Nornickel will continue to implement its social, industrial, and environmental projects despite the current situation, said Andrey Grachev, Vice President for Federal and Regional Programmes at Nornickel, speaking at the forum.

**Plenary session of the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum 2022**

“Nornickel’s goals remain unchanged. Our first priority is to ensure stable operation of our production facilities, secondly, we need to guarantee the fulfilment of all our obligations under contracts, and finally, we need to meet all our social obligations to our employees and people in the cities where the Company operates,” said Mr Grachev.

At an ESG roadshow, Nornickel presented its initiatives in this field, including the unique Sulphur Programme.

“There is public demand for quality of life and quality of the environment, with the two being closely linked. Today, economic development is first and foremost measured by these two criteria. Nornickel’s portfolio includes many large-scale and even unparalleled ESG projects. Over the past two years, we have developed and implemented a corporate management model in this area,” said Andrey Bougrov, Senior Vice President for Sustainable Development at Nornickel.

Last year, the Company’s Board of Directors approved the Environmental and Climate Change Strategy, designed to considerably improve Nornickel’s environmental performance. It envisages about 300 environmental initiatives until 2030 with a total over RUB 680 bn in investments.

Environmental monitoring is another important focus area for the Company. Nornickel has come up with an initiative and already installed 16 monitoring stations in Norilsk. They are currently working in a pilot mode, but will start transmitting data online in the summer of 2022.

The future of the labour market was among the forum’s main topics. The labour market is facing a “perfect storm”, which has to do with a labour gap, as well as demographic, climatic and infrastructural factors. Darya Kryachkova, Nornickel’s Vice President for Human Resources, spoke about measures that major industrial companies are taking to cope with this situation.

According to her, Nornickel has two programmes aimed at tackling these issues. The medium-term programme includes five areas. The first involves transition to remote work format, in which the place of work and residence will not necessarily be the same. The second is creating recruitment centres in other regions. Nornickel has already opened recruitment centres in Norilsk and Orsk. The third is switching some of the processes to a shift-camp work mode. The fourth is strengthening the Company’s value proposition. This includes not only salary, which already is among the highest in the industry and since 1 January 2022 has been increased by 20% in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The fifth area is comprehensive employee support. Today, we need to retain each and every qualified candidate, focusing on their training and onboarding.

The long-term programme provides for introducing new technologies to the workplace. Production facilities are becoming more technologically advanced, and to stay competitive, companies need to improve digital literacy of their employees, providing them with additional opportunities to grow professionally and improve their skills. “I see a huge potential for technology and great willingness of our people to learn. Apart from making these tools available to them, we should send them a message that there is still a lot to be learned in their professional careers. This process should be ongoing. In this context, we are making every effort to develop and move forward, offering new tools and technologies and working with universities to attract young talent,” said Darya Kryachkova.

Nornickel to carry on with projects in Siberia