The well-being of people — whether our workforce, partners or community members — is essential to the success of our business and at the core of all we do.
We are deeply committed to engaging and building trusting, ongoing relationships with the people most impacted by our operations. The programs and progress described in this section reflect our focus on empowering our workforce and the people in our host communities to thrive today and into the future. Our efforts, which are focused on protecting and supporting our workforce, host communities and Indigenous Peoples, also aim to support future resilience in a changing world.
Health & Safety
OUR APPROACH
Safety is a core company value and is foundational to our sustainability approach. Our highest priority is the health, safety and well-being of our employees, contractors, suppliers and the communities where we operate. We believe that health and safety considerations are integral to, and fundamental for, our operational success and efficiency and ultimately to our ability to deliver long-term value to our stakeholders.
We strive to achieve zero workplace fatalities, high-risk incidents, injuries and occupational illnesses by creating a safe and healthy workplace. This includes providing the training, tools and resources needed so our workforce can identify risks and consistently apply effective controls. We share information and key learnings about potential fatal events, high-risk incidents, and best practices throughout the company, and we engage with industry peers and professional organizations to learn and continuously improve our health and safety program.
Our Safe Production Matters strategy is focused on fatality prevention and continuous improvement through robust management systems, safe work behaviors and our safety culture, supported by leaders empowering our teams to work safely. We further seek to prevent fatalities and high-risk incidents by leveraging technology to support safe work practices in the field and leveraging analytics to support data-driven decisions made in combination with behavioral science principles.
Climax Molybdenum Company, a subsidiary of Freeport-McMoRan, sustainability programs are consistent with commitments set forth in company-wide policies defined by Freeport-McMoRan. To learn more, please see our website: fcx/sustainability or 2023 ANNUAL REPORT ON SUSTAINABILITY
Workforce
OUR APPROACH
Freeport-McMoRan believes our people are the foundation of our success and a competitive advantage. Our ability to successfully recruit, retain, develop and advance talented employees is paramount. We focus on attracting and retaining talented people by offering quality employment with fair and equitable compensation and benefits, as well as with opportunities for professional development and advancement. We prioritize a highly engaged, agile workforce and, in addition to safety, we aim to support the overall health and well-being of our workforce by providing access to health and wellness resources, and offering opportunities for flexible work schedules, where practicable, among other efforts.
We operate in regions of varying ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds, where we often are the largest employer in our host communities. As such, we are committed to fostering a company culture that is not only safety-focused, respectful, and inclusive, but also that is representative of the communities where we operate. To learn more about our workforce policies, please see our Corporate Governance webpage.
We seek to design our programs and initiatives with standardized processes and priorities while being adaptable to site specific or situational circumstances. Site-based employees implement customized programs to meet their site-specific needs. We believe each site’s leadership team knows their site best and how to successfully apply our human capital management programs.
At the end of 2022, Freeport-McMoRan’s global workforce totaled approximately 25,600 employees and 48,900 contractors.
Climax Molybdenum Company, a subsidiary of Freeport-McMoRan, sustainability programs are consistent with commitments set forth in company-wide policies defined by Freeport-McMoRan. To learn more, please see our website: fcx/sustainability or 2023 ANNUAL REPORT ON SUSTAINABILITY
Communities & Indigenous Peoples
OUR APPROACH
Freeport-McMoRan strives to work in partnership with our host communities and Indigenous Peoples to earn and maintain their trust and deliver shared value. We not only seek to avoid, minimize and mitigate adverse impacts from our operations, but we also aim to provide long-lasting benefits to our neighbors. We work in partnership with our host communities — which in many cases includes Indigenous Peoples — to help increase resilience and well-being at the individual and community levels to help people thrive over the life of our mines and beyond.
We believe we can best support community and Indigenous Peoples resilience by focusing our efforts in three main areas: (1) education and skill-building; (2) economic opportunity; and (3) community-level capacity building. Within each of these three areas is a fundamental commitment to support the skills necessary to achieve the overarching goal of resilience.
Proactive, ongoing engagements and constructive dialogue are foundational to our approach. This is how we understand actual, potential and perceived impacts on our host communities, build trust, and mutually identify the most relevant social investments and development priorities to address our impacts and support enhanced resilience. We also work actively through engagement and capacity-building activities to support host communities in maximizing the social and economic benefits of our operations.
While we tailor our programs to site-specific dynamics of the operation and host communities, our overarching objectives in partnership with local stakeholders remain consistent: (1) working to build enduring trust, (2) avoid, minimize or mitigate adverse impacts from our operations, (3) maximize the positive benefits, and (4) support our communities in building the resilience necessary to thrive and adapt during and beyond the life of our mines. To learn more about our policies & programs, please see our Corporate Governance webpage.
OUR APPROACH WITH INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
Indigenous Peoples often reside in areas that are home to rich biodiversity and to many of the most diverse peoples, languages and cultures. We acknowledge and respect the social, economic and cultural rights of the Indigenous Peoples who have historically occupied areas within or near our operations or have ancestral connections to these lands, and we also understand that Indigenous Peoples often have special connections to land, water and other natural resources that can be tied to their physical, spiritual, cultural and economic well-being. We are steadfast in our commitment to acknowledge, respect and engage collaboratively with Indigenous Peoples. We strive to understand the values and cultural needs of each group of Indigenous Peoples, develop and maintain ongoing relationships, support effective, ongoing engagement and create opportunities for social benefit, shared value creation and long-term resilience. We do this by consistently applying our Building Trust approach, which aims to foster trust through ongoing engagement, transparency and creating shared value.
CULTURAL HERITAGE
Cultural heritage can be defined as Indigenous Peoples’ or any other population’s unique assets and resources, including, but not limited to tangible assets such as places, buildings, and artifacts, or intangible assets such as practices, customs, religious/spiritual sites and shrines. We recognize that respecting and supporting the cultural heritage of our host communities, including our Indigenous neighbors, is critical to our ongoing social license to operate. While cultural resources linked to the heritage and history of an area are associated with a wide variety of people and places, within the context of mining we recognize it is critically important for Indigenous Peoples.
We acknowledge that the nature and location of our mining and processing activities means we have the potential to impact cultural heritage. We seek to avoid, minimize or mitigate negative impacts to cultural heritage through studies or surveys, planning and ongoing engagement with Indigenous Peoples and other impacted communities, including providing opportunities for stakeholders to identify any assets or resources that are culturally or traditionally significant and participating in decisions regarding their protection and management.
We are guided by a fundamental commitment to respect and appreciate the cultural heritage of people in the communities where we operate. This promise is connected to our overarching commitments — such as Human Rights — and it manifests in the choices we make when our operations can adversely impact the culture of our communities and neighbors.
WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT & DEVELOPMENT
Women’s empowerment is a theme across our community engagement and investment work. We believe inclusive and diverse communities that enable full and equal participation of women are stronger, more stable and resilient over the long term. In addition to contributing to the UN SDGs, our empowerment initiatives seek to promote women’s rights through policy advocacy, leadership in the public and private sectors, small business training, supply chain access programs and educational attainment.
The largest of our economic empowerment programs, DreamBuilder — a free, online entrepreneurship training program for women — has reached enrollment of more than 134,000 women across the world (primarily in the U.S., Chile and Peru where we operate). In Peru alone, over 30,000 women were enrolled as of year-end. Now in its eleventh year, the program seeks to equip women with the skills and confidence needed to become financially independent business owners.
Climax Molybdenum Company, a subsidiary of Freeport-McMoRan, sustainability programs are consistent with commitments set forth in company-wide policies defined by Freeport-McMoRan. To learn more, please see our website: fcx/sustainability or 2023 ANNUAL REPORT ON SUSTAINABILITY
Economic Contributions
OUR APPROACH
As an important part of our commitment to responsible production, Freeport-McMoRan aims to be a good corporate citizen in the host communities and countries in which we operate. We contribute to the wealth and prosperity of the countries, regions, and communities by generating economic value that includes tax and royalty payments, which support essential government functions such as education and infrastructure, local hiring and procurement that supports many types of jobs in a community or region, and other direct and indirect community investments. However, it is also important to recognize that mining is an inherently cyclical business with production levels and profits fluctuating over the life of the mine, which can impact our economic and social investments and other sustainability programs.
2022 Freeport-McMoRan Economic Contributions
Please see FCX 2023 Form 10-K for more information.
PHOTO DESCRIPTION: (top) Freeport-McMoRan’s training partnership program with the San Carlos Apache Tribe provides vocational skills and job opportunities to Native American men and women.
© 2024 Climax Molydenum • A Freeport-McMoRan Company