Stakeholder Engagement
In very simple terms stakeholder engagement is about communicating with individuals and organisations that impact or who are impacted by something you do/say etc. It’s a multi-way communication process which encourages stakeholders to take influence/control over activities which affect them. It is about facilitating discussion, feedback and learning from that feedback.
When Corelli ran a workshop for SI Poole it brought together stakeholders from education, health and well being, local Government and the local business community to discuss the issue of youth development and employability skills. Engaging stakeholders in the discussion enabled feedback, and ownership of the issues and subsequent activities. This idea of collaboration across sectors driving leadership is becoming increasingly popular as organisations see the benefit of stakeholder participation.
But the skills required to effectively implement stakeholder engagement are often missing within an organisation. But they would not be missing if the organisation could be flexible in how it views it communications approach. From Corelli's communications perspective, each different stakeholder group is an audience with individual needs and drivers, each requiring a tailored approach that needs to be directly linked to the corporate objectives. It sounds like a PR approach doesn’t it. And in a way if you think of an audience, internal or external as an audience, then it is.
If you then take that thought a bit further and look at consultative and cooperative issues management, where you are after tangible and measurable results from your communications with industry or company stakeholders, then you again see parallels.
In terms of models for engagement, I rather like BSR’s approach:
BSR’s Five-Step Approach (http://www.bsr.org/)
Set vision and level of ambition of future engagement and review past actions
Define criteria for identifying and prioritising stakeholders and select an engagement mechanism
Focus on short and long term goals, determine logistics for the engagement and set the rules
Conduct the engagement itself, ensuring equitable stakeholder contribution and mitigating tension while remaining focused on the issues
Identify opportunities from feedback and determine actions, revisit goals and plan next steps for follow-up and future engagement
As you can tell that is in corporate speak. I’ll talk more about Corelli’s interpretation, Corelli’s stakeholder engagement methodology another time.
If you are interested in talking with Lynn from Corelli regarding stakeholder engagement or your other communication needs please email: lynnbutterworth@live.co.uk
