In today’s business environment, engaging our diverse stakeholders in long-term dialogue is an important ingredient that informs our decision making, helps us progressively improve towards organisations sustainability commitments. In a world of business focused on 24/7 turnaround, technological integration, varying customer’s needs, regulatory environments, media and demand for profits and customer satisfaction.

In an environment where trust is hard-earned and a company’s reputation is in the hands of its stakeholders. Business proprietors require a deliberate stakeholder engagement strategy.  This is vital to a business, as it is no longer optional for businesses who wish to stay relevant in business. Organisations that ignore this, will in the foreseeable future find themselves dealing with different business realities.

A today’s stakeholder is more sophisticated, informed and engaged, collaborative, aware of governance and decision-making among stakeholder networks, and their expectations is that organisations aptly upright and  have the competence to instantly respond to any of their concerns. Businesses engage with many stakeholder groups in a variety of formal and informal settings across their entire business environment. The engagements may range from meetings with local, regional and national groups to dialogues with suppliers and customers.

There is always a need for organisations to actively get involved in multi-stakeholder initiatives, so that they can address pressing business environmental challenges. This can be proactively achieved by working together with external stakeholder partners, being able to identify and address issues by bringing together the expertise, knowledge and passion of organizations and individuals.

Engaging stakeholder’s is an important management function, particularly in relation to leading an organisation. In today’s modern business, you cannot run any business without engaging with your key stakeholders and there’s no doubt you already interact with them on a frequent, if not daily basis.  Stakeholder engagement goes beyond the interaction and in this context is about far more than dealing with them at the day to day level. It is a strategic decision and refers to truly putting stakeholders at the heart of your business and ensuring that everything you do across the business is designed to meet and exceed their needs and expectations.

Most organisations consider stakeholder engagement as a secondary function or even as a non-essential activity to the business vision. Programs in this line are today meant and designed to a tick the box approach with an aim of evidencing signed contracts. Stakeholder engagement should be at the heart of your strategic management processes and as an underlying principle in stakeholder engagement strategy.

It is essential that your organisation is genuinely interested in listening to stakeholder’s concerns and addressing their needs as part of the organizational decision-making processes. Some organisations undertake stakeholder engagement just because it is seen to be a fashionable thing to do and without any meaning to it, thus only racing to participating in a box ticking exercise.

What is evident is that stakeholders see through this while for leaders and managers who don’t approach stakeholder engagement in a genuine and meaningful way also do themselves and the business more harm than good.

As business leaders, aspiring owners, managers and employees, true stakeholder engagement has to mean more than daily transactions to developing meaningful relationships which serve to ensure that you understand and consistently deliver upon stakeholder’s needs and expectations.

For a long- term business relationships, consider thought leaders and influences from government, civil society, and the private sector, as they play an important role in creating and maintaining business value. This calls for organisation whether big or small to evolves and take a strategic and structured approach to stakeholder relations.

We have had insights as to why the stakeholders are a critical element of a business. Who are these stakeholders? And why are they important? Stakeholders vary from organisation to the other and include sponsors or investors, customers, employees, community, government, suppliers, shareholders among others.  

Investors or sponsors naturally want to protect their investment, and get the highest returns possible, so they generally view the business from that limited perspective. Thus it is essential to understand them in that context and create an understanding for business continuity. As a means, enable Annual General Meetings, quarterly roadshows and results briefings, webcasts, ongoing dialogue with analysts and investors.

A customer sustains and grows the business. It is common for businesses to interact with their customers on a regular basis and there is no doubt, no manager can survive for very long in a business environment without doing so. However, the real consideration here is how meaningful those relationships are in terms of really understanding their needs and continuously developing and enhancing service offering in response.

Introduce customer hotlines, local websites, plant tours, research, surveys, focus groups, feedback mechanisms among others like regular visits, dedicated account teams, joint business planning, joint value creation initiatives, customer care centers, social media engagement, surveys etc.

Employees play a critical role in your business. We already know that employee engagement is a vital success factor for business and organisations with no doubt have a variety of ways in which they interact with them. The key issue here is the quality of those interactions; for example, employees in many businesses complain that there are too many meetings which are unproductive so you should reflect upon the quality of your interactions, and not just the quantity. Is there value emanating from employee interactions? Consider; engagement surveys, senior executive business updates, town hall meetings, employee communications, individual development plans, health and safety communications programs, community and employee well-being projects, Ethics hotline;

Community depending upon the location of the business in question, the local communities have a greater or lesser impact on how you run it – if you are located in a small rural area they will probably have more influence on the decision you take than if you are based in a large city.

Regardless of location, most businesses seek to work closely with the local community and this can form part of wider corporate social responsibility efforts. Consider community meetings, plant visits, partnerships on common issues, sponsorship, lectures at universities among others.

The relationship between businesses and their suppliers has been somewhat at “arm’s length”, and in the past there has often been a general feeling of mistrust within the relationship. The expectation is that the supplier’s aim to maximize profits at the expense of service standards and quality, with the purchaser challenging the supplier on quality, weight and price and always threatening to take their business elsewhere.

Businesses must establish how to well manage the relationship and clear any possible suspicions. Create joint value creation initiatives, annual supplier conference, sustainable sourcing, supplier guiding principles, and packaging associations, branding among others as members of family.

Lastly, often the government is overlooked as a stakeholder in a business, but as you are well aware the national government or local government can directly impact on how you operate your business without you having too much to say in the matter.

In terms of the engagement issue, we must focus on the arms of government and those agencies that directly support the industry you operate in. Create dialogue, partnerships on common issues, and memberships of business and industry associations, foreign investment advisory councils, recycling and recovery initiatives, chambers of commerce among others.

As I conclude on this topic for now, businesses need to be committed to an ongoing stakeholder engagement as a core component of business and sustainability strategies by actively working as members of the communities where we live and work, and strengthen the fabric of our communities so that we prosper together.

Timothy Owase is a Marketing and Communications  professional and a Creative Industries practitioner. Can be reached at timothy.owase@live.com 

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