Our CR&S Approach

Stakeholder engagement

Embedding a proactive approach to stakeholder engagement

This year we have reinforced our business focus on stakeholder engagement with the introduction of a dedicated role within our corporate affairs team. Our stakeholder engagement manager works closely with our CR&S team and with business unit stakeholder engagement representatives to build a consistent, strategic framework and to balance stakeholder interests across our projects.

We aim to embed our strategy in our everyday operations so that our development and asset managers take ownership of their respective stakeholder engagement plans.

We train our people on stakeholder engagement and issues management as part of our employee orientation program and through business unit forums. Our strategic urban planning workshops provide specific training for our development managers on stakeholder priorities and concerns.

In FY10, we will incorporate performance measures for development and asset managers on stakeholder engagement and issues management. The performance objectives of our executives will reflect these priorities.

Our key stakeholders

Employees

We have 1,334 employees in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Each year we undertake the 'Our Voice' survey to understand our level of employee engagement. Our employee engagement score remained high in FY09 at 82 per cent, as measured by Towers Perrin-ISR.

Government and regulators

Federal, state and local governments set the regulatory environment in which we operate. We engage regularly with all levels of government in Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory directly and through industry associations. Our key industry representative body is the Property Council of Australia and two aligned bodies, the Shopping Centre Council of Australia and the Green Building Council of Australia. Our senior staff hold director-level leadership roles in these bodies. We also work with the Urban Development Institute of Australia, the Australian Institute of Architects and the Planning Institute of Australia.

Shareholders and the investment community

We have over 45,000 shareholders in Australia and overseas. We engage with our corporate investors via regular meetings with management and briefings on our strategy and financial results. At our Annual General Meeting investors can engage with our Board of Directors and are updated on our performance and strategy.

We recently undertook qualitative research with some of our retail shareholders to understand attitudes and preferences for communication channels. Over the past year we have enhanced access to online investor information.

Customers

We have a diverse range of customers, ranging from our commercial, retail and industrial tenants and shoppers in our retail centres to purchasers of our residential properties. We regularly seek feedback from customers about their priorities through surveys and research, and we incorporate their feedback into our product design and service offerings.

Suppliers

We procure services and products from over 7,000 suppliers. We established a program in 2008 to commence aligning the performance of our key suppliers with our CR&S values. Suppliers complete a CR&S questionnaire and a comprehensive health, safety and environment questionnaire as part of their response to our tender requests.

Communities

Our communities include those affected by our residential, apartment and retirement living developments, as well as the communities that visit our retail centres. Our engagement with communities includes community consultation forums, meetings with community groups and local leaders, as well as surveys and research.

Media

We engage with journalists across a wide spectrum of local, regional, metropolitan and national print and electronic media outlets. Our corporate media strategy outlines our approach to dealing consistently with the media. We aim to be responsive to requests for information about our business activities.

Engaging with our stakeholders: a consistent measurable framework

Over the past year we have field tested our stakeholder engagement template to ensure a consistent and strategic approach. We will be implementing this template across our projects in FY10.

This template will ensure that stakeholders are listed in priority order and includes an engagement plan for each group that clearly identifies primary concerns throughout the stages of a project. The plans will address the particular social, political, economic and environmental concerns of the community. This will help to identify the potential risks and opportunities to our business on a project by project basis.

Our stakeholder engagement plans will be active, 'live' documents and will be updated regularly by our project teams. The outcomes of engagement activities will be communicated to key stakeholders through newsletters to residents, stakeholder meetings, website updates or site tours for local community groups.

Future regional focus

The diversity and geographic spread of our business means that a consistent and coordinated approach to our stakeholder interactions can be a challenge. In response to this, in FY10 we are piloting regional stakeholder engagement plans for both our Residential and Commercial Property businesses in these geographies where our business units collectively have a significant presence.

Priority stakeholder projects

In our FY08 CR&S report, we said we would put stakeholder engagement plans in place for our largest and most complex projects. The priority stakeholder projects (PSP) list includes both the largest projects and those that have the highest risk in terms of impact on stakeholders and potential impact on our reputation. The list takes into account environmental issues, planning complexities, and community concerns.

Projects on the PSP list are determined by the senior leaders in our business and the list will be closely assessed and updated every two months. It also incorporates a 'watch list' for new and existing projects that may have longer-term issues on the horizon.

In line with the commitment we made in our FY08 CR&S report, we have put a stakeholder engagement plan in place for each of these priority stakeholder projects.

Our Residential business has recently introduced the first phase of a risk assessment program to identify the key commercial, environmental and stakeholder risks of each of our residential projects. This program informs our PSP list and will also be updated on a two-monthly basis.

A review of our residential projects identified that 20 out of 76 projects have a stakeholder plan in place (this includes all Residential PSPs). In some cases these plans are not clearly documented or regularly updated. We are committed to improving our approach to stakeholder engagement and aim to ensure that all our active residential projects have a rigourous stakeholder engagement plan in place by the end of FY10.

Improving our engagement plans

The stakeholder engagement plans for each of our priority projects have been rated in terms of their key elements and overall quality. The key elements include:

• Identification of stakeholders and relationship management,
• Objectives, key messages and measures of success,
• Implementation and key milestones,
• Engagement strategy,
• Current status.

Each plan receives a score out of five for each criteria.

The FY09 average score of 3.8 out of five is an increase on FY08's average score of 2.4, and demonstrates our increased focus on improving the quality and effectiveness of our plans. In FY10, we will be further developing the rigour of our scoring to ensure the criteria reflects key elements of our stakeholder engagement approach across all properties and projects.