Social performance
Voluntary social investment in 2014
proportion of spend
Voluntary social investment in 2014
split by region
Social performance involves working with communities to reduce the impact of our operations and share the benefits of our activities. We respectfully engage with relevant parties, evaluate impacts, plan mitigation strategies and find opportunities to support communities, such as helping to build local economies through the creation of jobs and business opportunities.
Shell requires all major assets where we are the operator to have effective community feedback mechanisms (CFMs): more than 100 locations have working CFMs in place. From 2013 to 2014, the number of locations with effectively run CFMs increased by 25%. To further improve in 2015, we will be increasing the frequency of the reporting of CFM data within Shell as well as introducing new parameters. This will help us to better assess the quality and speed of our responses to complaints.
We have management systems in place that set out our social performance requirements for activities such as engagement and impact assessment, and are aligned with international standards. In 2014, we made improvements in defining social risks by developing and using specific tools. Each year, we review the extent to which our operations, as well as our contractors and suppliers, have processes in place to prevent violations of human rights, such as the use of child or forced labour. In 2014, we trained 481 (441 in 2013) employees in our social performance requirements.
Social investment
Across our operations we invest in projects that benefit communities. Our intention is to help the project become sustainable in the long term. In 2014, we successfully completed the first round of global reporting on the projects’ impact. Social investment programme managers have been measuring the output and are beginning to capture longer-term social and business outcomes. Also in 2014, we spent around $160 million on voluntary social investments worldwide, compared with $159 million in 2013. These figures do not include investments that are part of contractual agreements or legal requirements with host governments, which is in excess of $100 million.
We spent around $39 million on our three global strategic themes of enterprise development, road safety and energy access. Around $121 million was spent on our locally tailored programmes covering community development, disaster relief, education, health and biodiversity. We estimate that almost $70 million of our spend in 2014 was in countries that are part of the UNDP Human Development Index 2013 defined as having a gross domestic product of less than $15,000 a year per person. Significant support is also provided by voluntary work by Shell employees and donations of equipment.
