4 Steps for Effective Stakeholder Engagement (2024)

An organisation revolves around relationships. While stakeholder engagement is beneficial for creating improved relations, it’s benefits go far beyond. Here is why in any impact measurement effort a process should be put in place to involve the relevant stakeholders:

Engaging with and involving stakeholders is essential to gain insights into the perspectives of people and the environment in which they operate, to ultimately better understand the value of your effects.

Improved stakeholder engagement allows for greater collaboration and communication which allows stakeholders to highlight or yourself to discover potential risks. This aids in employing preventative measures to mitigate risks such as execution or evidence risks.

Having a concise stakeholder engagement plan allows for a birds eye view of affected stakeholders. It can happen that stakeholders who originally weren’t accounted for, might be affected or that unintended effects occur. Accounting for these effects might ultimately improve the probability of creating net positive outcomes.

Engaging with stakeholders gives a greater understanding of needs as well as experiences. Accounting for the views and experiences of people aids in developing better solutions, opting for the most impactful projects and hence allocating scarce resources effectively.

The first and most important step is to pin down both internal and external stakeholders. Internal stakeholders are those part of the organisation or team. External stakeholders include service beneficiaries, family members or even public parties. Once identified, it is essential to understand the landscape in which they operate. This means defining their roles and responsibilities related to the project.

Once the stakeholders have been identified and their roles in the project have been established, the engagement plan can be put together. The primary purpose of the stakeholder engagement plan is to ensure continuous and effective communication. The plan should include information on the frequency of communication, minimum thresholds (i.e. the number of people to be engaged with in each segment) and how to engage (e.g. focus groups, questionnaires, interviews). Appropriate verification from decision makers and external assurance allows you to get challenged and confidently implement your plan. The developed by Social Value International provides explanations and practical examples on how to create and implement a powerful stakeholder engagement plan.

Creating clear communication channels and an open space where stakeholders can voice their opinions is vital for success. Specifically those hard to reach populations —due to factors like gender, race, culture, language, age, or disability just to name a few— are often left out. Read more about “How to Listen to Marginalised Voices” in this article.

While engaging with various stakeholder groups it is essential to keep track of the commitments made to them and regularly communicate progress made against the commitments. Stakeholders want to know whether their suggestions are taken into account, what mitigation measures will be put in place and how the outcomes are being monitored. It is a good practice to make monitoring results and material changes also publicly available, so that not only the stakeholders who are directly involved are up to date, but also other interested parties (2).