The challenge
Hawke’s Bay Airport wanted to refine and future-proof their sustainability strategy. To do this, they needed to confirm what their shareholders and other stakeholders expected of them and how they should prioritise activities.
The airport engaged thinkstep-anz to carry out a materiality assessment to provide this information.
How we helped Hawke’s Bay Airport
Step one: stakeholder interviews
We asked the airport company to identify their internal and external stakeholders. The resulting list included shareholders, employees, tenants, service providers and tourism partners. We then developed a set of questions and interviewed 13 of these stakeholders.
The interviews yielded 24 topics of interest, which we grouped into four buckets: people, environment, marketplace and corporate. Some topics were general business topics. Others were specific to the airport and its location.
What matters to you most in your relationship with Hawke’s Bay Airport? What does Hawke’s Bay Airport need to focus on to future-proof its business?
Step two: stakeholder survey
With this information in hand, we wrote an online survey and sent it to a wider cross-section of 104 stakeholders to understand which of the 24 sustainability topics were most important to them.
Step three: adding the ‘business lens’
We brought the airport’s leadership team together in a workshop to put a business lens over the 24 topics. This involved looking at the issues from a commercial point of view.
What do they mean for the airport’s social licence to operate? Our profitability? The continuity of our business? Our most urgent business priorities?
Step four: confirming what matters most (the materiality matrix)
We plotted the results of our assessment, identifying the topics which ranked highest for stakeholders and for the business.
How we are enabling Hawke’s Bay Airport to succeed sustainably
Setting business priorities
Our work is helping the airport decide where to focus their efforts in the coming years. Making progress on a strategy is about what you leave out as well as what you include.
Future-proofing their sustainability strategy
With a materiality assessment now in place, it will be relatively easy for the airport to update the assessment and keep their sustainability strategy focused, relevant and current as the business environment changes. We recommend they review the assessment annually and update it at least every three years.
Improving decision-making
The materiality assessment will guide the airport’s decisions. They can use the most important topics as a ‘checklist’.
What would this decision mean for health, safety and security at our airport? How will it affect our carbon footprint? What impact will it have on our resilience as a business?
Strengthening stakeholder engagement
Our work will help Hawke’s Bay Airport build stronger relationships with their stakeholders. The process itself has been useful: stakeholders generally appreciate being asked for their views. Communicating the results of the assessment and acting on priority feedback will strengthen engagement.
The assessment identified opportunities to tailor engagement activities to areas of mutual interest and this will be helpful too.
June 2022