BAA Plc – Stakeholder engagement programme

Client Challenge

This project focused on identifying the stakeholders that the company needed to engage with on an ongoing basis. To enable ‘stakeholder mapping’ to be effective it was important that a wide range of stakeholders were involved in this programme of engagement. The client required an external and independent organisation to verify existing stakeholders and identify ‘missing’ stakeholders.

What did we do?

We conducted a detailed stakeholder mapping exercise, outlining who the key stakeholders were, what their key issues were and how the company was already engaging with them. We then mapped the stakeholders, their issues and the current engagement against AA1000 requirements and identified the gaps. As part of this exercise an extensive survey was conducted soliciting the views of a wide range of stakeholders. This allowed a gap analysis to be done, on where the gaps in engagement were, and where there were emerging issues that would need to be dealt with. BAA was then able to prioritise and create a plan of action as result of the exercise.

There were several reasons why an effective stakeholder engagement programme was so crucial for this company. As a former public organisation, there was a history and expectation of accountability and stakeholder involvement in the major decisions that the company took. As the company also operates in an industry that has high environmental, economic and social impacts, in order to gain its licence to operate it was very important to have in place an effective ongoing stakeholder engagement programme. To enable the programme to be effective, the rigorous and robust identification of stakeholders was critical.

To ensure inclusivity of stakeholders (a key issue) Article 13 used the process standard AA1000 as a basis for the programme from the initial stakeholder mapping to the subsequent survey carried out by BAA themselves.

How did we break the cycle?

The mapping exercise conducted by Article 13 allowed the client to delimit the boundaries of policy options using stakeholder’s perspective, rather than internal decision criteria. Furthermore, stakeholder groups were identified with issues that may not affect the company in the present, but possibly may do so in the future.

© Article 13 2005