While absolute results remain low overall, BHP shows one of the three stronger results in Business Conduct and in Environmental Responsibility, and one of the four stronger results in Community Wellbeing. BHP’s results are also above average for the other three thematic areas.

In Business Conduct, BHP shows one of the stronger results on the issue of tax transparency, publicly disclosing its taxes, its strategy relating to its presence in low-tax jurisdictions, and the tax benefits and tax holidays it receives. Furthermore, BHP discloses the payments it makes to national and sub-national governments and information on its lobbyists and the subject matter of its lobbying efforts. In Environmental Responsibility, BHP has publicly disclosed information on the location and safety of its tailings storage facilities, and committed to a mitigation hierarchy approach to prioritise the prevention and avoidance of environmental impacts above measures to minimise, restore or offset the residual impacts. In Community Wellbeing, BHP shows stronger evidence on the issue of systems to ensure its operations conduct human rights due diligence processes, as a means of implementing its human rights policy.

As evidence of BHP’s continuous improvement efforts since the RMI Report 2020, the company shows evidence of having reviewed the effectiveness of its Indigenous Peoples Policy and Strategy in 2020 in consultation with Indigenous leaders.

BHP is associated with a leading practice on redesigning PPE and workwear to ensure it is fit-for-purpose for all workers, including women and pregnant women.

On the other hand, BHP’s overall results are limited by weak evidence of action on a number of issues, including for example tracking and reviewing its performance on preventing bribery and corruption and planning for the management of post-closure transition for workers. The company also shows limited evidence of systematic action on identifying and addressing how climate change can exacerbate the impacts of its operations on its workforce, affected communities, and the environment.

In the mine-site assessment, BHP ranks 6th among the 40 companies, though with an average mine-site score of only 14%. Moreover, BHP’s results in the mine-site-level assessment are very variable. While six of its mine sites score between 13-18%, the other two mine sites assessed show much lower results. Six of the eight mine sites do not show any relevant evidence on five issues: local employment, local procurement, safety of workers, women workers, and living wage.