Corporate volunteering
Corporate volunteering at Nornickel promotes employee involvement in charitable activities and in addressing social issues and provides opportunities for personnel self‑fulfilment and improvement of social well‑being while also strengthening the Company’s ties with local communities, charitable foundations, and other stakeholders.
The Company's socially significant volunteer initiatives are aimed at developing local communities and improving the well‑being of local residents, enhancing operational efficiency through better internal communications, creating soft skills, and providing non‑financial incentives.
Plant of Goodness
In 2023, the Plant of Goodness won the Employer Brand Award & Summit in the Good Deeds category, which includes social projects involving employees and aimed at supporting local communities, volunteering, and charity.
The Plant of Goodness corporate volunteering programme brings together the Company’s expertise and its vast track record of social and environmental initiatives. Since its inception in December 2015, the programme has expanded significantly. Over the eight years, it has expanded its outreach to more than 4,000 people from several hundred participants; the number of annual events has grown sevenfold, from 60 events in 2016 to 410 in 2023. The Plant of Goodness programme is now implemented in all cities where Nornickel operates. Nornickel’s volunteers attend international and Russian forums and expert platforms as participants, speakers, and moderators. The skills and expertise they obtain doing this kind of work help them not just in everyday life, but also in their extra‑professional skills and career pursuits.
Starting out as regular clean‑up days held annually from May to September since 2016, the marathon has now evolved into environmental awareness initiatives in addition to clean‑up, landscaping, and urban improvement. Marathon participants have to accomplish general environmental tasks and complex individual projects.
In 2023, to raise awareness of the environment and the issues of its conservation, the marathon developed various formats of educational games, which serve as a universal tool of environmental education both for children and adults.
Since 2019, the Plant of Goodness volunteers have been running the annual New Year's Eve charity fair. It features handmade items that volunteers from Norilsk, Krasnoyarsk, Moscow, Monchegorsk, Chita, Saratov, Pechengsky and Gazimuro‑Zavodsky districts make during the workshops held in advance. The fair runs in a hybrid format: one can buy a favourite item at a fixed price online at волонтерывсити.рф, attend a sale in one of the cities where the Company operates, or become an auction participant, which is held in person in a TV studio with live shots. Nornickel traditionally doubles the amount of donations raised during the fair. The funds are used to help children with special needs and restore rare animal populations.
Ecological shifts are organised annually in specially protected natural areas in order to foster partnership and communication, boost motivation, learn more about the Company and the environment, and share experience. 2023 saw volunteers:
- place information signs, build comfortable tent platforms, a pontoon, and improve the observation tower on Love Island in Monchegorsk, Murmansk Region;
- take part in the project called The Varlam Island – the Pearl of Pasvik in Nickel, Murmansk Region by arranging nature trails, repairing the reserve’s entrance area, building pavilions and a bridge over a stream, and installing solar panels;
- landscape the tourist reception area and plant oak trees on the historical site of the Ugra National Park, Kaluga Region;
- improve nature trails at the isthmuses of Kapchuk Lake and Lama Lake at the Putoransky Nature Reserve, Krasnoyarsk Region;
- arrange sites for visitors and install information works of art at the Krasnoyarsk Pillars National Park;
- improve the Adon‑Chelon tourist infrastructure at the Daursky Nature Reserve, Trans‑Baikal Territory;
- collect more than 2,000 litres of rubbish, arrange campfire areas, repair stands and a volleyball court on the bank of the Kharaelakh River in Norilsk;
- plant fruit trees to recreate historical gardens and clear a forest area at the Darovoye estate, Moscow Region.
The Icebreaker programme seeks to develop extra‑professional skills of leaders of the Plant of Goodness volunteering association by improving corporate communication and social design skills (creating and implementing initiatives in small towns by making the participants better learn the region’s context and objectives).
In 2023, various events were held in Moscow, Zapolyarny, Monchegorsk, Norilsk, Chita, and at Bystrinsky GOK, including The Night of the Triffids psychological training, business games (Desert Survival, Intuition 2.0 and others), online games, master classes, workshops, and the first festival of cases called Benefit Exchange, which was attended by volunteers from other companies.
There is a feedback mechanism implemented in the form of questionnaires and regular surveys, which helped collect and analyse opinions and suggestions from volunteers interested in improving the programme. Mentorship was a key message of 2023 highlighted during all Icebreaker events.
Programme participants can find like‑minded people from their region and implement a project for the benefit of the community and the whole city through the Map of Useful Actions; in 2023, the platform was updated on the basis of feedback from volunteers who worked with it last season.
In 2023, Nornickel’s volunteers took part in the following events:
- Siberian Perspective eco‑summit dedicated to expert discussions of strategic plans for sustainable development and mechanisms for joint implementation of environmental volunteering projects and partner events. In 2023, the business agenda of the eco‑summit included discussions on conscious consumption and responsible supply chain, as well as the role of businesses and consumers in these processes. The second day of the summit is traditionally dedicated to volunteering. Corporate teams from the mining and metallurgical, chemical, transport, banking and other industries were engaged in landscaping and cleaning of the territory.
- the Garden of Memory international campaign seeks to commemorate everyone who died during the Great Patriotic War. Every year, more than 100 corporate volunteers plant over 2,000 pine seedlings as part of the campaign.
- the all‑Russian “Save a Forest” campaign, the world’s largest reforestation project. Nornickel’s volunteers are reforesting the Kola Peninsula by planting over 2,000 pine seedlings each year.
