Senior Lead, Social Responsibility

The core of this role is the human side of the operation's health, safety, environment and community standards. Reporting to the Manager, Community & Indigenous Affairs, the Senior Lead owns the development and execution of strategies for engaging Communities of Interest on regional issues tied to land, air and water, plus project-specific consultation. Day to day this means building and maintaining relationships with local communities, stakeholder groups, regional governments and regulators, and making sure commitments made to them are actually delivered. A second cluster of work sits with risk and regulation. The role leads social risk assessments and supports mitigation plans for regulatory applications and project development, and it participates in regulatory consultations with local governments and the public. Agreement development, implementation and continuous improvement fall here too, which means the person is involved both when a participation agreement is negotiated and in the years afterwards when it has to be honoured. Third, the role carries communication, investment and reporting duties. That includes community development initiatives and community investment, internal and external engagement communications, input into annual budgets, and keeping engagement records current in the company's information management systems. Support to senior management reporting rounds out the mandate.

The most distinctive learning here is in the mechanics of Participation Agreement negotiation and implementation inside a regulated mining context. Few roles give you responsibility for both the negotiation phase and the multi-year implementation that follows, and that end-to-end exposure is difficult to acquire elsewhere. You would also build fluency in British Columbia's consultation framework and how social risk assessments are used to support regulatory applications and project approvals. On the environmental side, the role touches land, air and water issues, so you can expect to develop working knowledge of the technical files that drive community concern in the Elk Valley, including water quality. That combination of social process knowledge and environmental literacy is valuable and not common. Beyond the technical, the role offers real practice in high-stakes negotiation, cross-cultural engagement with Indigenous Peoples, and crisis-adjacent communication when issues escalate. Working with regulators, regional governments and internal operations teams means you would see how corporate decisions are actually made, which is useful preparation for any senior stakeholder-facing role later. Formal training may exist in negotiation or safety leadership, but the strongest development is likely on the file itself.

The baseline is at least eight years spent in community relations, communications, consultation, negotiation, health and safety or operations, with a degree or diploma in communications, business, social sciences or a comparable mix of education and experience. This is not a role for someone stepping up into community relations for the first time. Resource industry exposure is called out as an asset, and it likely counts for a lot, because the technical vocabulary of land, air and water issues is hard to learn from the outside. On the technical side, a hiring manager will look for hands-on experience running consultation processes under a regulatory framework, ideally for development projects or mine permitting, and for having actually negotiated and then implemented a Participation Agreement rather than just contributing to one. Knowledge of provincial consultation requirements in British Columbia, plus familiarity with human rights and community development practice, shapes the profile further. Candidates with a strong grounding in Indigenous relations and a track record of agreements that held up over time will stand out. On the personal side, the posting names collaboration, courage, communication, relationship-building, negotiation and mentoring. Read that as a signal that the role involves internal pushback as much as external diplomacy: defending community commitments inside an operation that is judged on production. The successful candidate will likely be someone who can hold a firm position with a regulator or community and still be trusted across the table.

EVR has disclosed that applications are screened with AI tools, and that the minimum is eight years in community relations, communications or consultation, so your first task is keyword precision. Mirror the language of the posting (Communities of Interest, Participation Agreements, social risk assessment, HSEC, regulatory consultation) and give concrete numbers to back each claim: the number of agreements you negotiated or implemented, the value and reach of community investment programs you ran, and the regulatory files you managed. Vague statements about being a strong relationship-builder will be filtered out before a human reads them. In your cover letter, speak directly to the two audiences that make this role hard: Indigenous Peoples and regional government. EVR operates in the Elk Valley where consultation practice is closely scrutinised, so a short case study of a difficult consultation you repaired, including what you changed in your own approach, will land harder than a list of successes. Mention your willingness to live in or relocate near the Elk Valley; the posting offers relocation assistance, so addressing it signals that you understand this is a community-embedded role rather than a remote corporate one. Before interview, read up on the steelmaking coal context: the Elk Valley selenium and water quality file, the Ktunaxa Nation and other local First Nations, and EVR's current regulatory processes for mine extensions. Expect behavioural questions on courageous safety leadership and negotiation. Prepare a view on how you would balance mine operations, regulator expectations and community trust when the three pull in different directions.

This is a social sustainability role rather than a decarbonisation one, and it sits at the intersection of the S and G of ESG. The primary focus is community and Indigenous relations: consultation, relationship-building, agreement implementation and community investment in the Elk Valley. That connects directly to EVR's stated commitment to responsible resource development and building strong partnerships with communities and Indigenous Peoples. The environmental dimensions come through the issues that communities care about. The role engages on land, air and water matters, which in the Elk Valley means the water quality and selenium conversation that shapes so much of the local debate, as well as the broader effects of mine development. Social risk assessment and mitigation for regulatory applications is where environmental and social concerns meet, and this role sits in that overlap. The governance layer is regulatory compliance and transparency. Managing consultations, publishing engagement and regulatory communications, keeping records in information systems and supporting management reporting are all about being able to demonstrate that commitments were made and kept. For Glencore as a group, which markets itself as supporting decarbonisation while meeting today's energy needs, the credibility of the steelmaking coal business depends in part on this kind of local social performance.

The defining challenge is the gap between the breadth of the mandate and a single role's capacity. The posting lists strategy, relationship management, social risk assessment, regulatory consultation, agreement implementation, community investment, communications, land initiatives and budget tracking. Doing all of these well, in a region with four operating mines and over 5,000 employees, requires constant prioritisation, and something will always be waiting. The external environment in the Elk Valley is demanding. Selenium and water quality concerns, mine extension approvals and the expectations of Indigenous Nations and local communities mean that trust is contested and slow to build. This person will likely face situations where the company's operational or regulatory position and community expectations do not align, and will need to hold that tension without overpromising. Being told internally that a commitment is commercially difficult, while being asked externally to move faster, is a recurring dynamic in this kind of role. There is also a personal dimension: compressed work weeks with alternating Fridays off suggest long days, and community engagement often happens in evenings and at events outside standard hours. Travelling across the Elk Valley communities adds to the load. Resilience, clear boundaries and the ability to keep credibility with people who are sceptical of the industry are part of the job, not extras.

A typical day mixes desk work, meetings and time in the field. It could start with safety and operational updates, then move into a planning session on an engagement strategy for a regional issue or a live project. Part of the day is likely spent preparing materials: consultation documents, regulatory communications, briefings for senior management, or updates to the engagement records system. Budget tracking and reporting tasks tend to fill the gaps between meetings. Externally facing days look different. You might travel to a community or a mine site for a meeting with local government, an Indigenous Nation, or a stakeholder group, sometimes in the evening. Regulatory consultations and agreement implementation discussions require preparation, note-taking and careful follow-up. On days when an issue escalates, the schedule can shift quickly toward internal coordination with environment, legal or operations colleagues and drafting a response. The compressed work week with alternating Fridays off means the working days themselves are long, so a realistic day is full rather than fragmented. Variability is high: a planned office day can become a field day or a crisis-response day, depending on what the community or regulator raises.

The reporting line into the Manager, Community & Indigenous Affairs puts this role one step below a functional leadership position, so a credible path runs toward that manager role or an equivalent social performance leadership position elsewhere in the Glencore group. Given that EVR sits inside a global operation with assets across many jurisdictions, strong performance on high-visibility files such as mine extension consultations could open lateral moves into group HSEC, social performance or sustainability functions internationally. The role also carries negotiation and agreement implementation ownership, which builds a rarer profile than general community relations work. People who can demonstrate that they have negotiated and then delivered on Participation Agreements are scarce in the mining sector, and that track record tends to be portable into senior advisory, consultancy or corporate affairs roles. Development in the narrower sense is less structured: this is not a rotational graduate program. Growth will likely come from the complexity of the files you take on, mentorship from senior managers, and exposure to regulatory hearings where you present or prepare evidence. If you want formal training, you may need to negotiate it yourself, for example in negotiation, dispute resolution or Indigenous relations.

Externally, the main relationships are with Indigenous Peoples and their leadership and technical staff, local and regional governments, community organisations, and provincial regulators. These interactions are continuous rather than transactional: the role owns Communities of Interest engagement strategies, so the same people will be met repeatedly across years, and the quality of those relationships is the measure of success. Regulatory authorities sit in a different register, more formal and evidence-based, tied to applications and consultations. Internally, the role reports to the Manager, Community & Indigenous Affairs and works closely with operations, environment, health and safety, legal and communications teams. Expect to brief senior management, contribute to annual budget cycles, and coordinate with colleagues on mine sites who hold the operational knowledge you need. Agreement implementation in particular requires operations to follow through, which makes influence and persuasion internal skills as much as external ones. There is also a Glencore group dimension. EVR sits within a multinational natural resources company, so group standards, HSEC requirements and reporting expectations will shape how local work is documented and prioritised. Stakeholder management here means translating between a global corporate framework and the specific realities of the Elk Valley.