British Gas primary stakeholders are shareholders/owners, employees, customers and senior management. Their secondary stakeholders include community, suppliers, environment, government and other businesses. These stakeholders can be put in groups in a power/interest matrix which shows how much power and interest each stakeholder has on British Gas.
Power and Interest matrix
British Gas' Customers
British Gas is committed to helping customers to reduce their fuel bills through the efficient use of energy. A wide range of programmes are used to help customers benefit from this throughout the country. Efficient use of energy is being encouraged throughout the community and schools.
British Gas is working along side other voluntary groups to help tackle fuel poverty. NEA and the Family Welfare Association are joining other organisations to raise awareness among the voluntary sector professionals and low-income families of energy efficiency services.
British Gas have joined a partnership with Help the Aged includes to improve living conditions and reduce energy consumption for older people.
Employees
Employees are a third primary stakeholder. Their claim on the business is for meaningful jobs that pay an equitable wage or salary (Fred et al, p131). Employees at British Gas play a critical role in helping to reduce the environmental impacts in operations. Employees need to work in ways that reduces their impact, and to influence our customers and suppliers to use our products and services in a more environmentally sensitive way.
In 2001 Learning at Work Day for employees focused on why environmental management is part of the way British Gas does business. It was followed by a competition to generate suggestions for reducing British Gas environmental impact. This resulted in the production of an energy efficiency leaflet for homes.
Our objective in 2003 is to run an awareness campaign among employees. Its aim is to raise understanding of why environmental issues are important to British Gas, and to engage them in taking steps to boost our environmental performance.
The campaign will run awareness-raising road shows at over 40 of our sites, and will develop an active network of environmental champions across the company.
To measure what British Gas employees thought about our commitment to the environment, we have included a question in the annual employee survey. Last year, it showed that 55% of employees felt that British Gas cares for the environment.
Local communities
We believe it is possible to create both shareholder value and social value these aims need not be in conflict. We place great emphasis on the relationships and we have with the local communities we serve and the wider social needs of the societies in which we operate. The principal focus of our investment is on three themes:
- regenerating local communities
- improving the environment
- Education and skills.
Government
We respond to consultation papers from the Government in areas where we have expertise and can make a thoughtful and valid contribution. The issues that have dominated the agenda over the past 12 months in the environmental arena are climate change, energy efficiency and the energy review. As a major national energy supplier, these issues are also core to our business, and we work closely with government and trade associations to promote and develop workable solutions that meet the environmental objectives of the legislation. Working on these issues has helped us shape our environmental strategy and action plans.
Suppliers
One of our more significant impacts on the environment is through the actions and performance of our suppliers.
We seek to:
- Encourage dialogue with major suppliers to assist us in improving their environmental performance.
- Promote environmental good practice through the supply chain.
- Utilise suppliers who have good environmental performance where economically viable.
In our tendering process across the Group, we ask a number of questions on the environmental performance of potential suppliers. We use this mandatory information to assist the overall decision of which supplier to use.
We are currently making contact with our major suppliers in a phased approach to explain our environmental aims and targets and to discuss ways we can work together to reduce our combined impacts. We view our suppliers as experts in their field and challenge them to provide us with ideas for lower environmental impact products that we could substitute for the ones they currently supply to us.
