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Customer and stakeholder engagement framework

July 2016

2 Customer and stakeholder engagement framework | July 2016

3Customer and stakeholder engagement framework | July 2016

Contents

1 Introduction .........................................................................................................4

2 Why engage? ......................................................................................................5

3 Our engagement framework ..............................................................................6

4 Who we engage ...................................................................................................8

Pillar 1 – understand our customers, stakeholders, partners and community ........................................................ 8 Our customers .....................................................................................................9 Residential and small businesses (small energy users).....................................9 Commercial and industrial customers (large energy users) ..........................10 Emerging customers ..........................................................................................10 Our community .................................................................................................11 Our stakeholders ..............................................................................................11 Our partners ......................................................................................................12

5 How we engage .................................................................................................13

Pillar 2 – plan for engagement ................................................................... 14 Pillar 3 – allocate clear accountabilities and responsibilities .................. 15 Pillar 4 – deploy best practice techniques ................................................. 17 Pillar 5 – report and explain our actions ................................................... 19

6 How we improve ................................................................................................20

Pillar 6 – monitor and evaluate engagement ............................................ 20 Project-level evaluation ....................................................................................20 Organisational-level evaluation ......................................................................20 Third party accreditation ..................................................................................20 Pillar 7 – build the capacity to engage ...................................................... 22

7 Appendix ............................................................................................................21


1

Introduction

In November 2013, the Ausgrid Executive Leadership Team (ELT) endorsed a Customer Engagement Strategy to help support a closer connection between the views and preferences of our customers and our decisions.

In 2015, we engaged external support to review that strategy and the way we engage as part of our commitment to improve our processes and better embed the views of our customers in our decision-making process.

It was completed with a better understanding that good engagement helps us understand our customers and stakeholders and adapt to meet their changing needs. The review included:

• A desktop analysis of our customer engagement activity between 2013 and 2015.

• Interviews and workshops with internal and external stakeholders.

• Benchmarking with energy network businesses in Australia and the United Kingdom.

The recommendations from the external review were adopted by Ausgrid, including a decision to refine and re-publish the Customer Engagement Strategy. See figure 1.

This document is the outcome of that work. It is our Customer and Stakeholder Engagement Framework because it provides a structure for how we:

• Identify and understand our stakeholders.

• Incorporate customer and stakeholder views into our decision making processes.

• Coordinate and select appropriate engagement activities.

• Report back to our stakeholders on how their views have been considered.

This framework will be subject to a regular cycle of improvement as engagement techniques and stakeholder views change. Key initiatives are outlined within the document to provide a structured way to develop and improve on our engagement practices.

With the support of our ELT and the Board, this document has been updated and improved based on feedback garnered through a workshop held with our stakeholders on 9 May 2016. The outcomes from this workshop can be found on our website. We have also included an Appendix to this document to show the changes made as a result of this feedback.

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Figure 1 Key issues and lessons from our customer and stakeholder review


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Why engage?

In developing this framework, we have considered different processes to identify and understand our customers and stakeholders and how to incorporate their views and preferences within our business. In doing so we have asked ourselves the question, “why should electricity network businesses engage with customers and stakeholders?”

There are a number of good reasons why monopoly network businesses are adopting better engagement practices. These include:

• Increasing expectations from customers, stakeholders, policy makers and governments for transparent decision making.

• Technological advances and changes to energy market services which provide more choices for customers where previously there seemed to be no choice at all.

• Increasing customer service expectations and a need to better respond to customer needs.

• Better engagement practices are viewed as a way to listen, understand and act on customer concerns.

• This in turn will provide a social licence for companies to operate in the communities they serve.

Good engagement will ensure that our business can adapt to meet the changing needs of our customers and stakeholders. It will allow us to understand our customers and how we can improve our services. It will also ensure we use the right tools in the right way, at the right level, to communicate and engage with our customers so that they are listened to, that we provide information they can understand and that we continue to build long-lasting and trusting relationships and partnerships.

At Ausgrid, we will engage with our customers and stakeholder because better engagement leads to better business.

It starts with our leaders, but all our people have an equally important role to understand, listen and act on the views of our customers. Action can lead to change and where it doesn’t it should also lead to more transparent decisions.

At Ausgrid, we will engage with our customers and stakeholders because better engagement leads to better business.


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Our engagement framework

Our engagement framework describes how we will engage with our customers and stakeholders. It builds the processes to help us embed customer and stakeholder feedback into the way we make decisions.

Our framework is structured around seven engagement pillars that describe who we engage, how we engage and how we improve:

Who we engage

1. Understand our customers, stakeholders, partners and community including their issues, interest and capacity to engage with us.

How we engage

2. Plan for early and ongoing engagement using best practice techniques and ensuring appropriate resourcing.

3. Allocate clear accountabilities and responsibilities.

4. Deploy a range of best practice techniques.

5. Report and explain our actions.

How we improve

6. Monitor and evaluate engagement at an organisational and project level.

7. Build capacity within the organisation to engage.

The engagement pillars are illustrated in Figure 2 and described in the following sections. How these pillars relate to the IAP2 values and AER Consumer Engagement Guidelines is shown in Figure 3.

Each section also outlines initiatives that will be used to embed the engagement pillars throughout our organisation. This framework is a starting point for all our engagement activities. It will be supported by more detailed engagement plans for key priority areas, policies, and stakeholder and customer groups.

Our engagement framework describes how we will engage with our customers and stakeholders. It builds the processes to help us embed customer and stakeholder feedback into the way we make decisions.

Our engagement framework is built on the core values for public participation developed by the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2). They state that public participation:

• Is based on the belief that those who are affected by a decision have a right to be involved in the decision-making process.

• Includes the promise that the public’s contribution will influence the decision.

• Promotes sustainable decisions by recognising and communicating the needs and interests of all participants, including decision makers.

• Seeks out and facilitates the involvement of those potentially affected by or interested in a decision.

• Seeks input from participants in designing how they participate.

• Provides participants with the information they need to participate in a meaningful way.

• Communicates to participants how their input affected the decision.

It also incorporates the best practice principles outlined by the AER’s Consumer Engagement Guidelines for Network Service Providers. This includes:

• Clear, accurate and timely communication.

• To be accessible and inclusive.

• Provide transparency.

• Ensure our actions are measurable.

These values and principles also reflect our existing organisational values:

• Safety excellence.

• Respect for people.

• Customer and community focus.

• Continuous improvement.

• Act with integrity.

As we start to embed our engagement framework, we will need to take these IAP2 core values and make them our own. We will need to work with our people so that we have a common understanding of what these core values mean and how we will apply them.


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Figure 2 Ausgrid’s engagement framework

Figure 3 How our pillars relate to the AER Consumer Guidelines and IAP2 core values

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Facilitates the involvement of those potentially affected • •Seeks input from participants in design of participation • • •Provides information so they can particitpate • •Communicates how the information was used • •


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Figure 4 Overview of our customers, stakeholders and partners

Pillar 1 – understand our customers, stakeholders, partners and communityAt Ausgrid we engage with four distinct groups:

• Customers – people or organisations in the community who use electricity supplied by Ausgrid’s infrastructure at properties connected or connecting to our network.

• Community – people and organisations who are or may potentially be impacted by Ausgrid’s network operations. This includes residents, businesses, schools, electricity consumers and community groups.

• Stakeholders – organisations and institutions who speak on behalf of customers or the broader community such as peak associations, consumer groups and regulators and different levels of government.

• Partners – organisations we work with to provide a safe, reliable and affordable supply of electricity and other services. They include electricity retailers, accredited service providers, and other suppliers and contractors.

Understanding these groups is critical to designing our engagement. We need to understand how they use our services and their interest in our business. This framework provides a high-level segmentation as a starting point. We are developing a more detailed customer and stakeholder analysis that will support key projects, initiatives or policies. The outcomes of analysis will be tested on a regular basis both internally and externally with our key stakeholders. It will be updated based on our research and engagement activities and will be supported by our customer segmentation model and stakeholder database. These processes will ensure that everyone in Ausgrid has up to date information on our customer and stakeholders and how to engage with them.

1

Who we engage


Our customers More than 1.65 million homes and businesses are connected to our electricity network across 22,000 square kilometres throughout Sydney, the Central Coast and the Hunter region in NSW.

They comprise:

• Residential properties and small and medium business in both rural and non-rural areas. As small energy users they are billed for their electricity service via an electricity retailer.

• Commercial or industrial customers which, as large energy users, have a direct billing relationship with Ausgrid. They can include government departments, local councils or the operators of large infrastructure like road, rail or water services.

Each year about 15,000 new customers connect to our electricity network, either as individual customers or via large property developers or Accredited Service Providers (ASPs) working on their behalf. These connecting customers are an important customer group and requires a specific engagement plan.

Residential and small businesses (small energy users)

Households and small and medium businesses make up about 99% of our customer base. They are mainly concentrated in densely populated urban areas with some also located in rural or semi-rural areas in the Hunter region and Central Coast.

Our customer base reflects the demographic profile of our areas of operation. It includes low income households, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and a variety of household types and age profiles. They want us to be there when they need us most: during network outages or incidents, to make the network safe from bushfire hazards and to read their meter. They also want us to provide an efficient and value for money service.

We do not have a direct billing relationship with these customers, however a large portion of their electricity bill is made up of network charges that fund the safe and reliable operation of the electricity network. They receive electricity via energy retailers that bill them according to their energy use plus a fixed charge. In most cases our customers will interact with the energy market via energy retailers or organisations, institutions and individuals who can speak on their behalf.

We will need to work with these stakeholders and our partners to reach these customers and build their capacity to engage on energy issues. It is also likely that we will need to build separate engagement plans or models for engaging with some of these customers such as culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities, small business, aged and vulnerable and indigenous communities.


1Commercial and industrial customers (large energy users)

Some large energy users have a direct billing relationship with us, as well as electricity retailers. They include government, commercial and industrial organisations that consume large amounts of electricity and perform an important role in the wider economy and community. Different rules govern how large energy users are billed. They also have specific requirements for safe connection to the electricity network as a poor or unsafe energy supply can have a direct and serious impact on their operations and the wider community.

Our large customers include (but are not limited to): Sydney Airport, Sydney Trains, Sydney Water, large industrial and commercial users of electricity and local councils.

These customers tend to have a higher level of understanding about the energy market. They want to understand changes in Ausgrid’s business and how it may impact their business. Engagement techniques may therefore be more tailored for these customers.

Emerging customers

The energy sector is changing due to emerging technologies such as smart metering, photovoltaic cells, energy storage solutions and electric vehicles. These technologies are changing the nature and function of the network. Australia already has the highest penetration of rooftop solar and is a test bed for battery storage.

While still a minority, some of our customers are increasingly investing in new technologies and partners as alternate means of energy supply. This growing class of customers is increasingly represented by new stakeholders or peak associations who have a willingness to engage on a range of issues across the sector. They are also interested in how we are changing as an organisation to meet the technology changes and what we are doing to address climate change.


Our community Our community includes the neighbourhoods and regions where we operate and supply power. It may include consumers who rely on the safe supply of electricity, but who are not a connected customer. The impact of our operations and business may still have a direct impact on them.

For example people using roads and public transport that are supplied by our network. Or sporting, cultural or artistic groups and supporters who rely on our network for events.

We have a community engagement framework and tools that help guide how we engage and consult with our community. It is consistent and complementary with the approach in this framework.

Our stakeholders Our stakeholders include individuals and organisations that can directly influence either our business or our customers.

Stakeholders with a direct influence on our business tend to be federal or state government agencies (policy makers and regulators) or industry organisations that can influence policy or regulation makers. We also have stakeholders that represent the interests of, or influence, our customers and the community in which we work. These stakeholder groups tend to be industry or advocacy groups. They can also include Local Members of Parliament and state and federal agencies. Their interests in Ausgrid’s business can be as diverse as the customers and consumers that they are representing or influencing, and may be local, regional, state or issue based.

When considering these stakeholders and how we engage with them we take into account their interest and influence on our business. An example of this is found in Figure 5 below. Stakeholders can move within the quadrants over time as interest and influence change. Stakeholders can also influence our mapping by engaging with us and providing feedback on how they want to engage with us.

Figure 5 Stakeholder mapping example

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Our partnersOur partners are groups that help us supply power to our connected customers and our community. They include the 32 electricity retailers that are licensed to operate across our network area. They also include Accredited Service Providers (ASPs), large contractors, agents for connecting small scale renewable generators or sometimes government agencies. We will seek to understand the different needs of our partners and where appropriate build tailored engagement plans to ensure we are working with them to provide better services to our customers.

Key 2016/17 initiatives to understand our customers and stakeholders:We will conduct a baseline research to understand the views and preferences of our customers and stakeholders and their ability to engage with us on issues affecting our business and the electricity market (see section 6.1)

Build our engagement and research program in a way that maximizes meaningful stakeholder participation and makes it less resource intensive for stakeholders.

Finalise and engage on the outcomes and uses of our stakeholder mapping and customer segmentation tool.

Retailers in particular provide an important feedback loop between us and our small energy use customers. It will be important to work with the retailers to ensure that they understand any necessary changes to price and tariff structures so that they may be able to communicate these changes to their customers. They will also help us improve our understanding of the needs and expectations of these customers and help us improve our services to them.


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Our engagement framework is based on the core values for public participation developed by the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2). It also incorporates the best practice principles outlined by the Australian Energy Regulator’s Consumer Engagement Guidelines for Network Service Providers. This includes:

• Clear, accurate and timely communication

• To be accessible and inclusive

• Provide transparency

• Ensure our actions are measurable.

Our stakeholders have also told us that they want our engagement practices to be:

• Genuine and personal – not superficial and compliance driven.

• Tailored to the stakeholder – not a one size fits all approach.

• Simple and targeted – not large complex documents.

• Co-operative and constructive – not a one way dialogue.

• Outwardly focussed – not Ausgrid-centric.

• Up front and early – not once decisions have been made.

Building on this, four of our engagement pillars describe how we engage. These are:

• Planning for engagement (Pillar 2)

• Allocating clear roles and responsibilities (Pillar 3)

• Deploying best practice tools (Pillar 4)

• Reporting and explaining our actions (Pillar 5).

These steps are described further in the following sections.

How we engage


Pillar 2 – plan for engagementPlanning for engagement is important on two levels. At a wider business level, it ensures engagement activities are properly resourced and supported. At a project level, it ensures that staff are clear on what they are engaging on, and why and how engagement activities will be implemented. More importantly it ensures that we are thinking about and planning to engage before decisions are made - making engagement a part of our business as usual process rather than an add on.

Key issues for engagement will be identified on a regular basis from the top down, starting at the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) or from the bottom up, from our people or customer or stakeholder feedback through lessons learnt sessions, previously raised issues, research and benchmarking. Once these issues have been agreed by the ELT, teams will be given responsibility for drafting an engagement plan that supports their project plan or key business area.

2Our engagement plans will (at a minimum):

• Outline the customers and stakeholders that could be affected by the project or change in policy.

• Describe how we are going to engage with these customers or stakeholders using a wide range of initiatives and communications tools appropriate to achieving the engagement outcome and the level of participation required.

• Outline internal roles and responsibilities for delivery of the engagement.

• Describe reporting and evaluation techniques.

Our Customer Council will be transformed into a Customer Consultative Committee that will be responsible for reviewing and providing feedback on whether the plans address the right stakeholder groups and use the right engagement tools.

These plans will also be endorsed and actions and outcomes monitored by the respective General Manager. They will be made available to stakeholders with a summary of key timeframes and topics for discussion. Figure 6 shows how this progressive engagement approach works.

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Key 2016/17 initiatives for planning for engagementWe will:

Adopt progressive engagement where stakeholder and customers concerns/issues are considered an important part of project planning and approval.

Develop an engagement planning system that includes a toolkit of resources to support engagement planning within the business. This will be similar to Ausgrid’s Community Engagement templates that are consistent with the IAP2 spectrum of public participation.

Identify key topic and business areas and stakeholder groups that require tailored engagement plans including CALD climate change and small business.

Make our stakeholder database accessible to the business to aid in developing plans. This database includes issues and contact with stakeholders.

Investigate partnering with other network providers to engage on issues that affect the whole industry.

Transform our Customer Council into a Customer Consultative Committee that helps to guide our plans and engagement approach.


Pillar 3 – allocate clear accountabilities and responsibilitiesEverybody at Ausgrid has a role to play to ensure that we engage with our customers and stakeholders and act on feedback received. Our engagement will be led from the top of the organisation:

• Our Board will provide oversight of our engagement, strategies, outcomes and setting of key performance indicators.

• Our Executive Leadership Team, consisting of our CEO, General Managers and Company Secretary, will meet regularly (at least quarterly) to discuss their engagement plans and take collective responsibility for delivering good customer engagement. This will also ensure that engagement is properly resourced and agreed too.

• Our General Managers will take responsibility for delivering engagement plans aligned to their divisional responsibility. This includes stakeholder management, reporting on engagement activities and outcomes including what action was or wasn’t taken as a result of feedback and building the engagement capability of key managers or staff.

• Our CEO will lead this process with our key stakeholders and with our staff.

This step up in accountability will be key to building a better business by engaging with our customers, stakeholders and partners. An overview of these key roles and others within the business that have particular responsibilities for engagement is shown in Table 1.

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Role Responsibilities

Board • Endorses the overall engagement approach.

• Oversight of the annual key performance indicators.

Chief Executive Officer

• Overall responsibility for the implementation of the framework.

Ausgrid’s Executive Leadership Team

• Provides strategic direction, review and approval of the framework.

• Accountability for divisional engagement plans including action on customer/stakeholder feedback.

• Sets the annual engagement key performance indicators.

Project teams • Development and delivery of engagement plans that are consistent with engagement framework.

• Reporting on engagement activity and outcomes to GMs.

Customer Engagement Manager

• Supports project teams to deliver engagement plans including the development of best practice engagement tools.

• Supports stakeholder mapping and customer segmentation and insights.

• Supports building the engagement capability of key staff via training and education.

• Ensures customer engagement plans are consistent with Ausgrid’s Customer and Stakeholder Engagement Framework.

All our people • Responsible for delivering on our promises to our stakeholders and customers as a result of engagement activity.

Key 2016/17 initiatives for allocating responsibilitiesOur CEO and General Managers will lead our engagement on this framework with our key stakeholders. They will:

Take accountability for their divisional engagement plans including how feedback has been actioned , reviewed, reported on and monitored.

Ensure the whole business is appropriately supported and resourced to deliver on their specific engagement plans and activities.

Table 1Internal roles and responsibilities


Pillar 4 – deploy best practice techniquesWhen planning for a particular engagement activity it is important to determine the appropriate technique or tools to match the level of engagement required.

The IAP2 spectrum provides a useful framework for deciding the level of engagement required based on the commitment to the public (or in this case our customers). These promises are:

• Inform – we will keep you informed.

• Consult – we will keep you informed, listen to you and acknowledge concerns and aspirations. We will tell you how your feedback influenced the decision. We will seek feedback on drafts and proposals.

• Involve – we will work with you to ensure that your concerns and aspirations are directly reflected in the alternatives developed and provide feedback on how our decisions were influenced by your feedback.

Figure 7 outlines some examples of tools that might be used for informing, consulting or involving our stakeholders and customers in our business planning and operations.

Our engagement plans will outline the best tools to use including when, how and with which stakeholders. This will help to ensure that our engagement activities are tailored to our stakeholders and allows for a more co-operative and constructive approach to engagement.

In deploying these plans we will take an iterative approach as described in Figure 6 where by our plans and actions are consistently reviewed and updated based on customer and stakeholder feedback and these changes are regularly communicated back to them.

The IAP2 spectrum suggests that organisations can better include public (customers) into their decision making by collaborating with or empowering them. The public promises for these two levels are:

• Collaborate – we will work with you to formulate solutions and incorporate your advice and recommendations into the decisions to the maximum extent possible.

• Empower – we will implement what you decide.

While the majority of our activities will likely fall into the inform, consult or involve categories, we plan to actively identify areas where we can co-design outcomes with our customers to help build a better business and reach the higher levels of the participation spectrum. This is a genuine but longer-term goal for our customer engagement activities that will build on the foundations set by this renewed engagement framework. It is a longer term goal as we need to better our ability to commit to the engagement promises at the lower level of the spectrum before we can move toward the higher end promises.

Another important consideration when deploying best practice techniques is to ensure that communication materials are in plain english, are tailored to the engagement purpose and the target audience. For example, in areas where there is a high proportion of non-English speaking backgrounds, consideration should be given to preparing materials in different languages or with only pictures and info-graphics, using a translation service, advertising in non-English speaking media and attending key cultural events.

We will refer directly to the relevant stakeholder group to ensure our communication and engagement approach is relevant. For example for CALD groups we will defer initially to the NSW Ethnic Communities Council’s guidelines ‘Cultural Connections - Engaging CALD energy consumers’ to help develop our engagement plan for this group.

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Key 2016/17 initiatives for deployment of best practice techniquesWe will:

Conduct a regular benchmark of best practice techniques including feedback from other distribution and retail businesses.

Establish a lessons learnt forum within the business of how tools deployed and what worked/didn’t work well and why.

Use the IAP2 spectrum to help determine the level of engagement required for particular issues.

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Figure 7Example of Engagement Tools


Pillar 5 – report and explain our actionsEach engagement plan will identify how outcomes will be reported back to those key stakeholders and customers involved in the engagement and the wider public (if applicable). Examples of this type of reporting include:

• End of project briefing to engagement participants.

• Letters/emails outlining the feedback received and how it was used to influence the project, policy or plan.

• Engagement outcomes report shared with participants and posted on Ausgrid’s website.

At a whole of business level, all engagement activities should also be included in an annual engagement report. This could be a stand-alone document or form part of an annual business report. The report should include but not be limited to what we did, how our engagement activities have influenced our business and how we have improved our engagement programs based on feedback.

The report will be made available on our website, a summary document sent to customers and key stakeholders and released through relevant media and social media. Our customers and stakeholders will be encouraged to provide comment and feedback on this report and for significant engagements we will also consider reporting back and lessons learnt sessions with key external stakeholders and customers to help inform our end of project reporting and improve our engagement practices.

Key 2016/17 initiatives for reportingWe will:

Make reporting another business as usual activity that forms part of all engagement activities.

Include reporting examples in the annual engagement report.

Produce high quality reports at each phase of the engagement. Consider tiered reporting e.g. summary document and full document.

Ensure all reports available are on Ausgrid’s website, sent to stakeholders and customers and communicated via the relevant media channel (including social media).

Consider lessons learnt and reporting back sessions with our stakeholders and customers on significant projects and plans.

End of engagement reports will be presented to our ELT and used to inform engagement scorecards to help the ELT monitor our progress overtime.

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Pillar 6 – monitor and evaluate engagementRegularly monitoring and evaluating how we engage is important to ensure that our engagement approach remains current and that objectives are being achieved. A key part of any effective evaluation activity is the process of acquiring, analysing and acting on feedback.

Engagement evaluation needs to occur at the project level while ongoing monitoring of engagement progress should happen at the organisational level.

Project-level evaluation

At the project level, evaluation will be incorporated into engagement plans. This can involve:

• Evaluation forms at engagement events or sent electronically (via tools such as surveymonkey.com) after the event.

• “lessons learnt” sessions with key project team members after the completion of key engagement initiatives or at the end of a project to determine what worked well and what could be improved for next time. On significant projects we will also consider conducting a lessons learnt session with our key stakeholders.

• Verbal or written feedback received from customers or key stakeholders during the course of the engagement.

Organisational-level evaluation

At the whole of business level, a baseline survey will be implemented that measures stakeholder views on, and satisfaction with, our current level of engagement. This will be a useful tool on which to build an annual review of our engagement practices including stakeholders issues, interest and resource levels to engage. We will engage a research partner to undertake this baseline survey. This will ensure the most appropriate methods for conducting the survey based on the information to be captured, resources available and outputs required e.g. results to broken down per stakeholder group and key issue.

The survey will need to be repeated regularly using the same methodology to enable monitoring, changes in perceptions, and satisfaction level over time. This will also enable us to adapt to changes and develop more robust engagement activities and programs.

Once this initial baseline survey is complete, key performance indicators can be set for the following year based on the improvement level to be achieved . The survey and proposed key performance indicators will be made publicly available for feedback from our customers and stakeholders.

These key performance measures will then be agreed at the ELT with oversight at the Board level and will drive the main engagement activities and programs for the year.

Third party accreditation

IAP2 has recently released a Quality Assurance Standard for community and stakeholder engagement. It is recognised as the International Standard for Public Participation practice and is a standard process that allows for assessment and ongoing improvement of the quality of engagement practices. It is based on the IAP2 core values and an audit process is being developed to enable an organisation or a project to attain accreditation with the standard. This will be further investigated as this framework is implemented and approach to engagement matures.

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How we improve

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Key 2016/17 initiatives for improving evaluation techniquesWe will:

Ensure that evaluation forms are used after every engagement event.

Develop evaluation templates to ensure feedback forms are relevant and easy to analyse e.g. they use a mix of open ended and closed questions depending on the result required.

Plan for lessons-learnt sessions as part of every project and where appropriate include or conduct a separate lessons learnt with external stakeholders.

Identify and implement a method/tool for recording feedback from stakeholders. It will be important that this information can be shared across the organisation and reported on (as required).

Engage a research company to benchmark customer and stakeholder views of Ausgrid.

Annually update and develop an action plan from the benchmark to measure progress towards key performance indicators.

Consider annual third party evaluation (IAP2 accreditation) based on IAP2 quality standards.


Pillar 7 – build the capacity to engageBuilding our organisational capacity to engage will be extremely important to ensure that engagement with our customers and key stakeholders becomes business as usual. This will involve a commitment to key initiatives identified throughout this document but in particular ongoing training, sharing lessons learnt and developing key templates to support engagement activities.

Next stepsThis framework is intended to provide the foundation for genuine and lasting improvements to our engagement with stakeholders and customers. Its core assumption is that better engagement leads to better business.

Genuine improvement takes time. This framework should therefore change and evolve as our engagement grows and matures.

Our engagement improves with the help of customer and stakeholder feedback. This can be demonstrated through the update of this document as a result of the feedback received by our stakeholders at a workshop held on 9 May 2016. We appreciate their time and commitment as part of this process, and future reviews of the framework.

We will also start engaging on our Business Plan and Regulatory proposal in mid 2016 which will test and help to refine our engagement practices further.

How to provide feedback

We welcome your comments and suggestions about our framework and this plan. You can email us at [email protected] or phone us on 02 9269 2469.

Key 2016/17 initiatives to build capacityWe will:

Develop tools and templates that are consistent with our Community Engagement Policy and Plan to support engagement.

Share lessons learnt and best practice techniques with stakeholders, partners and customers.

Make IAP2 training a requirement for key engagement staff.

Conduct internal training and seek feedback on the framework and tools to support engagement.

7


Ausgrid’s customer and stakeholder engagement framework – changes made to March 2016 version

The following changes have been made as a result of feedback from our stakeholders before, after and during a workshop held on 9 May 2016. The outcomes report for this workshop can be found at: www.ausgrid.com.au/workshop

Appendix

7

Themes Change Page numbers

Feedback informs decisions

• Changed introduction and conclusion to advise readers that the framework has been updated to reflect the feedback from stakeholders at a workshop held on 9 May as well as comments received prior to and after the workshop.

• We inserted Figure 6 (page 14) and additional words to show how feedback from our customers and stakeholders will be used to inform decisions. We wanted to be more precise (based on feedback) in demonstrating that decision from engagement will not be made until they flow back to stakeholder for more discussion.

4, 14, 22

Engagement practices

• Inserted words throughout the document to outline that we will seek to understand our stakeholder’s interests and issues and deliver communications at the right way and right level to match these interest and issues.

• Acknowledged throughout the document the need to tailor and target information and engagement techniques and use plain English.

• Expanded on the need to move beyond information/consult/involve as a longer term goal.

• Committed to ensuring that our staff are appropriately resourced and supported at all levels to deliver engagement activities.

5, 6, 12, 13 15

Table 2Changes made to March 2016 version of our Customer and Stakeholder Engagement Framework


Themes Change Page numbers

Understanding our stakeholders

• Called out the customer groups that we may need specific engagement plans for e.g. culturally and linguistically diverse communities, small business, aged and vulnerable and indigenous communities.

• Expanded the emerging customers section to better reflect interest areas e.g. climate change as well as emerging technology.

• Committed to changing our customer council to a customer consultative committee that will help us develop how we engage with key stakeholders and customer groups.

9, 10, 11, 15, 21

Reporting and sharing lessons learnt

• Added extra ways to share the results and listen to feedback on the outcomes of our engagement including social media and media and lesson learnt sessions.

• Committed to implementing a tool for recording feedback from stakeholders.

20, 21, 22, 23

Documents

Customer and stakeholder engagement framework - …/media/Files/About Us/CE Reports... · Customer and stakeholder engagement framework July 2016 3 ... • Benchmarking with energy