A stakeholder is anyone who has a financial, social, economic or environmental “stake” in the organisation. Stakeholders can be individuals or groups who either have an influence over the organisation, or are affected by it. Typical stakeholders are customers, employees, suppliers, franchisees, business partners, investors, governments, campaign groups and NGO partners.

From a purely commercial viewpoint, it is essential that any company fosters healthy and productive relationships with its key stakeholders, in order to:

•  build trust and brand loyalty
•  engage employees behind company values, strategies and objectives
•  understand the business environment, to be able to adapt and improve
•  form effective partnerships to open up new services, products and markets
•  create sustainable and long-term operating environments

In the UK this has been legally enshrined in the duties of company directors which now states that “a director of a company must act in the way he considers, in good faith, would promote the success of the company for the benefit of its members as a whole, and in doing so have regard to …. the interests of the company's employees; the need to foster the company's business relationships with suppliers, customers and others; the impact of the company's operations on the community and the environment.”

Stakeholder accountability is a foundation of corporate responsibility, hinging on the notion that a responsible company is one that understands the diverse, and sometimes conflicting, needs of its stakeholder groups and takes these into consideration in strategic and day-to-day business. Some go further than this, expecting companies to be accountable to stakeholders for social and environmental performance, in the same way as they are held accountable to investors for financial performance.

Our view is that well-planned, regular and effective dialogue is an essential management activity that helps to create informed, adaptable, motivated and trusted organisations that are sustainable in the long-term. Effective dialogue becomes even more important for larger global organisations, or for sectors whose activities have significant, high profile or controversial impacts.

We have extensive experience within the Network of designing, developing, facilitating and monitoring single dialogues or broader dialogue programmes that work, for the client, and its stakeholders. This has included; designing complete dialogue programmes for global businesses; monitoring the effectiveness of dialogues and offering recommendations for improvement; using actors to create simulated training dialogues; facilitating dialogue sessions.

We are not from the school that believes in dialogue for dialogue's sake. Dialogue is extremely time-intensive, for management, and for stakeholders. All dialogue must therefore be mutually beneficial and must serve a specific purpose e.g. to expand awareness of impacts and issues; to understand stakeholder expectations; to manage conflict; to test and develop strategy; to test markets, products or services; to create partnerships to jointly own and manage difficult decisions; to change opinions or behaviours. Our reviews of engagement evaluate the benefits for the company, as well as assessing the responsiveness to stakeholder interests and concerns.

For some types of engagement e.g. around controversial issues, careful planning, risk assessment and implementation are essential. But engagement need not always be separated from normal day-to-day business. It is important that the multitude of informal and routine methods of engagement are identified and recognised as contributing to the overall stakeholder management process, and that the results of such engagements are captured so that they feed into risk management and decision-making.

If you are designing, expanding or just wishing to improve your engagement with stakeholders we are able to offer best practice, business-focused advice, support and assurance.

And for the stakeholders it seeks to answer questions such as:
•  was the right mix of participants present?
•  was I able to voice my opinion, and was I listened to?
•  did I have an influence? How will my input be used?
•  was it worth my time to participate?
•  what are the next steps?

Assurance can be provided at three levels, or a combination of all three:
•  evaluation of the overall strategic stakeholder engagement programme
•  evaluation of specific elements e.g. employee engagement, dialogue with NGOs
•  evaluation of a specific dialogue event

We are informed in our assurance by emerging standards such as the AA1000SES Stakeholder Engagement Standard which we first piloted with Camelot in 2006.