OMV Petrom holds itself accountable for safeguarding the human rights of its workers, including those related to non-discrimination, fair pay, reasonable working hours, and employee representation, as well as for safeguarding these rights outside the walls of our business, in the community and the supply chain. Our external obligations in the area of human rights relate to equality and non-discrimination, security, primary healthcare, labor rights in the supply chain (including fair wages and working hours), education, poverty reduction, land rights, timely informed consultation with our communities as well as other relevant topics. Our Human Rights Policy Statement outlines our commitments to human rights. It sets out our understanding and responsibility for the protection of human rights in our business environment. It is our guiding principle for dealing with human rights issues in all aspects of our daily business life.
The internal human rights Matrix further explains our commitments. It serves as the foundation for our operations in the area of human rights and as a key tool for its execution. The Group has set out its obligations in this area. This also covers sensitive areas of security arrangements and supply chain management. categorized into essential, expected, and desirable, our responsibilities cover relations with relevant stakeholders, such as employees, communities, contractors, business partners, and customers. The Matrix examined human rights issues in all business practices along the value chain; it serves as an umbrella for work already undertaken and allowed for the translation of practices into company directives.
The OMV Human rights Matrix is a tool used to:
- map human rights responsibilities
- help managers assess identified gaps
Human rights issues addressed in the matrix:
- equality,
- security,
- forced labor,
- child labor,
- health and safety,
- adequate remuneration,
- freedom of association and collective bargaining,
- property,
- procedural rights and effective remedy,
- social security,
- standard of living,
- education,
- minorities and indigenous rights and religions, and
- freedom of expression and assembly.
Our approach regarding the Human rights contribute to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals:
SDG 4 – target 4.7 – through our entire array of human rights issues addressed
- SDG 8 – target 8.7 – by ensuring full compliance with UN Goal of eliminating all forms of child labor or forced labor
Why is this important?
Human rights are inalienable, and every person is inherently entitled to them. Human rights represent a universal value that guides our conduct in every aspect of our activities. As a major regional energy player, we have a duty to foster an ethical company culture that recognizes moral obligations towards the members of the communities in which we operate. It is part of our deepest commitments to address social concerns and to increase awareness of operative and social risks within our core business.
When protecting human rights and avoiding becoming complicit in human rights abuses across our sphere of influence, we consider that our responsibility goes beyond the company’s borders and we focus also on our employees, our business partners, our suppliers and contractors, the local community, government and state bodies, and the wider society.
We strive to conduct the business in alignment with our role as a good corporate citizen, with respect for people, security of our operations and protection of our company’s reputation.
Our commitment
OMV Petrom respects human rights as contained in the Universal Declaration of Human rights and in internationally recognized treaties, including the International Labor Organization (ILO) core treaties. Accordingly, OMV Petrom has signed the UN Global Compact and is fully committed to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights as well as the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. OMV Petrom’s commitment to human rights is embedded in its business approach and supports our adherence to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Following a process of peer research, feedback from benchmarking agencies, ESG rating agencies, reporting requirements as well as expected upcoming legal requirements, the Group has reviewed the Human Rights policy. This updated policy includes the CEO’s personal commitment to human rights and includes new content in order to meet stakeholder expectations, business best practice, and expected new legislations.
The most notable updates include:
- Description of specific human rights commitments:
- Rights of workers
- Security & human rights
- Vulnerable groups (children, women, human rights defenders, migrant workers, indigenous people)
- Commitment to just transition and right to environment
- Commitment to provide remedy to correct negative impact
- Due diligence updates
In the short and medium term, OMV Petrom’s target is to train to all employees on the topic of human rights.
The Sustainability Department at the OMV Petrom Group is responsible at the Group level for the coordination of activities and for reporting our performance on human rights, including awareness-raising and training.
No operations or suppliers were identified to have significant risk for incidents of child labor or considered to have significant risk of forced labor.
All our social activities embed human rights aspects, and the responsibilities lay with the management of various departments to act and mitigate.
The Sustainability Department is in charge of site implementation of our policy related to human rights impact on communities, while the Procurement Department is in charge of managing human rights issues in the supply chain, HSSE Department is in charge of security-related human rights issues. Concerns related to labor rights are handled by the People & Culture Department.
We regard grievance mechanisms as a key tool for preventing and managing adverse impacts on local communities, employees, and other stakeholders.
Following the UN Effectiveness Criteria, we aim to address all grievances received, regardless of whether they stem from real or perceived issues and whether the complainant is identified or anonymous.
Following the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human rights, our Human rights Due Diligence Process encompasses the following four steps:
- assessing actual and potential human rights impacts associated with our current and future business activities
- integrating and acting upon the findings in our activities
- tracking effectiveness of our actions
- communicating on how these impacts are being addressed
We are committed to a rightsholders’ perspective, ensuring that next to business-related risks, actual and potential impact on our stakeholders’ rights is professionally assessed and acted upon accordingly. This ongoing due diligence process thus makes use of external resources and expertise and includes external stakeholders, in particular impacted groups.
Regularly, OMV Petrom contracts third-party experts to support in evaluating and mitigating the Company’s exposure to human rights risks for our operations as well as for conducting due diligence in the case of new country entry risks.
In 2022, we increased our focus on human rights topics within our supply chain.
An e-learning human rights course from MySF platform is provided to all employees with computer access. This training has been updated in 2022 following the revised Human rights policy and it is mandatory for all employees to complete.
- New revised mandatory human rights training for all employees starting late 2022, both on- and off-line
- Inclusion of human rights topics on quarterly meetings with contractors
- Roll out of an internal communication campaign, in light of the revised group policy, to increase awareness of human rights topics
- Following the deployment of the new e-learning, in Q1/23, a material will be prepared to facilitate face-to-face training for those employees without computer access, for whom this offline training will also be mandatory
In 2022, we worked specifically on:
- Revising the Human rights policy statement
- Preparing learning tools for mandatory human rights topics and launching the new e-learning
- Starting internal awareness campaign for revised policy in particular and human rights topics in general
- Increasing awareness of human rights topics along our supply chain
In 2022 was set up a task force contained of representatives from Compliance, Procurement, HSSE, Sustainability, HR, and Legal and was developed a human rights violations prevention plan for OMV Petrom sites, both with the objective of intensifying human rights management in the business relationships. Some of the measures are the inclusion of human rights in quarterly meetings with contractors, awareness campaigns for our own staff and contractors, and the training of HSSE auditors on human rights.
2,238 employees from OMV Petrom Group were trained on human rights through our e-learning course, which has also been updated in late-2022 with more extensive and detailed content; out of the total number 632 are women and 1606 are men. Approximately 859 training hours were provided.
OMV Petrom’s target for 2025 is to offer training to all employees as e-learning for those with computer access and face-to-face for those without computer access.
As an action plan to achieve this target, in 2022 we have launched an online training alongside the revised strategy. For the face-to-face training, materials were finalized by the end of the year and the training for the applicable employees will commence in 2023. A series of continuous communication campaigns to encourage the completion of the training are in due course.
To ensure that all OMV Petrom Group employees receive human rights training, we will continue to update our human rights e-learning tool.
- Enhance internal communications towards own employees in light of revised group policy in order to:
- Increase awareness of human rights topics in general
- Ensure the completion of mandatory training, including dedicated training tools for employees without access to a PC
- Empower employees to look out and speak-up in case of alleged violations of human rights
- Increase focus on human rights topics along our supply chain by the inclusion of such topics on quarterly meetings with contractors, renewed attention during supplier audits, targeted communications towards contractors (i.e. letters), potential spot-checks