Investment in human capital of Russian mining companies: institutional factors and strategic directions for sustainable development of single-industry towns

<jats:p>This study examines the transformation of human capital investment in the Russian mining companies from corporate social expenditures into a strategic resource for sustainable development of single-industry towns. The relevance of this research is explained by a projected shortage of up to 300,000 fuel-and-energy specialists by 2030, the RUB 112.6 billion net loss of coal companies in 2024, and asset concentration in single-industry towns where the budget-forming businesses generate 32–65% of the regional tax revenues. The hypothesis is made that the strategic directions of the industry are determined by the structure of human capital investment, measured via the integral index IHC with weights 0.30; 0.25; 0.25; 0.20 for education, health, occupational safety and social support. The objective is to justify strategic directions for human capital development in the Russian mining companies through the investment and institutional factors of single-industry town sustainability. The methods include the comparative strategy analysis, industry benchmarking, index assessment, scenario factor analysis. Investment into the top-5 mining companies went up from RUB 35.2 to 50.7 billion in 2022–2024 (+44.0%); the industry-average training expenditure per employee reached RUB 29,600/year against RUB 9,800 country-wide (3.02×); the LTIFR of Polyus (0.12) matches the global benchmark, while those of Metalloinvest (0.57) and Nornickel (0.64) exceed the ICMM average of 0.52; the I_HC ranges from 56.6 to 85.2 (the industry average 71.5). A human-capital maturity methodology is formulated with the “leadership”, “development”, and “lagging” zones; three critical gaps are identified, i.e. the low density of corporate universities in single-industry towns, insufficient digitalisation of contractor training platforms, and limited use of sustainability-linked financing for the social programmes.</jats:p>