Stakeholder engagement
Find. Map.
Listen. Engage.
They’ve got a stake.
You’ve got a strategy.
Your stakeholders are the people — individuals and groups — who have a stake in your business. Some are allies. Some aren’t. All of them matter.
Stakeholders can be powerful due to their position in society, their property or land rights, and their interests that align or compete with yours.
Effective stakeholder engagement is both strategic and genuine. It seeks first to understand stakeholder perspectives before engaging in good faith to create business and community success.
Service breakdown
Our stakeholder engagement practice ranges from short-term strategic planning to hands-on work with your team.
Stakeholder mapping
Listing, analyzing and categorizing stakeholders often creates “aha” moments for executive teams.
Story and message customization
Tailor your organization’s narrative and overarching key messages to specific stakeholders.
Stakeholder relations planning
The highest priority stakeholders require dedicated communications plans, ensuring constructive relationships for mutual benefit.
Community relations
Plan and develop materials and engage directly with the local community near your operations or proposed development.
Stakeholder perception audit
Interviews with key stakeholders, typically without attribution of specific comments, to assess areas of support and misalignment with your organization’s key stakeholders.
Engagement tracking
Establish a rigorous tracking system and process for all stakeholder engagement and commitments, in turn supporting regulatory approvals.
Highlights
Here are examples of our stakeholder engagement work in action:
Startup company
Mapped the key stakeholders, created the community-focused website, hosted a community open house, built the stakeholder tracking system and fielded community inquiries for a startup clean energy industrial development.
Major sport organization
Completed a stakeholder perception audit for a large Calgary sport organization that saw management follow through on a majority of the audit report’s recommendations.
Municipal department
Prepared a stakeholder engagement strategy for a City of Calgary department that was working with diverse stakeholders, some with competing interests.
Federal agency
Facilitated and supported a stakeholder mapping initiative undertaken by an arm’s-length federal government organization.
FAQ
What is stakeholder mapping?
A stakeholder map is a core tool for strategic communications. The map is a simple two-by-two matrix that organizes stakeholders into four categories – we label them the power people, the overlooked, the squeaky wheels, and the distractions. The process to create the map is hands-on facilitation with your team, creating ownership of the resulting strategy.
What is a stakeholder perception audit?
A perception audit is a series of one-on-one interviews with a representative sample of an organization’s key stakeholders (typically 12 to 15 interviews). We follow a pre-approved question guide, probing on responses that differ from the norm or hint at an insight. By promising respondents that no individual comments will be attributed to them, we get frank, actionable input. A written report captures the themes, insights and gaps along with recommendations for management consideration.
Is stakeholder engagement different from Indigenous relations?
Yes. For one thing, the word “stakehoIder” has a negative historical meaning to some Indigenous people. For another, Indigenous Peoples have distinct treaty rights and legal rights. Stretch & Minogue doesn’t specialize in Indigenous relations, but we know people and firms that do excellent work in this area.
Can you plan a town hall or open house meeting?
We have planned and executed both town halls and open houses for clients to hear directly from their stakeholders. We have a team member who is IAP2 certified and deeply experienced in this space.
Can you speak directly to our stakeholders?
In some cases (typically with smaller clients), we work directly with local communities on behalf of our clients. For example, we can monitor phone lines, email addresses and social media channels used for community relations.
Related links
Services
Communication strategy
Media and communication training
Writing
Issues
management