In IAPH, we aim to provide leadership for the global port community during a period of unprecedented societal and technological change. We do this by seeking to offer the very best in services, information, and networking opportunities to our members. With this continued mission in mind, in June we undertook a membership survey and consultation for the first time since 2017. The response rate was strong, exceeding that of the previous survey. The results were both useful and interesting and will help shape the future of your association. Encouragingly, the survey showed strong levels of satisfaction with IAPH’s products and services, its communications and networking opportunities. Feedback from the survey indicated that members valued several benefits highly. These were: industry networking and making connections at a global level; sharing best practice; provision of IAPH guidelines and information; the IAPH World Ports Conference; and advocacy at a policy-making level. As well as the digital survey, the membership consultation involved interviews with senior leaders at a select sample of members from across the association’s six geographic subregions. These interviews confirmed a very diverse set of strategic goals and governance profiles among members and gave the IAPH Board and management teams some valuable insights into infrastructural and policy-making challenges across the globe. Sustainability was a key focus of the consultation and the results indicated that the six themes of the World Port Sustainability Program were similarly important across the world. Regional economic and social imperatives, as well political expediency, all affected the perceived importance of sustainability topics. While members were largely happy with our performance, there seemed to be an opportunity for us to improve engagement with, and usage of, our many products and services. Both digital respondents and interviewees were sometimes unaware of some key IAPH offerings or hadn’t yet been motivated to use them. It is our task to ensure that members get the most out of their membership, whether that means accessing our latest whitepaper or enrolling in the Environmental Ship Index (ESI) at no additional cost. There was also an understandable desire among some members to take a more regional focus regarding digital meetings, to ease attendance challenges and interaction. Following an initial discussion of the results by the IAPH Board at the end of June, we are currently considering how to enact the full set of recommendations from the membership consultation. We thank all the members who took the time to answer or share the digital survey and who spoke to us in person. Every verbatim response was read by a member of the IAPH team and given consideration. Of course, we remain open to feedback at any time. If you have any comments or suggestions, please email Fabienne Van Loo at [email protected].
