Often, project managers will step into a stakeholder management plan without consulting or creating a stakeholder matrix, also known as stakeholder mapping. It can seem like an unnecessary extra step – however, making one is essential to the ease of your project. A stakeholder matrix is a simple and effective project management tool to analyze your stakeholders and to create different strategies for the different groups of stakeholders, ensuring that you meet all the actions needed to align their needs and perspectives with your project goals.

You may hear people talk about different types of matrices, each with their own approach. Every single one has a different origin. The basic six you will hear about are:

• The Business Process Management Stakeholder Matrix, proposed by John Jeston and Johan Nelis
• Stakeholder Influence Grid, proposed by Dragan Milosevic
• Power and Support Stakeholder Analysis, proposed by Paul Roberts
• Power and Interest grid Power/Interest Grid, from Eden and Ackermann
• Support and Importance Stakeholder Matrix, developed by Paul Nutt
• The Influence/Interest Matrix, suggested by the OGC
• The Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix

But what do these matrices actually involve? How can you have so many approaches to the same relative idea? Let’s dive into a few examples.

The Influence/Interest Matrix plots out your stakeholders based on their influence on the project, cross referenced by their interest in the project. This way, you can figure out which stakeholders need the most attention to keep the impact of their opinions in check.

A government body would have a significant impact on a project. A person whose home needs to be moved in the process might have significant interest. So, your stakeholders then get plotted out based on these two axes. Less interested stakeholders who also have less impact might need to be monitored. You can keep others satisfied, keep informed, and manage your most interested, most impacted stakeholders closely.

The Stakeholder Engagement Assessment Matrix rates your stakeholders based on how engaged, flatly, they are with the process in total. They’ll be rated on a scale of Unaware, Resistant, Neutral, Supportive, and Leading.

Each stakeholder can be put into these boxes, but the trick with this matrix is to also demarcate where they currently sit in their interest, versus where you’d like them to be. You can mark each current status with a “C” and each desired status with a “D”. Are more Cs and Ds actually in the same column? That’s great! But if you’ve got them spread out, there’s still more work to be done.

There are many different approaches, many different matrices, and each with different strategies for the different groups of stakeholders in each of the four quadrants. These are just two examples broken down, but you can take any path you think will work. How do you decide which matrix should be for you? Every one is geared toward measuring your stakeholders’ value and impact on your work. But take a look at these models and see how you would describe your stakeholders. Whatever terminology connects mostly strongly with your team, pursue that in your matrix.

Will every stakeholder you have always fit perfectly into these matrices? Not always. But it’s also not a perfect science. The goal is to have a starting point to work from. If you’re able to visualize all your stakeholders on this matrix, you can have an opportunity to start calculating and planning out their engagement, editing as you go to get a good perspective on priorities and needs.

Understanding the influence and authority of specific networks, and being sensitive to stakeholder relationships will provide you with a real advantage right from the start.

Learn more: Communication Strategy for Stakeholder Engagement

Contact SustaiNet Software – We would love to hear from you!

Contact us with questions you have about our services and products, or if you would like to see our software in action. Someone from our team will get back to you within 24 hours.

Effective stakeholder engagement is essential to ensure a project is fully successful. For your stakeholder engagement plan to have value and be impactful, it has to be meaningful.

But why shift toward meaningful engagement? The goal is to emphasize:

• corporate social responsibility, 
• more transparency, 
• better reporting,
• and improved project outcomes.

You’re doing much more than reaching out to the people impacted by your project and giving them a voice. Optimal engagement has been shown to have a direct connection to the success of a project.

Learn more about StakeTracker information management software with your custom demo.

Originally, stakeholder engagement was seen primarily as a way of mitigating risk. Keep your stakeholders happy, make sure to talk to them in the planning stage, and there was a smaller chance something would go awry. But now, that engagement is essential to the whole lifespan of a project – ensuring stakeholders are part of the process, and documenting those interactions over time.

To do that, we have to always be returning to how we approach a plan and re-editing, reevaluating. That continuous cycle looks like this:

• Planning: Create your initial plan after some preliminary talks with stakeholders. Figure out their original needs and incorporate that into your overall plan. Identify your stakeholders, create a map, and do research to understand them.
• Engaging: As you proceed with your plan, continue to engage with those stakeholders. Ask them about their needs as you proceed with the project. Have conversations or focus groups, do surveys, and hold one-on-one meetings to connect.
• Measuring: Measure the impact of the plan and project progress so far on your stakeholders. Gauge the success and their needs again. Let that impact your work.

And then, the cycle repeats. You’ll adjust your plan based on those measurements, you’ll engage with those stakeholders, and measure the success of that engagement. Then change that stakeholder engagement plan again. It might feel exhausting to return to the same planning document, like you’re a hamster on a wheel. But the point is to watch how your project influences your stakeholders over time, so you’re better prepared the entire way through your process.

In essence, that all really means you’re never done with stakeholder engagement. You’re always refining and honing what your plan looks like in relation to those stakeholders. Broken down further, you should always be committing to a cycle that looks like this:

• Identifying stakeholders
• Defining objectives
• Communicating objectives
• Creating strategy
• Assigning responsibility
• Measuring outcomes
• Assessing risks & objectives, and then beginning again at the top.

But these processes are never going to be so smooth in reality and you need to balance out your objectives with their needs. You’ll likely encounter roadblocks that will change your course. But that’s the point of more meaningful engagement: providing you with a strong, flexible stakeholder engagement plan that’s ready for change.

Contact SustaiNet Software – We would love to hear from you!

Contact us with questions you have about our services and products, or if you would like to see our software in action. Someone from our team will get back to you within 24 hours.

The social license to operate refers to the ongoing perceptions, acceptance and approval of a project among its stakeholders, and is granted by the stakeholder community. In order for social license to be determined for a project, efforts have to be made to measure these beliefs and perceptions. Since beliefs and perceptions can change over the lifespan of a project, social license needs to not only be earned but also preserved.

Understanding stakeholders and their needs.

Stakeholders are the local community and other interested parties, such as NGOs, government and other organizations. It is that diverse group of people’s beliefs, opinions and perceptions that make up their collective feelings about a project. Acquiring social licence from stakeholders is a complex exercise, and when not done effectively can result in the delay or cancellation of a project.

For companies proposing projects, the social license to operate is something only stakeholders can grant. Companies should be aware that social license is a dynamic, mostly intangible concept that can change and evolve over time. Therefore, it must be gained and then maintained over the course of a project’s lifespan.

Research shows the concept of social license depends on stakeholders’ perceptions of the project—first the project must be viewed as legitimate in order for it to have credibility. A company must therefore understand a group or community’s social, cultural and legal norms before engaging them. Having this understanding legitimizes and lends credibility to the process, as does sharing clear and accurate information under an established communications framework.

Levels of social license.

Trust takes time and effort to cultivate, and requires shared experiences throughout the stakeholder engagement process. Even if a project travels through the stages of legitimacy, credibility and trust, stakeholder approval is still not guaranteed. It is not a case of “Yes” or “No”, as there will be different levels of stakeholder support. These can include:

• Acceptance: stakeholders accept the project. This is viewed as a primary level of social license.
• Approval: this is a higher level of social license that carries more weight and is more desirable for all parties.
• Becoming part of the social fabric: this occurs when projects transcend acceptance and approval, and become part of a community’s collective identity.

Best practices to achieve and measure social license.

Some pitfalls that can have an impact on your project’s ability to achieve social license to operate are:

• Failing to engage a community early enough in the process.
• Not taking the time to understand the norms of a community of stakeholders.
• Failure to accommodate the diverse range of knowledge and behaviours across stakeholder groups.
• Not investing enough time for the process and for relationship building.
• Overestimating support for a project.

Best practices to achieve, measure and maintain social license include:

• Understanding the context of the project/issue with respect to stakeholders, as well as identifying external influencing factors.
• Engaging and building relationships with all stakeholders, including those opposed to your project.
• Communicating early and with as much transparency as possible.
• Considering what resources and background stakeholders will need in order to understand your project, and how often updates should be provided.
• Continuously using findings to review strategies and methods of stakeholder engagement throughout the lifecycle of your project. Doing so will maximize improvements to stakeholder engagement and increase project support.
• And finally, making good use of a secure online stakeholder management solution to centrally document engagement strategies and outcomes of stakeholder engagement activities.

To be confident of the status of a social license, it needs to be measured and documented.  The results are used to modify activities with the intention of improving the quality of the relationship between the project and the community/stakeholders. A project that lacks a meaningful stakeholder engagement process can lead to politicization of the process and delays, but done effectively social license is an achievable goal for those who can make longterm investments in the process.

Learn how our stakeholder management software can help your organization effectively connect and communicate with important audiences across the communities in which you operate.                    Request Your Demo Here. 

Strong stakeholder engagement and effective stakeholder management are the cornerstones of a successful project. Do it right, and you’ll save yourself a lot of problems, time and money along the way. Do it wrong…and your project can become derailed before you barely start.

But take heart – the key to effective stakeholder management is planning. With a good strategy and tactical plan in place it’s possible to handle all the “curve balls” that can come your way during the stakeholder engagement process.

1. Stakeholder Identification:

Map out everyone who is affected by your project. What individuals, special interest groups, rights holders, community and indigenous groups, municipalities, or organizations should be considered?

2. Stakeholder Prioritization:

Now that you have identified the groups, determine which ones are the main or priority stakeholders (those who are more impacted than others and who may have the authority to block progress or advance your activities) and which groups have less influence or interest, but should be kept informed of your activities. Different stakeholders in the 4x different quadrants of a stakeholder map would require different communication strategies.

3. Stakeholder Communication – Methods:

Consider how to most effectively communicate with each group. There will be differences in how groups, as well as individuals, prefer to take part in the project dialogue.

4. Stakeholder Communication – Content:

Communicate early and with as much transparency as possible. Consider what resources and background stakeholders will need in order to understand your project, and how often updates should be provided.

5. Stakeholder Engagement:

Understand the difference in effectiveness when stakeholders are engaged rather than neglected. Is there two-way communication occurring that benefits both parties? Stakeholders will feel engaged if they are aware of being listened to, and it is demonstrated that their input matters.

6. Stakeholder Management Team:

Who is working with stakeholders on the project? Effective staff training and making expectations, company messages, and consistent reporting very clear to the team is essential for effective stakeholder engagement and use of company resources.

7. Stakeholder Data Collection:

Stay on top of projects by centrally managing all communications via specialized software and team support. Look for an easy solution that enables quick input, tracking and cross-referencing of information.

8. Stakeholder Information Reporting:

Make sure your software reporting functionality allows easy extraction and reporting on any aspect of your stakeholder consultation. Good reporting will minimize risk and maximize transparency and accountability.

9. Stakeholder Relationship Analysis and Improvement:

Continuously use findings to review strategies and methods of stakeholder engagement throughout the lifecycle of your project. Doing so will maximize improvements to stakeholder engagement and increase project support.

Powerful stakeholder management involves tracking the impact your work has on the communities in which you operate, while maximizing transparency and accountability. Keep your activities and communication aligned with the interests of your stakeholders, and you’ll produce much more effective outcomes.

Need to get control of your stakeholder engagements? With StakeTracker you can easily record, document, track & report on all your interactions and communications with stakeholders.

Stakeholder consultation is a common business practice that serves a variety of purposes. It can be mandated by government, be part of corporate social responsibility policies, or a strategic development activity. The communication channels that are opened between a company and stakeholders can ideally result in the strengthening of relationships between parties, and provide essential insights into current or future challenges and trends.

Compelling stakeholder engagement follows a strategy that targets the right groups, involves participants in a meaningful way, and makes use of the information collected to inform next steps.

Effective stakeholder consultation can also result in participants changing their preconceived perspectives about the project, development or issue under discussion. This occurs when participants feel engaged, valued and invested in the process, and when they receive sufficient clear information about the project to make the most informed decision about it.

One of the most important aspects of engagement is for the proponent to not to have predetermined outcomes for the process. If stakeholders feel any area is not up for discussion or their voices will not be heard, they will be mistrustful of the process.

Targeting the right groups involves including those who will be or will deem themselves to be affected by the project or proposal, those who can add new information to the discussion, those who it would not be wise to exclude, and those the proponent is mandated to consult.

Participants should be engaged in ways that are suited to them and make it easy for them to understand and communicate. This may involve engaging participants online so they may contribute when it’s convenient for them, and/or giving stakeholders the ability to comment anonymously. Offering a range of approaches such as focus groups, surveys, forums, questions and answer opportunities is also practical.

Stakeholders who are not properly informed about a project may not be in favour of it due to the lack of comprehensive background information. For that reason, proponents must engage in educating stakeholders during the consultation process. Part of meaningful engagement also means taking the information gathered during the consultation process into account and making necessary changes to the application as a result. Changes or alterations should be communicated to stakeholders to reflect this commitment.

Some of the additional positive outcomes for an engaging stakeholder engagement process that can shift stakeholders’ perspectives include:

• Improved relationships between proponent and stakeholders
• Changed perceptions of the proposal and the proponent company as a result of information sharing
• Improved communication channels
• Generation of new ideas to inform the project or proposal
• Identification and diffusion of potential conflict areas before they arise
• Support and goodwill for the proposal

Key takeaway: Have the intention to educate and inform stakeholders, to develop an open communication channel, as well as being prepared to adapt and communicate back based on the input that is gathered. This is the practical approach towards informing and in some cases even changing minds during the consultation process.

Find out how our stakeholder management software can help your organization effectively connect and communicate with important audiences across the communities in which you operate.

Request a StakeTracker Web Demo

To ensure the highest level of data protection when using a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application to manage stakeholder information, it’s important to pay attention to three components of security: the user, the network, and the application.

The user must adhere to established protocols, the data centre must meet high security standards and perform high-level testing and security audits, and the application must be built in such a way as to guarantee encrypted data transfer and make it easy for the users to adhere to best-practices.

Take a look at this overview of the three security components, and best practices for each.

The user

How secure are the people using the system?

• Do the end users understand the system and the security concerns regarding the information they collect and enter?
• Does the company have an information security protocol or standard operating procedure in place for collecting, handling, inputting and saving private information?
• Who has access to the system? How do they save their login information?
• If a laptop gets lost or stolen, will the thief be able to access the system?
• What happens in the event that someone who has access to the system leaves the company?

When considering web-based software, it’s important to understand that these security concerns are possible to overcome with the implementation of a system of permission settings and protocols regarding device usage.

Just like physical on-site security requires keys be given to specific people by someone assigned to keep track of them, online security also requires a similar system whereby designated administrative personnel manage permissions and access levels.

Protocols will ensure that user security is dealt with in an systematic and standardized way from within the organization. It is a best practice that the company or department create, document and implement a series of protocols or standard operating procedures.

Even apparently mundane information about stakeholders is private, and it is very important for the company collecting and managing this information to not only be able to offer a privacy guarantee to stakeholders, but to be able to follow through on it with integrity.

The network

How secure is the network and hosting server?

• Where is your information stored? In what country? In what kind of facility?
• What are the physical security practices?
• What are the ‘virtual’ security practices?
• Are they certified as a secure provider?

When a company considers SaaS, the intention is usually to manage significant amounts of information in an environment that requires privacy and robust security. Therefore, it is imperative that the service provider they select has exceptional integrity when it comes to the data servers hosting their information.

In many cases, SaaS development companies work closely with a hosting provider – a company that specializes in data storage and handling, disaster recover, backups, and more. It is important to note that security is likely strengthened by working with a dedicated hosting company. An organization that specializes in data centre operations and is committed to managing the possible security risks associated with physical and virtual data centre infrastructures.

The application

How secure is the software?

• What kind of security practices does the software developer adhere to?
• Does the software provider regularly perform vulnerability scanning?
• Does the software provider regularly perform penetration testing?
• Does the software use encryption technology for data transfer over the internet?

Application-level security assessments consist of two levels of testing, both of which should be performed regularly by the software developer:

Vulnerability Assessment:

A vulnerability assessment is a high-level scan that does not attempt to ‘break into’ the system but rather spot potential areas for security breaches. It is the process of identifying, quantifying, and prioritizing (or ranking) weaknesses and delivering prioritized recommendations for remediation. This is an important tool for software providers and worth asking any SaaS provider for details about.

Penetration Testing:

This is a much more in-depth test, ideally performed by a 3rd party testing company on a regularly scheduled basis. It is a method of evaluating the security of a computer system or network by simulating an attack from malicious outsiders (who do not have an authorized means of accessing the organization’s systems) and malicious insiders (who have some level of authorized access). The process involves an active analysis of the system for any potential vulnerabilities that could result from poor or improper system configuration, both known and unknown hardware or software flaws, or operational weaknesses in process or technical countermeasures.

SaaS and stakeholder engagement

Cloud-based software is often the best fit for companies performing stakeholder engagement and consultation activities. The universal access and unified database fits well with the day-to-day activities of practitioners and those needing to pull customized reports by filtering specific criteria.

Be sure to focus on finding a provider that meets your company’s needs and meshes with your security requirements. Most vendors are more than willing to go into more depth about the security offered by their software, so ask lots of questions and discuss the benefits and potential issues. Establish strong security protocols early, and ensure users adhere to them.

Ready to learn more?

Request your Free Staketracker Demo and

download our e-book SaaS Security for Stakeholder Engagement Part 2

A variety of community engagement methods should be considered when planning a stakeholder relations project.

Four popular community engagement methods are community meetings, focus groups, surveys and online engagement – and there are pros and cons to using each one.

The approaches you use will depend on the groups of stakeholders being consulted and the intended outcomes of your initiative. The reality is that a number of engagement techniques will likely be needed in order to communicate with a range of stakeholders.

Issues, objectives, stakeholder mix and available resources will all contribute to determining the ideal framework for your stakeholder engagement initiative.

Community meetings

Public or Town Hall meetings can be a valuable way of sharing information.

The face-to-face nature of these events provides a great opportunity to demonstrate openness and transparency to stakeholders. It is important to consider what will make your event compelling to stakeholders – and encourage attendance.

Strengths:

• Opportunity to deliver information and gather feedback. Community meetings can be used effectively at the beginning of an initiative to explain processes and outcomes.
• Great for meeting stakeholders in person, and to demonstrate transparency.
• Can be useful for community outreach or to attract media attention for your project or program.

Weakness:

• Attendance may be low. Stakeholders are not likely to attend unless they feel personally affected by outcomes related to your project or program.
• If an issue or project is particularly controversial, this may not be the right method for engagement.
• Media publicity may be negative if the meeting is confrontational or not handled well.

Focus groups

Focus Groups encourage discussion and work well when reaching out to smaller or marginalized stakeholder groups. The active dialogue between members is enhanced when asked focused questions, and a comfortable environment is created.

Strengths:

• This small group setting is an efficient way to use resources and identify important issues.
• Focus groups can be planned and organized to reach a specific group of stakeholders or developed around a particular topic.
• If there is conflict, it can be handled more easily in a small group.

Weaknesses:

• Must involve an experienced facilitator to ensure the process runs smoothly.
• Focus groups are not an effective method to ensure all stakeholders and perspectives are represented.

Surveys

Surveys or questionnaires often ask yes/no (or scaled) questions to groups of people in order to identify community opinion. They are useful for mass outreach.

Strengths:

• Useful to collect and collate quantitative data.
• Data can be used to compare results from another period of time or against different stakeholder groups.
• It is a quick and cost-effective way to communicate with large groups of people.

Weaknesses:

• Surveys are not usually useful to identify reasons behind stakeholder opinions.
• They are not as effective in establishing community relationships or developing dialogue.
• Response rates may be limited, survey rates are often less than 20%

Web-based engagement

Online public participation is a useful way to reach and engage with many stakeholders. Reaching out using online communications can include using social media, web or cloud-based survey systems, and online discussion platforms.

Strengths:

• Effective in reaching large groups of people and collecting data in an efficient way.
• Flexible and convenient for participants, encourages participation if time and location is a barrier.
• Is an opportunity to encourage discussion and reflection about complex topics.
• One practice that will improve the outcomes of a consultation initiative is to take time to develop the right set of questions.

Weaknesses:

• Stakeholders without access to the internet will be excluded unless special accommodation is made for them.
• A moderator should be allocated to manage the process and respond to questions promptly.
• Privacy concerns should be addressed to encourage participation.

There is not one perfect way to engage with stakeholders, and needs will change depending on the groups and issues needing to be addressed. Using more than one outreach method for your engagement process will pave the way to increased stakeholder participation, and building of stronger relations with your stakeholder community.

Being asked to participate in a consultation, but not believing that your input will make any difference to the outcome, is a serious hazard. If intention is not genuine, people can sense it. Effective stakeholder engagement is more than a check box as all parties must value it.

Finally, regardless of the technique used, making good use of stakeholder engagement software like StakeTracker helps your organization track all your stakeholder communications. Quickly and easily input, track and cross reference stakeholder information, and our powerful report writer allows you to easily extract and report on any aspect of your consultation.

Municipal governments often need to poll citizens regarding community planning and development initiatives. What do people think about changes to the roads? What are the priorities for new infrastructure spending? How should the local government invest in parks and recreation?

These are the types of issues that are particularly well-suited for online discussion and debate. Differing opinions can be presented, supported, argued against, and ultimately resolved. People can contribute and check in to online discussions on their own schedule, as well as take time to think about issues before commenting on other people’s ideas.

Diverse sets of stakeholders and user needs

Municipalities generally want to hear from as many people in their community as possible. This can present a big challenge in the online environment due to the diverse range of knowledge and behaviours across different stakeholder groups.

Stakeholders who are comfortable communicating online will think nothing of opening multiple browser tabs, popping in and out of online discussions, and researching more on the topic on their own.

Less tech-savvy stakeholders may struggle to participate online, navigating to the right page, make sense of the buttons, icons and links, and finally feel frustrated to discover they have to go through another process of registering a user name and password before they can actually post their opinion.

How can municipalities straddle this divide and make online community engagement a process that is meaningful and easy for all participants?

Technology

User-Experience: 

• Remember that good design is is always important.
• Clear, consistent prompts and interface cues (icons, buttons, layout) should be intuitive and ideally fade into the background as a support to the content.
• Accessibility standards should be followed and it should be immediately obvious how to navigate and make the text larger or smaller.

Content-centric Design:

• Set up the platform to focus primarily on the content, keeping things on the same level for all users.
• Less-experienced tech users are still familiar with text, images and video.
• Making the content the focus of the experience will ensure that everyone is on the same level and that nothing is out of reach for those not as comfortable with the platform.

Multi-media:

• We know a picture is worth a thousand words, so imagine how much value a slide presentation or a well-made video adds.
• Move beyond static text. Let people see with their own eyes a slide show of the area up for re-zoning, or watch an interview with the mayor being grilled about the need for more community policing.
• Content presented this way makes people want to watch and read, but also come back and check for updates, and share with their friends.

Social Media:

• Social media integration allows for more interaction and networking potential.
• Having an option to leave comments using a Facebook profile may appeal to some, while being able to tweet a discussion page helps others attract traffic for their own endeavours. Plus it increases the exposure for the engagement project.

Content

Broad-Appeal Issues:

• The issues themselves will change the appeal factor for potential contributors.
• For example, youth may not connect to municipal budgets, unless they understand the relation to services and infrastructure that matters to them.
• Focusing on the subjects and issues that affect everyone can help ensure the discussion receives attention from a wider audience.

Different Engagement Options:

• Discussion boards are great for gathering thoughtful comments that can express multiple perspectives and generate debate. However most people don’t want to read through long threads of people agreeing or arguing about details that don’t pertain to them.
• Surveys can allow proponents to gather specific answers to specific questions and gather opinions.
• Polls allow those conducting the exercise to get a snapshot of priorities, or gauge the exact level of support on a set scale, and thereby get more specific, direct feedback for the questions they ask.
• Take advantage of the wide variety of different engagement options available through the technology. Different people will respond to different modes of engagement, so offering a selection will garner the widest range of responses.

Online/Offline Integration

Tie your online engagement project to offline issues, events and topics. Community events and celebrations, municipal elections, new infrastructure developments or re-zoning, and common challenges people are facing…these are all relevant subjects for online consultation, but they also present opportunities to broaden the discussion and cross-pollinate different engagement activities.

An open house is a good place to promote your online engagement, while your online engagement is also a good place to promote the next ‘town-hall’ meeting.

Promotion

If you make your engagement project easy to find you will get traffic, but it won’t get discovered without some help.

Don’t expect any one mode of promotion to cover all your bases. How can you reach your intended audience? Email, blog posts, posters, social media promotion to specific groups – it’s important to use multiple methods of promotion to reach as many stakeholders as possible.

Look for spots or opportunities where people have a moment to stop and actually read something. Consider when people will receive your email promotions. Look for related websites and other online services, from forums to Twitter to municipal web pages etc. that you can post a link on. And take time to create catchy link headline…the engagement starts from the first moment they see your message.

Long-term campaign, not a single event

Despite all these advances in technology and familiarity with online tools and activity, sometimes you may not get the response you expected even with targeted promotional efforts.

Don’t get discouraged – view online community engagement as an ongoing strategic process, a long-term campaign rather than a single event. Online engagement is not something you can do once and expect everyone to ‘attend.’

Municipalities are becoming more and more savvy at reaching out and listening to stakeholders online. Public consultations can be a productive way to engage local communities, and are an effective way to encourage citizens to contribute to municipal processes.

Check out our FREE Stakeholder Management Software Buying Guide.  

This e-book will walk you through a series of important pre-purchase considerations and will offer up tips and resources aimed at helping you make an informed buying decision.

Effective issues management prevents challenges from becoming major crises.

An approach that involves early detection and action helps companies manage their reputation, become proactive with regulators and stakeholders, and identify business opportunities.

Throughout the stakeholder engagement process, the team involved in communicating with a company’s stakeholders is not only going to hear about topics related to initial consultation parameters, but may also uncover issues and attitudes that were not originally identified or anticipated. It is essential for organizations to be proactive, and have solutions in place for potential issues that may arise.

Because a stakeholder engagement project is fluid and adapts over time, the issues management process needs to be amended over time too. New and important questions and problems are likely to emerge. If they are not managed properly, issues can certainly affect project outcomes.

Four steps to approaching issues management

1. Identifying issues: What are stakeholder perceptions and expectations? What issues will the company be held accountable for?
2. Prioritizing the response: How does the company focus on the issues that matter the most to the strategic direction? How are they ranked?
3. Development of strategic action: What actions are needed to generate a response while there is time to influence the outcome?
4. Evaluation: What are the results? Were the problems resolved effectively? What are the teachings from both successes and failures that can help determine future strategies?

At its core, stakeholder engagement is an issues management process, and consultation is at the forefront of identifying these issues.

Stakeholder engagement is also a public relations activity. It is easier to maintain good relationships with stakeholders when people feel they are being heard and their input is valued. The difficulty lies in the assessment of an issue’s intensity and the prioritization of a response.

Types of issues to prioritize

Issues are likely to relate to some or all of the following:

• Financial objectives (revenue and profitability)
• Government regulations (duty to consult, access)
• Legal issues (current or potential future lawsuits)
• Public image (reputation and transparency)

Deciding which categories carry the most weight is a challenge for organizations.

When identifying and prioritizing issues (consultation parameters) it’s important to consider the following:

• What are the company or business unit’s essential goals and strategies?
• Which stakeholders are affected both positively and negatively, and in what way?
• What are the main concerns and objectives of stakeholders individually and as groups?

Effective issues management is a proactive process that equips companies to better meet stakeholder expectations, maintain positive relationships, and achieve business objectives. This results in an enhanced company reputation, and trust generated between groups.

Find out how our stakeholder management software can help your organization effectively connect and communicate with important audiences across the communities in which you operate. Request a Demo.

Social capital is a collective societal connection and understanding that enables individuals or groups to build trust and to work together. Shared values and connections facilitate co-operation within a network, leading to trust creation and healthy working relationships.

When it comes to stakeholder consultation, a network can be a specific company, project or industry, and its stakeholders and rights holders.

Here’s your overview to help understand social capital, and make the most of your new insights when building relationships with your stakeholders.

How does social capital work?

Social capital facilitates co-operation and communication within and between groups.

The central premise of social capital is that networks have value and influence – and that there are inclinations that arise from these networks that lead to individuals or groups doing things for each other.

Social capital is the glue that bonds people together around shared ideas, and generates good faith.

Building social capital

Can social capital be expanded? Yes. Creating new ties and strengthening old ones can build social capital. These connections may increase opportunities by linking people more strongly to their community or to larger societal resources.

Developing network ties can also strengthen bonds that link groups and help bridge divisions between them. Communication and outreach is central to generating social capital, which creates a capacity for collaboration among individuals and groups within a network.

Influence and relevance to stakeholder management

In stakeholder consultation projects, being able to build networks is a very important skill.

Understanding the influence and authority of specific networks, and being sensitive to stakeholder relationships provides a real advantage when proceeding with a community consultation.

Having a good read of who talks with whom, who gets along (and who doesn’t), leads to the development of more effective communication strategies. A couple of key outcomes to aim for include nurturing positive word-of-mouth and building goodwill related to your consultation process.

Questions to consider:

• Which of the stakeholders  or rights holders affected by your project have relationships with each other?
• Do these groups of stakeholders or rights holders represent the same point of view?
• What connections do they have linking them to each other?
• Is there one group making the decisions?
• Do the stakeholder or rights holder groups interact? Are they opponents?

Value in understanding

Understanding social capital and how it influences stakeholder and rights-holder groups can help your organization build equity – both for your brand or a specific project.

It’s important to step back and take the time to fully comprehend the individuals and communities affected by a project and their relationships with each other, so that circumstances and perspectives that had never been considered don’t arise unexpectedly.

A focus on social capital allows a company to understand the dynamics of a situation and create effective frameworks for managing it. Understanding relationships and measuring the level of support is an effective way to generate goodwill and mitigate unexpected challenges during the public consultation process.

Learn more and Download Your Online Consultation and Community Engagement E-Book