Mandate

Stem the flow of negative media coverage in the short term and recover and turn around Eskom’s image and reputation in the long term, while gearing Eskom’s corporate communication machinery.

The Corporate Affairs division was formed in 2010, with the explicit task of focusing on the turnaround of Eskom’s reputation that deteriorated significantly after the load-shedding incidents in 2008. The Corporate Affairs division is therefore being geared to address this mandate through effective communications, stakeholder engagement, advertising, public relations and marketing, internal communication and media relations activities.

Highlights	Challenges
Moved Eskom’s reputation from a negative RepTrak score of 40.5 in 2008 to a positive score of 54.44 Managed reputational risks through its communication and emergency readiness for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ Created public awareness and achieved substantial megawatt savings through marketing campaigns that promoted demand-side management products such as solar water heaters and compact fluorescent lamps Launched Operation Khanyisa – a national social marketing campaign partnering with several business organisations to change behaviour and encourage the reporting of illegal connections Promoted public safety and the dangers of electricity and held 645 engagements in five regions Initiated the “Nine City Tour” leadership dialogue with Eskom’s chairman and chief executive, to strengthen stakeholder relationships Encouraged two-way dialogue between leadership and employees through regular employee engagements, and introduced an internal chief executive blog Highlighted energy efficiency and promoted science, innovation and technology through its flagship sponsorships, Eskom’s Expo for Young Scientists, and the eta Awards Launched the 49M national campaign in March 2011 Seen small, yet significant improvements in media coverage as Eskom’s strategy includes quarterly media “State of the System Addresses” and the annual and interim results announcements with key stakeholders.	Continued negative media coverage, despite a small yet significant improvement in media coverage Changing the stakeholder experience by building stronger relationships and having a deeper understanding of customers’ and stakeholders’ needs Evoking a cultural and paradigm shift among employees in terms of the role they all play as guardians of Eskom’s reputation Developing, driving and maintaining the ideal brand strategy and image to rebuild trust Maximising corporate social investment initiatives Sustaining behaviour and attitude change towards energy efficiency
Future priorities
Strengthen media relations and stakeholder engagement Refine emergency communication protocols Prepare for the hosting of the 17th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 17) Continue the momentum of the 49M campaign Improve reporting to senior managers: daily media assessments, weekly trigger documents and parliamentary reports Fully implement the nerve centre Finalise brand concept by year end Implement a CSI strategy in 2012 Launch an electricity summit Launch a new customer magazine.

 

 

RepTrak™ is a proprietary tool that was developed by the Reputation Institute to measure corporate reputations. It is grounded on the theory that reputations are emotional attitudes stakeholders have towards companies, and can be measured by assessing their degree of admiration, trust, “good feeling” and “overall esteem” for companies. The RepTrak™ model not only measures the health of a company’s reputation across stakeholders, countries and industries, but also examines which of seven key driver dimensions most influences the company’s reputation – as well as the level of support stakeholders provide companies.

Material issues

 

Corporate Affairs is geared for moving Eskom’s reputation from a 42.3 Reptrak score in 2010 to 60 in 2016, with the intention of restoring stakeholders’ trust and confidence and regaining Eskom’s position as one of the most reputable power companies globally by 2020.

This includes additional objectives:

• Manage stakeholder relations by forging stronger relationships with stakeholders through open dialogue and by understanding stakeholders by mapping their issues in a stakeholder matrix.
• Manage internal reputation and evoke a shift among Eskom employees about the role they play as guardians of Eskom’s reputation.
• Manage external reputation by positively profiling Eskom through various initiatives and consistent messaging, such as mobilising South Africa around the common goal of saving electricity for the future.
• Manage reputation risk by providing early warnings and co-ordinating pro-active responses.
• Develop the ideal brand strategy for Eskom to rebuild brand equity and trust and to ensure continued brand health.
• Turn Eskom’s reputation around by gearing up Corporate Affairs with the right skills and resources and by enhancing internal media and channels.

In regaining and rebuilding Eskom’s reputation, excellence in the way the company communicates is crucial. The approach is to ensure a pro-active, sustained, honest and transparent communication with internal and external stakeholders, using the best available channels. The integration of projects from a messaging, internal, media, branding and stakeholder perspective is integral to the success of the communication approach.

The plan to regain confidence centres around five distinctive building blocks:

 

Current performance

Stakeholder engagement

Reputation is derived from stakeholder perceptions. The key ambition of Eskom’s stakeholder engagement initiative is to gain a deeper understanding of stakeholders and their issues and agendas.

In 2010, Corporate Affairs developed a stakeholder matrix and engagement plan. The matrix segments, groups, prioritises and assigns responsibilities to executives in terms of specific stakeholders and shapes the stakeholder engagement plan.

Broad groupings of stakeholders

• Authorisers – government (national, provincial and local spheres), parliamentary portfolio and select committees
• Enforcers – regulators
• Influencers – investors, suppliers, customers, lending institutions and, industry experts, academics, analysts (economic/business, environmental, political and social), organised labour, business organised interest group (broad and niche)
• Partners – internal stakeholders (board of directors, executive committee, management and employees), media.

Stakeholder engagements in 2010

• Nine province and nine city tours
• Interim results stakeholder engagements
• Investor roadshows
• Questionnaires to recipients of the 2010 annual report.

The primary objective in all these engagements was to share Eskom’s corporate strategy and to listen to stakeholders’ concerns and expectations.

Brand strategy

A strong and resilient brand is central to public confidence in Eskom. Corporate Affairs aims to take the Eskom brand into the top five on local and global brand league tables by 2020.

Nerve centre

This year Eskom established a pilot nerve centre. The nerve centre is an intelligence gathering and early warning unit for the day-to-day management of reputational risk. The purpose is to improve customers’ experience of electricity supply and pro-actively communicate on issues important to stakeholders. Critical issues are fed into the emergency protocols process.

Internal reputation management

Introduced at the beginning of 2010, the Guardian concept is used as a thread through all internal campaigns and programmes. The concept is focused on empowering employees to be ambassadors of Eskom by instilling pride and passion in the Eskom brand. Guardian interventions help employees at all levels to work as teams, dedicated to safeguarding the assets that are vital to South Africa’s electricity supply. Monthly interventions under the banner Guardians Fly the Flag aim to keep the spirit of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ alive. Once a month, Eskom offices nationwide encourage employees to wear their favourite sport shirts or outfits. Guardian Fly the Flag activations for Heritage Day, cancer awareness and HIV counselling and testing have been very successful.

The chairman and chief executive had extensive employee engagements across the country in this past year, focusing on the financial results and Eskom’s new strategic direction.

The leadership network series is a monthly conversation platform for Eskom board members to engage with thought leaders on business trends and leadership topics. These sessions have been successfully subscribed to and have added value to the business.

A chief executive blog was launched last year as part of the new chief executive’s 100-day plan. The blog gives employees an opportunity to engage more easily with the chief executive, regardless of their location or position in Eskom. The initial response was overwhelming with a few thousand postings per day. This has toned down since, and the blog has turned from many negative comments to more positive postings.

Corporate Affairs has developed a communication coaching programme to improve how senior management engages with employees, stakeholders and the media and how they lead in times of crisis.

Media relations

Detailed daily, weekly and monthly analysis of the media indicates a small yet significant change in Eskom’s reputation. Eskom has increased its share of voice through regular “state of the system” briefings and the announcement of annual and interim business results. The media and the public will have better access to Eskom following the appointment of additional spokespersons conversant in the official South African languages.

External reputation management

The key milestone is to position Eskom positively in the public domain, to rebuild trust and confidence.

There are four elements to this building block of the plan for regaining confidence:

• The corporate campaign
• Reviewing the corporate social investment strategy
• Developing the Eskom Factor – a report that details Eskom’s social, economic and environmental footprint in South Africa
• Rolling out an electricity summit.

The corporate campaign consists of two strategies: active leadership and active partnerships. Active leadership demonstrates Eskom’s leadership in meeting the electricity challenges in the country – this campaign is called “Eskom at work” and tells the public what Eskom is doing to maintain a stable electricity network. Active partnerships are aimed at creating partnerships with all South Africans to become more energy efficient – this is the 49M campaign.

The Deputy President and the Ministers of Energy and Public Enterprises launched the 49M campaign on 18 March 2011.