Bringing sustainability to life: from the enhancement of CADF’s 2021 Integrated Report to internal stakeholder engagement
CADF, the “Water Factory”, is the utility that manages the water service in the territory of 11 municipalities in the lower Ferrara area, actively engaged for years in protecting the water resource, in a particularly delicate context such as the Po Delta. Sustainability for the company is a foundational value: at the base of the organization’s strategy, it guides its commitments in the environmental, social and economic dimensions. A sustainable action that CADF has been reporting annually through the Integrated Report since 2019, in 2022 awarded at the FERPI (Italian Public Relations Federation) Oscar di Bilancio awards in the medium and small enterprises category.
The “pocket” version and stakeholder interviews
Amapola was chosen to enhance the 2021 edition of this important transparency and stakeholder relations tool. It did so with different communication tools.
First, a summary version designed for the company’s digital channels. The agency took care of both the content, identifying the highlights of the complete version and recomposing them in clear and exhaustive storytelling, and the graphic-visual aspects, designed to facilitate reading and understanding of concepts. An agile solution that strengthens the dissemination of the document, simplifying it and making it accessible to more audiences and not just industry professionals.
To further bring the company’s sustainability to life and make it shared culture, Amapola also took care of creating 5 video interviews with the main strategic stakeholders of CADF (available on the utility’s website: https://www.cadf.it/sostenibilita/), dialogue and openness tools towards the company’s key interlocutors. The interviews were also inserted, via QR codes, within the CADF Integrated Report summary.
Engaging CADF’s internal stakeholders with a participatory work day
Amapola also supported the company in defining a strategic path to shorten distances between shareholders and the company. The project materialized in a participatory work day with mayors, councilors and executives of member municipalities, called upon to propose ideas, projects and stimuli on CADF priorities, starting from the contents of the Integrated Report summary, presented on the occasion. Three main objectives of the day: involve shareholders in utility projects, encouraging and stimulating active participation; identify any present and future criticalities; highlight opportunities for service improvement and future development directions of the company.
The workshop Together: for citizens, for the future of our territories was fully designed and organized by Amapola, which also handled the feedback from the meeting. Focused on three strategic themes for CADF (infrastructure, citizen services and environmental sustainability), it was structured in two plenary sessions and three working tables, moderated and managed by CADF experts, trained by Amapola for this role, and by the agency’s expert facilitators. The chosen work methodology was World Caf�, a technique that stimulates the emergence of ideas and the sharing of resources and skills through discussions self-managed by participants, within a common framework and under the guidance of reference questions. Three World Caf�s one for each identified strategic theme were held simultaneously during the day, each organized in two “conversation rounds” of 30 and 20 minutes. The priorities that emerged from each table were then presented and shared in a concluding plenary session.
