Having benchmarked comparable companies and consulted internally, we have grouped our stakeholders into these 7 macro-categories:
- customers
- suppliers
- institutions and regulatory bodies
- business community
- civil society
- people
- financial community
The standard we have adopted for effective stakeholder engagement (AA1000SES) includes a circular process, with a view to continuous improvement.
Therefore, we begin by defining the engagement objectives that are consistent with the strategic plan to achieve actions that are in line with what emerges from the discussion with the stakeholders and taking it into consideration. In order to do this, we have adopted a model that relies on two enabling factors: digital potential and the crucial role of corporate representatives, who at TIM supervise and manage stakeholder engagement activities internationally, nationally and locally, at various levels.
To engage our stakeholders, we use a collaborative platform (Re2N(1)) which uses sustainability applications and semantic and big data analysis techniques.
The collaborative platform we use allows us to keep an open dialogue with our stakeholders, have a shared view of the complex system of relationships and businesses we manage and monitor the evidence in order to update topics of interest in a more timely and consistent manner, thus facilitating the analysis of emerging risks.
We have a different way of engaging with each stakeholder, depending on the purpose of the engagement:
- consultation (surveys and observatories) in which we ask our stakeholders for their opinion on certain initiatives
- dialogue such as panels on topics of common interest
- information, one-way communications from TIM to its stakeholders, including training initiatives
- partnerships, the specific projects we manage together with our stakeholders
Through the collaborative platform, TIM company representatives manage important information to map and monitor stakeholders relevant to their business. In addition to indicating which are the stakeholder categories with which they interface, they enter the data for the most important stakeholders and information about their contact persons and thus create actual maps in which the positioning of each category of TIM stakeholder can be seen for the various corporate components. Positioning on the map is the result of an assessment made by the contacts themselves which, according to the international standard AA1000SES, expresses the relationship with the stakeholders on the basis of "dependence", "influence" and "tension" through a score from 0 to 5 (page 3 of the presentation "Monitoring local stakeholders").
In addition, the contacts take note of stakeholder engagement events and initiatives, specifying elements of common interest with stakeholders, such as relevant issues on which to collaborate (on page 5 of the presentation "Monitoring local stakeholders" the Lucca case study is presented).
After a number of refresher webinars held in the second half of 2021 with all corporate functions involved in stakeholder engagement, the reference stakeholder map was updated (following the criteria of the AA1000SES standard) in order to identify the most relevant stakeholders for the company.
During 2022, TIM intends to make stakeholder engagement more continuous and solid, keeping relationship channels open, and to plan together with the stakeholders in order to create shared value.
(1) For this project, TIM is working with Re2N, a company that develops innovative tools for sustainability and shared value