Stakholder Engagement Model
Global Engagement Model With Stakeholders
Rising to the needs and expectations of our Stakeholders
As part of the Iberdrola group, Avangrid leverages a Stakeholder engagement model that seeks to increase transparency and understanding
This model is inspired by widely acknowledged international standards (AA 1000 SES 2015) and sustainability indexes and is to be implemented by all Iberdrola group companies, business units, and major sites using a shared digital application.
This model is based on an ongoing improvement process involving 10 phases:
This stakeholder process is implemented across the organization using a shared digital app for the management of Avangrid`s stakeholder groups in the various geographies of its Corporate, Renewables, and Networks businesses. Using this tool, the various business areas can identify groups of sub-stakeholders that are relevant and should be addressed in a specific way, and to define relevant themes, channels (phone, e-mail, assemblies, meetings, events, social networks, and others), and the degree of engagement: listening, information, interaction, or collaboration.
Best practices are identified and shared through a global working group that includes those responsible for all Iberdrola stakeholders and businesses at the corporate and country level. This working group sponsors an annual meeting to share best practices.
Stakeholder engagement in 2022
Listening to our Stakeholders to Best Address Their Needs
Engaging with and listening to our stakeholders – those we serve and those whose lives we affect across our entire footprint – is essential to building strong, lasting relationships with our communities. In 2022, we exemplified this commitment by conducting in-depth interviews, focus groups and listening tours with our customers to better understand how they interact with our family of companies and how to better meet their needs. This included candid conversations between customers, other key stakeholders and our leadership teams to obtain their feedback and enable us to continually improve our service. During our ongoing Customer Listening Councils across our utilities in Maine, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts, customers and other key stakeholders engage directly with our leadership, providing feedback that will help us continue to improve our business in ways that best serve our customers’ changing needs.
Our commitment to stakeholder engagement is also exemplified by our Public Outreach team. This team uses a variety of tools to proactively inform customers and community members about how our project work may impact them while also providing them with easy-to-access resources to contact us with any questions or concerns. This “Design with the Community in Mind” approach is based on the transformative perspective shift where our decision-making is guided through the lens of our customers. We want to ensure that every project is designed and engineered to mitigate the potential disruption or inconvenience to our communities as we work to improve the resiliency and reliability of our network.
Our stakeholders, including our investors and the communities we serve, expect that we will be thorough and transparent when we share our progress against our ESG+F commitments, goals, achievements and challenges.
We disclose and share our ESG work across several different platforms and reporting structures, including:
• The Global Reporting Index (GRI)
• The Sustainability Accounting Standard Board (SASB)
• The Edison Electric Institute (EEI)
• The American Gas Association (AGA)
• Annual Sustainability Report
We make these reports available in the Sustainability section of our website. We view effective stakeholder engagement as an essential component of our work and will continue to identify and implement the most effective ways to move this work forward.