Stakeholder engagement
By understanding the views of our stakeholders and helping them to understand ours, we build a stronger business.
The support of our employees, customers, investors and other stakeholders is critical to our continued business success. So, listening to them and responding to any concerns they have is essential. Of course, the decisions we take must consider the needs of all stakeholders and we have to find a balance between conflicting opinions. By engaging with all our stakeholder groups, we can see the wider picture.
Our engagement activities are guided by a clear process set out in our stakeholder framework. The process involves a number of stages, namely:
- > recognising the need for engagement
- > identifying relevant stakeholders and impacts
- > deciding how to engage
- > recording the outcomes.
We identify stakeholders with whom we need to engage in different ways across the business. At a corporate level, we are often approached by organisations, and we prioritise engagement with those that will inform and challenge us. We will evaluate our key stakeholders to support our new sustainability strategy in 2010. Within our business units, we develop plans at the start of individual projects that incorporate the identification of relevant stakeholders. These may include nearby schools, Wildlife Trusts or Local Authorities, for example, with which we then engage directly to discuss the project and our wider impact on the community.
In 2009, our stakeholder engagement activities included:
- > gathering feedback from customers through our annual market perceptions survey, which includes questions on sustainability
- > submitting information on our sustainability performance to socially responsible investment funds and indices
- > collecting comments from employees through various channels, such as our annual Great Debate survey and monthly Team Talks
- > making presentations in local schools on the dangers of playing on construction sites
- > soliciting the opinions of our two external sustainability advisors Jonathon Porritt and Dame Julia Cleverdon
- > participating in community forums local to our operations
- > producing our employee newspaper Spectrum, which reports quarterly on all the Group’s operations, Tomorrow’s News, our newsletter which focuses on sustainability issues and a range of other newsletters produced by our business units
- > regular consultation with key Government policy makers and influencers on sustainability issues
- > appointing a community liaison officer and developing a community engagement plan for each of our major projects, so that we fully understand and manage the impacts of Carillion entering, operating in and leaving the communities local to us.
The issues raised through engagement naturally vary between stakeholder groups and for our different business activities, but key topics included:
- > noise from construction and infrastructure sites – we develop action plans to address any case of noise nuisance and endeavour to minimise incidents through our work under the Considerate Constructors Scheme
- > waste from our sites – we are working with WRAP to halve the volumes of waste sent to landfill by 2012
- > the management of biodiversity – all our projects have biodiversity action plans and we commit to working with The Wildlife Trusts to enhance biodiversity through the Carillion Natural Habitats Fund
- > consulting the WWF-UK Forest and Trade Network on the issue of sustainable timber procurement.