance, tied to their department and company objectives, in addition to topics such as teamwork, self-initiative, skills development, work quality and communication effectiveness. Contractors are evaluated for their ability to carry out their work effectively, but no individual performance reviews are conducted.