Safe, Inclusive and Innovative Operations
People are at the core of our business. By keeping our people safe, providing well-paid jobs and fostering inclusivity and diversity in our workforce, our operations contribute to the social and economic development of the communities in which we work.
Occupational Health and Safety
Protecting the health and safety of our employees, contractors, suppliers and communities is our first priority and a cornerstone of our operating philosophy. We are focused on driving an engaged safety-first culture, as part of our commitment to a zero-harm workplace.
Eldorado’s SIMS contains occupational health and safety standards that set minimum performance requirements for all Eldorado sites and actions our corporate Health and Safety Policy.
Our Kışladağ and Efemçukuru mines in Türkiye and the Kassandra Mines in Greece are independently certified to ISO 45001. The Mining Association of Canada’s Safety and Health Protocol is being implemented across our operations as part of Eldorado’s broader adoption of the Towards Sustainable Mining program within SIMS.
High-risk and safety-sensitive activities are identified in Eldorado’s Golden Rules, which provide requirements for health and safety risk identification and management. Every person entering an Eldorado site is required to carry a copy of the Golden Rules as part of their PPE. Eldorado holds employees and contractors to the same standards for safety and health, and all workers receive health and safety training at induction and periodically according to Eldorado’s Golden Rules Health & Safety Handbook.











Strengthening Our Safety Culture
We continuously look to strengthen our safety culture by taking a holistic view towards safety leadership. A culture of safety means that each individual values their safety and the safety of those around them; having this culture allows for our policies, procedures and systems to be implemented effectively and leads to safety-conscious behaviour.
We focus on strengthening our safety culture by continuing engagement with front-line workers. Our Health and Safety Policy reflects our commitments to foster a strong safety culture, through promoting greater awareness and ownership of safety objectives and performance across all levels of the organization. We encourage and facilitate the sharing of health and safety information across all of our operating regions to build knowledge of health and safety practices throughout the Company.
Technology and Innovation to Improve Health and Safety
As part of our continuous improvement efforts, we study the use of new technologies that can help our workers accomplish tasks more safely and reduce the risk of harm to people and the environment. In our underground mines at Efemçukuru, Olympias and Lamaque, innovations in underground-communications technology have allowed us to implement tagging and tracking technology for our equipment and our workers. Tagging and tracking involves providing employees with transmitters so that everyone can be accounted for, even if they are working in areas of restricted visibility. This technology allows us to reduce the risks of collisions, helps our workers avoid mobile machinery, and creates opportunities to adopt other beneficial technologies such as ventilation on demand.

Keeping our people safe is our first priority. To do so, we are continually looking for ways to strengthen our health and safety practices and implement innovative solutions.
Our underground mines employ a potentially life-saving digital system of electronic safety beacons carried by each worker as an extension of their PPE. A network of digital receivers is installed throughout the mine, providing our technicians in the control room with information about the whereabouts of personnel and equipment and the ability to locate an employee whose beacon has been triggered in a dangerous situation. This allows emergency personnel to respond and aids in the safe evacuation of the mine. We are working to integrate this system with other technologies, including remote and automated ventilation on demand, to provide people working underground with fresh air and use energy efficiently.
Across our operations, we have been implementing innovative technologies to improve the safety of operating heavy mining equipment. Our Lamaque operation has remote underground mucking technology to conduct work safely and quickly when no personnel are working nearby, allowing the operator to work out of the control room at the surface. Our haul truck operators at Kışladağ receive stringent simulator training to prepare them for the challenging work environment sitting behind the wheel in the open pit. Drivers gain simulated experience in various real-world situations, such as inclement weather, day and night, variable road conditions, and a number of parking and loading/unloading settings. Simulation retraining is required at least once per year.
The use of aerial drones was recently introduced at Kışladağ with a number of innovative applications. Beyond mapping, we are able to gather data regarding on-site activities that can be analyzed to provide information related to equipment, vehicle traffic and personnel on-site, which are used to isolate hazards and identify continuous improvement opportunities in our occupational health and safety practices.
Health and Safety Beyond the Mine
We consider local stakeholders’ health and safety in our activities. As we transport materials to and from mine sites, the safety of our workers relates directly to the safety of local communities and neighbours. We require our workers and contractors to adhere to all local transportation laws and regulations. An important part of being a responsible operator and a good neighbour is respecting common areas outside of our mining sites (such as roadways), and Eldorado is committed to transportation safety.
To promote health and safety in the communities near our operations, health programs at our sites provide basic medical treatments and services for employees and contractors, including immunizations and medical checkups. At some sites, like Efemçukuru, local community members are welcome to visit our physicians to receive checkups free of charge, while we support access to healthcare off site across our operating regions.
Emergency Preparedness
By planning for emergencies, we identify, prioritize and implement controls for potential hazards at our sites. Emergency plans help to safeguard our employees, the environment and local communities. Our emergency response teams comprise employees with additional training in emergency protocols, procedures and equipment.
Our emergency response teams also maintain close working relationships with community-based emergency responders, and provide additional support and resources to local responders in the event of a serious off-site incident. In cases of natural disaster and irregular weather events, such as floods and forest fires, which may become more frequent due to climate change, our emergency responders are prepared to assist community-based response teams to protect our workers, assets and neighbours.
Our operating regions also have crisis-management plans in place and are working to ensure consistency with MAC’s TSM Crisis Management and Communications Planning Protocol.
Inclusive Diversity
We believe diverse and inclusive teams are a competitive advantage for Eldorado. We recognize and seek to foster diversity of identity and cognitive diversity across our organization. This includes gender, race, ethnicity, language, sexual preference, geography, religion, disability, age, and any other demographic characteristic that, in combination, define our sense of individual identity.
Cognitive diversity is also essential in mining, which often requires specialized skills and expertise; this form of diversity includes our background, acquired skills, knowledge, experiences and other attributes that influence our thinking, decision making and performance. Actively including diverse people, perspectives and ideas is critical to our business and our ability to create shared value.
Diversity in Leadership
Eldorado’s Diversity Policy sets aspirational targets to:
- Maintain a minimum of 30% women directors on our Board of Directors;
- Achieve a minimum of 30% women on our senior management team by year end 2023;
- Have at least an additional 10% of directors on our Board of Directors be represented by one or more designated groups (beyond women) by year end 2023; and
- Have at least an additional 10% of our senior management team be represented by one or more designated groups (beyond women) by year end 2023.
Eldorado defines designated groups as women, Indigenous peoples (First Nations, Inuit and Métis), visible minorities, persons with disabilities, and LGBTQIA2S+. As of January 2022, we have achieved our aspirational targets at the Board of Directors level.
Supporting Opportunities for Women and Other Designated Groups
Everywhere we operate, we seek to provide opportunities for people of diverse ages, genders and cultural backgrounds.
We pride ourselves as an employer of choice in the jurisdictions where we operate, including at our Lamaque mine in Val-d’Or and the surrounding region of Abitibi-Témiscamingue. Amid one of the lowest unemployment rates in the province due to significant mining induced economic development and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the region is subject to a labour shortage. We continued our “Sous la Surface” or Under the Surface campaign in 2022 to highlight that it is the diverse people who make up our workforce and their diverse backgrounds and perspectives that are the keys to our success, setting apart Eldorado as a great place to work.
The objectives of the campaign are to recognize and celebrate the contributions, perseverance and dedication of the amazing people who make up Eldorado, and to uncover what lies beneath the surface of our shared success. We are grateful and proud to share the personal stories of our Diversity Ambassadors who live and breathe Eldorado’s values every day, both in their work and in their communities, and why they choose to work with us.
READ JOE’S FULL STORY HERE. (FRENCH)
TO READ MORE STORIES FROM OUR DIVERSITY AMBASSADORS, CLICK HERE. (FRENCH)
It’s a company that takes care of its people, that has good values. I was welcomed here by extraordinary people. We also talk about the environment, it’s not like that everywhere. It is a responsible mine where human contact is important. It’s the family side that matters and people are close. I always recommend my company to people.
Joe Kongo, Exploration Geologist, Eldorado Gold Québec

In partnership with the NeuroLeadership Institute, we apply tools and training backed by neuroscience to help leaders practice inclusion, speak up productively, and mitigate bias.

We are a proud sponsor of Artemis Project, an organization that brings together women-led businesses related to mining to accelerate collaboration, innovation and entrepreneurship for better business outcomes.

Eldorado is proud to be a Silver Partner of International Women in Mining (IWiM), as part of our commitment to foster career and leadership opportunities for women in our workforce.

We have been working to speak openly and destigmatize mental health through “Not Myself Today”.

Eldorado is a participant in SHARE, a European Union sponsored project focused on promoting gender equality, inclusive culture, and work-life balance.
Eldorado recognizes that our successes in problem-solving to tackle challenges is dependent on the diversity of our people – their personal identities, backgrounds, skills, knowledge and experiences – and inclusion is the key to unlocking their full potential. Our dedication to enhancing identity diversity extends beyond our own workforce, which is why we have partnered with Artemis Project, a social enterprise working to increase the presence of women-owned businesses, women contractors and independent women consultants in mining to drive innovation, collaboration and entrepreneurship for our collective success.
We are proud to be part of a network that aims to break barriers for historically under-represented women and women-owned businesses by fostering marketing opportunities to present their business plans to internal decision-makers and for enhanced chances of landing new business. In 2022, we actively worked with Artemis Project to set a foundation for creating opportunities for women entrepreneurs at Eldorado, who previously may not have had the ability to secure such opportunities. Among breaking barriers for women-owned businesses in mining, our objectives also included increasing their visibility, advancing entrepreneurial capacity, and strengthening diversity, inclusivity and equity ambitions in procurement. Through this foundational work, we were able to celebrate three key successes:
- Executive endorsement – this included Eldorado’s President & CEO as the Executive Sponsor and meeting participation from four senior leaders, as well as internal and external communications
- Exposure opportunities for women-owned business entrepreneurs – this included 12 delegation meetings with participation from 14 or more senior leaders, ten departments, and 25 women-owned business entrepreneurs
- Deal flow – this included six proposals presented to internal decision-makers with a win ratio of 50% within six months, and two of the three member businesses are re-engaged for 2023
We are excited to continue our partnership with Artemis Project, creating tangible and shared benefits for our operations, our women-owned business partners, and the broader mining industry.
We believe that including diverse voices is critical to our success. We are proud that Eldorado is a place where values of collaboration and integrity are put to work every day and encouraged through the continuous improvement of our safety and inclusivity practices across our operations.
In 2022, we updated SIMS to include a new set of standards for inclusion and diversity. These standards affirm our ongoing commitment to embedding practices that foster fairness and mitigate the impacts of bias in our activities. We want to give everyone an equal opportunity to contribute, grow and foster a sense of belonging and safety. We also introduced a new global Respectful Workplace Policy outlining Eldorado’s commitments and expectations for a physically and psychologically safe work environment free from harassment, discrimination and workplace violence as an extension of our Code of Ethics and Business Conduct.
To support these commitments and standards following human rights assessments conducted across all sites in 2021 and 2022, we created multiple channels for workers across our operations to report any concerns of discrimination, harassment and/or workplace violence, with consideration for local language needs and accessibility. To help gauge our progress and guide further effort toward ensuring a safe workplace, we also established a global baseline for worker awareness and willingness to report concerns. We set our baseline by conducting a global Integrity Pulse Survey that captured the experiences of more than 70% of our employees.
In a year of firsts, we also completed a gender pay equity review across our global operations in 2022, which was catalyzed, in part, by what we learned during participation in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index. While the indicated adjusted pay gap was less than two percent in most jurisdictions, we recognize that there is always room to improve, and the gender pay gap is dynamic in any organization. We will continue investigating opportunities to reduce systemic bias in our pay practices, hiring and career development. Consistent with SIMS, actions arising from the gender pay equity review are embedded in Inclusive Diversity Roadmaps for each of our operating jurisdictions, which will continue through 2023 and beyond.