Hydro Brazil: Grievance Handling across Operations

Hydro is a global aluminium company. Based in Norway, the company has 13,000 employees involved in activities in more than 40 countries on all continents.

Brazil is Hydro’s main source of the important raw material bauxite and is the country where the company has the most employees – or more than 5,000 if long-term contractors are included.

In Brazil Hydro extract raw materials in Paragominas and Trombetas and refine bauxite to alumina (aluminium oxide) at the world’s largest alumina refinery, Alunorte. Hydro also produce 460,000 tonnes of aluminium metal annually at the Albras plant, which they partly own.

Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN) in Trombetas, in the western region of Pará, has an annual production capacity of 18 million metric tons of bauxite and approximately 1,300 permanent workers. Source: Hydro Brazil

Hydro bauxite plant from its own deposit in Paragominas, in the state of Pará, one of the most northern states in Brazil. Source: Hydro Brazil

Grievance Handling with Darzin Software

Hydro Brazil implemented Darzin in 2013 as a central engagement and complaints management system for all operations. Meetings, and discussions with local communities, government agencies, business groups, research institutions, training and education providers, interested groups, and media are also tracked and reported in Darzin by individual operations and across the whole organisation. Information such as sponsorships and corporate events are also recorded in Darzin.

Darzin’s grievance handling module proves an important tool for Hydro to effectively handle complaints and enquiries. All grievances are recorded in Darzin, responsible persons are assigned with due dates and close out dates. All corrective actions and communications related to the complaints are also recorded so the entire history of how the complaints are captured and reported upon.

Investment in local vocational training and capacity building. Source: Hydro Brazil

Hydro staff from various operations and locations access Darzin regularly to input data. When a stakeholder profile is updated or an interaction is entered into Darzin, all team members benefit instantly from the new information. While the ground staff uses Darzin to manage the daily communications the managers can log on periodically to see an overview of engagement activities, outstanding tasks and grievances, and run ad-hoc reports.

Darzin provides tools for consistent data management and reporting across the operations. The same classification tree which comprises of theme and sub-themes is used for the categorisation of stakeholder feedback and grievances for all different sites. This enables the teams to consistently track & report on stakeholder issues across Hydro Brazil. This also allows the teams to manage engagement activities for their own sites while the corporate communication team has the oversight of all data captured in Darzin.

One of the regular interactions with the local children. Source: Hydro Brazil