Annual Report 2019-20

We promote clear, efficient, and effective communication to support and celebrate our work.

Our strategic communication team provides expert advice on communication and engagement matters to support the delivery of our work program. 

Our year in review

We supported more engagement with our stakeholders than ever before

We released our stakeholder engagement framework as part of our commitment to effective stakeholder engagement. 

Designed to provide stakeholders and the community with a range of ways to contribute to our work, the framework is built on five principles:

• we will be transparent and accountable
• our engagement will be inclusive
• our information is clear, accessible and simple to understand
• we will listen and learn to improve our engagement.
• our engagement is considered, planned and genuine.

With the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic to face-to-face engagement, we moved all of our stakeholder events online. Hosting digital events ensured we remained accessible to Victorians. 

In 2019–20, our commitment to engagement saw the commission host 28 events, with more than 1,200 registered attendees.

Our energy rights campaign continued to support Victorians in making informed choices

Now in its second year, our ‘It’s your energy’ campaign (pages 38 and 39) has helped consumers find information on best offer deals, how to access support for payment difficulties and the Victorian default offer. 

Using digital, social, print, outdoor advertising and radio, the campaign built on our work from 2018–19, reinforcing messaging and branding. 

More than 40,000 Victorians visited our energy rights campaign webpage in 2019–20 to access simple and concise information on their energy. 

On a survey of 1,000 Victorians, we found: 

• consumer awareness of 'best offer' deals increased by 32 per cent
• 37 per cent of respondents sought more information about best offer deals
• 58 per cent took action by contacting their retailer. 

We’re working on improving our digital presence 

We completed an audit of our digital platforms in 2019, and developed our three-year digital strategy which will be implemented from July 2020. 

The new strategy will achieve a coherent, efficient and effective approach to digital platforms, and will ensure our stakeholders can use our digital tools to easily gain the information they need. The strategy will help us increase brand awareness and engagement. 

In 2019–20, our website saw more than 380,000 visits and our social media gathered more than 350,000 impressions. The digital strategy will help us to grow our presence online and meet the needs of all our audiences. 

Progress report, 2019–20

Objective: Manage external communication – Status: On track

Manage external communication (media, web and social) to promote the trust in the regulator by ensuring it is accurate, relevant, audience-cantered, and current 

Outputs

• We published over 70 media releases and more than 300 social media posts (LinkedIn and Twitter)

Outcomes

• Subscribers and stakeholders to our social media channels receive more information-rich, extensive, clear-to-understand and relevant information directly. 
• Our tweets received more than 302,000 impressions, while our LinkedIn posts collected more than 58,000 impressions organically.

Objective: Supporting the commission – Status: On track

Support the divisions to communicate and engage effectively with industry and sector stakeholders

Outputs    

• Each division has a communications business partner to support their work and ensure best communication practices are met.
• All divisions have developed engagement plans.
• All internal training is provided online to ensure all members of the commission can access it. 

Outcomes

• We have continued to improve the publications and communication divisions have with their stakeholders. 

Objective: Stakeholder engagement – Status: On track

Promote stakeholder engagement activities to a wider audience to promote transparency and the legitimacy of our outcomes 

Outputs    

• We published out stakeholder engagement framework.
• More than 1,200 people registered for our 28 events in 2019–20. 
• In response to disruptions created by the coronavirus pandemic, we moved all our engagement activities to online.

Outcomes

• More events in a more accessible way improved our ability to communicate with stakeholders and has helped us increase engagement.
• Stakeholders can engage more easily with us – with communication no longer being one-way, but a two-way conversation.

Objective: Developing our digital strategy – Status: On track

Develop a three-year digital strategy to achieve a coherent, efficient and effective approach to digital platforms and tools. 

Outputs    

• We completed an audit of our web and social media channels.
• A digital strategy for 2020–22 has been developed, with implementation to begin in 2020–21.

Outcomes

• We have a better understanding of how stakeholders use our channels and access our information. 
• We have improved our digital channels, making them easier to use and effective in promoting our work.

Objective: Promoting the work of the commission – Status: On track

Promote the work of the commission, building our reputation via earned and owned media channels

Outputs    

• We sent seven Essential News monthly newsletters and 54 Essential Express email alerts to our more than 1,200 subscribers, with unique open rates between 34 and 43 per cent. 
• Our social media following continued to meet the needs of stakeholders shown by the growth of our following across all platforms – more than 1,000 new subscribers.

Outcomes

• Stakeholders have a better understanding of our work and the important decisions we make that can affect them. 
• Our Essential News and Express saw engagement well above the 31 per cent industry benchmark, indicating our notifications are useful for our audiences. 
• Our reputation as a source of accessible and relevant information has been strengthened.

Measuring our success in 2020–21

Strategy objective	Objective	What outputs do we intend to produce?	What outcomes do we intend to achieve?
Objective 2	Digital strategy implementation: Implement year-one of the digital strategy roadmap with a focus on improving the accessibility, usefulness and relevance of our content.	Implement 2020 content audit outcomes. Redevelop ‘for consumers’ section. Implement ‘how useful was this content’ feedback mechanism. Conduct usability testing. Establish reporting dashboards for key content areas.	The project has three key elements: Increasing the team’s capacity to deliver key components of the roadmap capability building for the team development of guidelines and key artefacts (content calendars and channel strategies) to improve quality and consistency of digital and social content and management of digital channels.
Objective 3	Customer research insights program: Build a deeper understanding of the customer experience through coordinating targeted consumer insights research and improving our customer information systems through the development of a complaints and correspondence framework.	Identify barriers to consumer engagement with energy market and implement/consider policy and communications initiatives to reduce them.	Run integrated communication campaigns focused on energy rights, promoting our engagement activities and increasing the ‘findability’ of our content for new audiences including culturally and linguistically diverse and First Nations audiences.
Objective 1	Enhancing our visibility: Develop and support a range of events designed to enhance our community connectedness, reach new diverse audiences, and increase our social media footprint.	Conduct review of 2019–20 engagement activities to identify opportunities for improvement Develop an engagement measurement and evaluation framework Implement ongoing capacity building to deliver high quality engagement including: develop digital engagement skills across the organisation introduction to engagement for all new staff within their first two months.	All projects have an approved engagement plan that upholds the principles of the stakeholder engagement framework Post engagement reviews are conducted within one month of the end of a project All new staff attend engagement training (inhouse) within two months of commencing with the commission.
Objective 2	Media strategy: Implement year one of our media strategy	Create and implement a 12-month themed media calendar Develop divisional communication and engagement plans Develop a key targets strategy to increase diversity of coverage.	10 per cent increase in annual share of voice 10 per cent increase in coverage and variety of coverage.

Environmental factors

The main environmental factors affecting our work are:

• The scale and pace of energy reforms means our work in this area has a higher profile and attracts more media attention than some of our other work. We must ensure our work in all sectors is promoted as it is all just as important to the community. We need to effectively forward-plan to make sure we don’t miss opportunities to inform and engage stakeholders with our work. 
• The commission has grown quickly – as has our workload and responsibilities. We need to ensure our priorities include relevant and effective digital communications and that we have a clear strategic focus. 
• The pandemic meant we had to shift quickly to engaging online which lead to a significant increase in the number of participants to our forums. Maintaining the quality of virtual engagement will be an ongoing challenge for the team.

Publications and submissions for 2019–20

You can view a complete list of all releases we published and all submissions received during 2019–20 at www.esc.vic.gov.au/annual-reports