Stakeholder Engagement Resource Hub

Introducing the Essential Stakeholder Network (ESN)

At Essential Energy, we understand that listening to our customers and stakeholders is crucial to making good business decisions and we want to provide genuine opportunities for people to shape decisions early in the process. That is why we have established the Essential Stakeholder Network (ESN), a network of customer advocates who provide feedback and represent the broad perspectives of our regional, rural and remote customers across NSW.

The ESN has been created to strengthen our relationships with communities across NSW. It gives us a direct conversation to valuable feedback on the issues that matter most to our diverse customer base, ensuring our business decisions reflect the needs and priorities of the people we serve.

Reach out to the Stakeholder Relations team to involve the ESN in your decision making process. The ESN can provide insights and feedback into the issues you are deliberating on.

Conversations leading to change

 

ESN Terms of Reference

Engagement Topic Template - share this with the stakeholder engagement team for proposed engagement with the ESN

The Stakeholder Map reflects the external stakeholder landscape and who within our business is managing these important relationships.

Why review now?

• Stakeholder relationships are dynamic. Projects evolve, new partnerships form, and priorities shift. Regular review ensures our stakeholder analysis remains accurate and relevant.
• Your input matters. You are closest to many of these relationships and can identify changes, new contacts, or emerging issues that should be reflected.
• Strategic alignment. Up-to-date stakeholder information helps us manage risks, seize opportunities, and deliver on our commitments.

Your input needed:

• Review the latest Stakeholder Matrix and Map in the Resource Hub.
• Advise the Stakeholder Engagement team of any updates, corrections, or new stakeholders.
• Share your insights on emerging trends, new contacts, or changes in stakeholder priorities.

As an organisation that values genuine engagement, we offer in-house engagement training. This training follows the International Association for Public Participation Australasia (IAP2) framework. 

IAP2 is recognised as the peak body for engagement, providing education and training courses in community engagement, and leadership within the engagement industry.    

This is a great opportunity for you, as the training will benefit many areas of your work, and if you participate in the first three training modules you walk away with an internationally recognised certificate.  

The training will be delivered face-to-face in Port Macquarie.

DATES for 2026:

• Essentials of Engagement: Tuesday, 24 February 2026
• Apply Engagement Methods: Wednesday, 25 and Thursday 26, February 2026
• Design and Plan Engagement: Tuesday, 10 and Wednesday, 11 March 2026

Please get in touch with Karyn Looby to find out more and advise your interest to participate. 

A reminder of not only listening to the loudest voices; and someone with lived experience may sit across a few of these ‘pieces of the pie’.

Colleagues attended engagement training in Wagga Wagga, organised by the Energy Charter. They listened first-hand to landholders about successes and areas needing improvement and spent a full day delving into community concerns and best practices for communication and engagement.

Here are some key learnings they have shared:

Empathy and Understanding: It's crucial to be empathetic and understand stakeholders' practices and challenges. This is especially important when engaging with landowners and understanding the impact of infrastructure on their work and property.

Proactive and Genuine Engagement: Engage with stakeholders genuinely and patiently. Open, honest conversations and acting on feedback are essential.

Two-Way Communication: Establishing and maintaining trust through effective two-way communication is vital for successful project delivery.

Conflict Resolution: Knowing techniques for conflict resolution and collaborative problem-solving is essential. Projects often face common issues such as trust, finances, and impact on farms.

Early Involvement of Technical Experts: Involve technical experts early in the process and avoid premature compensation discussions to prevent perceptions of bribery.

Let's continue to build stronger communities and foster positive relationships through effective stakeholder engagement!

A huge thank you to the following people for providing this feedback:

Damian Munday        Melinda White        Brett Day             Glen Faganello     

Josh Galloway           Mitch Hume            Peter Wilson

Training available to you

Granicus University is an excellent resource we can use to learn more about how to make the most out of the platform and benefit your engagement projects. 

Attendees are required to register for the upcoming sessions through the Granicus Learning Hub. You have access to on demand webinars and live webinars to best fit with your schedule and preferences. Here is a quick video showing how to sign up for both. Please remember to update your time zone when you first log in. 

An engagement plan is a working document and should be regularly updated as the project progresses. As an engagement lead for the project, it is your role to develop and implement the engagement plan, in collaboration with the project team and external stakeholders. It is your 'source of truth' and guides you in your day-to-day activities. 

Here is an Engagement Plan template. It offers guidance on what to include in your engagement plan, but feel free to personalise it. The plan does not need to match the template exactly; it should be something practical for you to use regularly. You can use the Engagement Planning Toolkit to build your plan.

Here's an Engagement Plan being delivered by the Tibooburra Smart Energy's Communities project team. 

IAP2 has developed the Quality Assurance Standard (QAS) which is a really great tool to assess how well you are delivering your engagement program.

The QAS should be reviewed at each phase of your engagement program, so you can look for gaps and make the necessary changes to your engagement program along the way. 

Thriving Communities Partnership, together with Symplicit, Energy Queensland and Suncorp, have shared research which identifies opportunities that are tangible and actionable - from preparedness through to long-term recovery and resilience. 

This project recognises the complexity and interconnectivity of the ecosystem we live in, and the need for organisations to work collectively, rather than individually, to support people in our community when they face challenging times.  

By mapping the experiences of community members and local businesses in Townsville impacted by the 2019 North Queensland Monsoon disaster, this research report identifies insights into the barriers, challenges and pain points experienced when interacting with organisations. The research findings create a collective community voice and are represented by two end-to-end journeys uncovered in the research: 

Small and Medium Size Business Insights:

• The employer is a pillar in the community 
• Family safety is the priority 
• There is an aversion to accepting ‘charity’ 
• Business insurance was a pain point for many 
• Government grants and support are a welcome relief, but there was some red tape 
• Macroeconomics influence community resilience 

An initiative of The Energy Charter Better Together Know Your Customers and Communities

1. Why do we listen to customers?

All energy businesses are here to serve our customers and communities. Put simply, without customers (whether they are residential, small & medium business, or large commercial & industrial) we would not have our business. To deliver our energy products and services in a way that meets our customer and community needs and expectations, we first need to understand: what are those needs and expectations?

That’s why engaging with our customers, consumers and communities is essential.

2. What’s this got to do with me?

Maybe you’re a network engineer, a planner or a marketing manager and you’re thinking, what’s this got to do with me? It’s easy to think that engaging with customers and communities is the job of those in our business who interact with them every day. Maybe you’ve even got a dedicated team of Stakeholder Relations or Community Relations folk.

Well, the good news is that the more people in our business that speak to our customers and communities, the better we will be. If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to genuinely engage with our customers and community you will be surprised at what a rewarding experience it can be, and how it may help you do your job better!

That’s because speaking to customers and communities gives us all the opportunity to understand:

• Who is using our energy products and services and who else might benefit from them?
• Why are they using them and how and where they are being used?
• How can our energy products and services be improved?
• Do our energy products and services meet future needs and expectations?
• How is a community impacted by our activities and is there shared value for all?

3. Supporting you

There are people in our organisation that can share opportunities to engage with our customers and communities and support you in doing so. There’s also a Stakeholder Engagement Framework that can give you some tips.

We’d encourage you to contact the following people if you want more information:

Karyn Looby, Stakeholder Engagement Specialist

4. Finally… share the feedback!

Remember to share the insights across your organisation!

Often people are being asked similar questions from different people across our organisation, or information gained from a conversation in one area of our organisation can benefit someone else in another area.