AA1000SES Consultation Feedback Form

Romania, 3rd December 2009 This form submits comments and recommendations to AccountAbility and the AA1000SES Technical Committee. This form was completed during the event and using feedback received after the event. It captures the major thoughts on each issue, including when different stakeholders have different views. Consensus was generally reached on most feedback. Three types to consensus are marked: BC: broad consensus, C: consensus, LC: little consensus.

First Session – Stakeholder Engagement in General

AA1000 SES Consultation, in Bucharest on 3rd December 2009

Topic for discussion # Feedback comment/recommendation Broad

consensus or not?

Apart from the definitions from AA1000, AA

Stakeholder Engagement handbook and

ISO26000, the following was tabled during

the consultation:

1

Stakeholder Engagement (SE) can be a way

of doing business in accordance with

sustainable development principles and in a

transparent and organized way, involving

stakeholders in every field where it is

possible.

C

What is stakeholder engagement?

2

Stakeholder engagement is seen as a

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) tool

that companies or any kind of organization

use within their CSR programs in Romania.

There is little delimitation that is drawn

between the two concepts – when trying to

define stakeholder engagement the

discourse always comes back to how CSR is

understood and how companies chose to

define their CSR strategy.

C

3

SE is a way to

- involve the stakeholders into the

company’s strategy development

process

- find out the stakeholders expectations

- find out the company’s response to

stakeholders expectations

SE is constant dialog in a formalized

process.

C

4

A brainstorming of short phrases to describe

what participants felt SE is gave the

following:

- Enabling Stakeholders to feel valued

- Identifying the concerns of the

stakeholders on any issue

- Knowing when to be humble

- Ensuring that the stakeholder concerns are

included in the programs

- Team empowerment

- Identifying and managing risks at a useful

stage

- Being honest to your mission and

respecting your stakeholder’s expectation

- Building a mindset where everyone is

aware of everyone else’s goals

- Tool to build a culture of respect and

accountability

- Setting borders through which we

undertake our activities

- Educate and inform stakeholders

- Help stakeholders on their advancement

- Disclosure of material issues

- Defining organizational strategies in line

with all(?) stakeholder expectations

- Ensuring sustainable profit/success

- Inclusion and empowerment of all(?)

stakeholders

BC

C

LC

5 Increasing awareness of issues BC How does stakeholder engagement contribute to accountability and 6 Finding joint solutions BC

sustainable development?

7 Enabling programs to deliver desired results BC

8 For a successful management in a chaotic world SE can help bring real benefits to governments, companies and communities.

BC

9 For image building C

10 In response to public pressure C

11 To make informed decisions BC

Why do organisations undertake stakeholder engagement and who benefits from stakeholder engagement?

12

- Improve products and services (e.g. To conduct surveys about products and services for input to the commercial strategy). - Improve employee relations, efficiency and satisfaction:- through organisational culture and employee inter-relationship surveys that results in a follow-up action plan. - To build understanding and win-win partnerships with NGO’s and associations.

C

13 - To formalise efficient dialogue with - shareholders

BC

14 - To structure and support company - supplier relations.

BC

What is the role of stakeholder engagement in different contexts:

1. Business/organisational strategy

2. One off projects 3. Government/public

sector consultation

15

- To enable timely and efficient dialogue and consultation on specific issues with Public authorities,

C

16 It is an inherent part of any standard, guideline or initiative that needs clarity of thought and effective communication

C

17 It is a discipline, skill set and culture needed to reach the goals of sustainability standards, guidelines and initiatives

C

How does stakeholder engagement relate to other sustainability standards, guidelines and initiatives?

18 It benefits standards, guidelines and initiatives from both a line management and discipline department perspective.

C

19 Transparency, honesty, credibility, effective communication, dialogue, accountability

BC

20 Being able to define a solution in partnership with key stakeholders

BC

What are some of the common success factors and common challenges to good quality stakeholder engagement?

21 Being honest about the customs and culture of the stakeholders BC

22

Challenges: - If an organisation is not truly committed (materiality and inclusivity) to engage with stakeholders then management and employees can always find justifications why not to continue. - genuine availability of both stakeholders and companies to discuss / engage - stakeholders to have realistic expectations and companies to be clear about what they can and cannot offer

BC

23 Deciding whether SE is a management style or an organisational culture C

24 Old ways of seeing things – e.g. information is power, manage stakeholders rather than manage stakeholder engagement

BC

25 Insufficient time and resources allocated BC

What are some of the barriers to making stakeholder engagement a more strategic considerations in organisation (or where this has been achieved, what were the important factors)

26 Designing the SE process too narrowly and so leaving out important issues or stakeholders and so loosing credibility

BC

27

It can be helpful to develop models of stakeholder engagement that shows how SE can benefit an organisation in good times and bad.

BC

28

Maybe because many general terms are used to describe stakeholder engagement, there is often a different understanding of what it means at many levels of an organisation. Help is therefore needed to help stakeholders, including top management in companies, to understand what SE is and to promote its principles.

BC

29

Anything else?

30

Any additional general comments: BC A discussion on obstacles to Stakeholder Engagement in Romania: Summary: One of the obstacles - and maybe the most important - in developing an efficient stakeholder engagement in Romania is the mentality that also reflects on the organizational culture. On one hand, the employees of a company do not yet fully understand that their own involvement in the success of the company can also translate to their own personal and professional success. On the other hand, the owners of these companies seek to build a successful business without fully acknowledging their stakeholders and therefore ignoring a very important step in their sustainable development. Employees, with some good exceptions, do not believe in the products or services that they sell, are rarely involved in the decision making within a company and if they are empowered to take decisions they do not necessarily have the right set of skills or the proper motivation to do so. As for how companies communicate with their public, we see a rather one-way communication strategy. It is rare that companies build an efficient dialogue with their clients; they tend to avoid being transparent with their stakeholders or being responsible for the decisions that affect them. On a scale of engagement of inform

– consult – include – collaborate – empower the general tendency is to do incomplete and rather biased informing and company controlled partial consulting. The levels of including, collaborating and empowering tends to be only for a limited number of stakeholders often without objective strategic or professional criteria. A necessary step to ensure a proper understanding of the stakeholder engagement concept, and its latent potential for organisational development, is by changing this mentality in people and by making them realize the dual role that we are all playing - that of a stakeholder and of a responsible for our actions towards our own stakeholders. Building self-confidence through peer challenge and support is one of the tools that we need to employ. Part of the inherent problem faced by decision owners is an overall lack of confidence – but not just self-confidence but also institutional conference. There was a general feeling among the participants that this is founded also on a lack of self-esteem. It was felt that part of the solution to this was to acknowledge that social confidence and competences are largely build in first few years of life and that this is often neglected in the current educational and parenting approach, a situation made worse by individual civic responsibility being a little asleep. Participants felt that the system of national education needs to build more of a feeling of cooperation and solidarity. The common challenges when approaching stakeholder engagement in Romania, therefore, include:

1. Lack of self confidence, lack of personal goals, lack of implication in most of decision making

processes

2. People need support to build their own confidence and it has to start with their upbringing

3. Overall lack of confidence in decision makers and institutions

4. A very specific cultural and anthropological matrix of the Romanian nation

5. Huge lack of ownership in the public area and consequently lack of responsibility

6. Lack of long term vision within the governments – stakeholders should pressure their governments to

create this vision

7. Lack of honesty about capacity

8. The culture of mass consumption that will lead to lack of equity and that will affect sustainable

development and environmental responsibility

A discussion on the business case of Stakeholder Engagement in Romania: As mentioned in point 1 above, stakeholder engagement (SE) is seen as a corporate social responsibility (CSR)

tool that organizations use within their CSR programs in Romania. There is little delimitation drawn between

the two concepts – when trying to define stakeholder engagement the discourse often came back to how CSR

is understood and how companies chose to define their CSR strategy.

A main challenge people presented is justifying SE/CSR as a business case – justifying within the organisation

versus justifying within the community / among the external stakeholders. This challenge raises other

questions that are all revolved around the moral obligation of a company towards a community:

1. What is the content of the moral obligation?

2. Is a company obliged to do everything for the community and neglect business?

3. What does it mean being moral, who can define it and how moral is a company in its business?

4. Are they fully responsible towards the clients even if that means constructing counterproductive

PR/branding?

5. When a company has a CSR program in a school is that moral or immoral to consider it a way to win

future clients?

6. A reputable sales strategy – is this moral since the business’s purpose is to have success in achieving

its own goals?

The participants eventually proposed that bottom line is the main question of how we together ensure the

sustainability of the society, not about the morality of the companies’ decisions, debating over right or wrong

and putting a philosophical accent on CSR.

As for stakeholder engagement the mind set and mentality should go towards a sit down at the same table and

discuss issues relevant to all stakeholders. The concept is new in Romania and people fear that before

debating it there is an acute need to arrive at a common equal understanding of what stakeholder

engagement is.

A discussion on the role of education in enabling Stakeholder Engagement in Romania: In general, the way the educational system is currently functioning lacks the ability to build a strong feeling

of cooperation and solidarity between the students and, moreover, neglects building confidence in students.

Universities, with some rare exceptions, are not challenging students enough and students don’t feel they get

rewarded enough for their initiatives.

This is not the general approach. There are, for example, universities that encourage students to do

volunteer work within nongovernmental organizations. This also is influenced by how young people

envision their future profession and what they expect from their studies/educational system.

Overall, students are considered an important stakeholder by companies who give them opportunities to learn

and do internships as they are well aware of the fact that one day they will become employees and/or

potential clients.

The feedback from educationalists within the participants was that is very important to start considering in

Romania partnerships between the business environment and secondary and high schools, not only universities

– the main reason is that pupils should be more involved and challenged, and an improved professional

education should come from an early age.

Further comment was that a more clear awareness that peoples’ main social competences are build within the

first three years of life and are developed throughout the entire life - so there is the need to have a society

that is aware of this issue and take into consideration all stages in life.

Some examples of engagement given by the participants were:

Blogging and social networking

Through the online program Responsabilitatesociala.ro some stakeholder engagement initiatives are being

done such as:

1. Romanian bloggers are invited to participate at an online opinion poll on how companies ran their CSR

programs in the previous year and what recommendations they can give for the following one

2. Periodical meetings with different stakeholders are organized where nongovernmental organizations are

invited to discuss issues related to different fields of activity

The participants debated the issue related to how bloggers are chosen to participate at the online opinion

poll, what are the criteria that makes them eligible for the poll and whether they can be considered non-

biased as the public suspect that many companies pay bloggers to promote the companies. In general, opinion

leaders in the Romanian public are quite suspicious towards this kind of public polls as bloggers are a tool

used very much to manipulate public opinion. This however is not the case of all companies. Some companies

appear to come out well on the ranking of from bloggers who have been impressed by their openness to

address issues that they had previously been criticised for.

Multi-stakeholder forums:

Multi stakeholder forums (MSF) start to gain some success in Romania despite many years of difficulties. One

point of view stated in a FAO E-Forum was “Romania is still unprepared to work in multi-stakeholder platforms

because there is no tradition of sharing and asking for information, especially in open decision-making

processes”.

Recently, however, work is being conducted that sets out to equalise the power share between stakeholders

and this is proving quite successful. More clarity is introduced as to roles and responsibilities for the issues at

stake. Respect for decision ownership is central to the success of this process. It has proven to be

extraordinarily successful and creates significant win-win benefits for all concerned, including and even

especially, responsible companies, authorities and NGOs. The process incorporates respect and support for

local cultures and tradition, and a humble, clear and honest approach from the organisations who traditionally

wield the power.

Network facilitation: Unesco European Center for Higher Education

The UNESCO Center needs to monitor change all the time – so they consider a proactive approach.

The UNESCO Center is among other things a laboratory of ideas, a standard setter, a clearing house, a

capacity builder in UNESCO fields of competence and a catalyst for international cooperation.

By working to contribute towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), the UNESCO Center has

a Social Responsibility agenda (ex. promote policy agenda, undertake projects relevant to development,

provide consultancy, link with the Romanian authority, assist member states in enhancing the quality of

higher education by developing international and regional cooperation).

Their authority or international agency stakeholders are: national authority, non/governmental organizations,

national commissions, Council of Europe, UNITWIN UNESCO chair, etc.

Their customer stakeholders are: Member States, universities, institutes, experts and policy makers.

Their partner stakeholders are: governmental and nongovernmental organizations, business community,

international organizations.

UNESCO Center does stakeholder engagement through activities such as: consultation, dialogue, training,

study visits, transfer of know how; participative approach to business with focus on stakeholders, proactive

perspective and commitment to sustainable development.

The participants were impressed with the level of competence of the UNESCO center and acknowledged it

as a good environment for future related meetings linked to stakeholder engagement, social responsibility and

CSR capacity building initiatives.

Second Session - AA1000SES

Topic for discussion # Feedback comment/recommendation Broad

consensus or not?

1 To enable objective pre-engagement strategic assessment and planning and post-engagement auditing in support of an organisation’s development.

C

2 A project management, strategy development, risk mitigation and opportunity harnessing support tool.

C

3 An enabler of an organisation’s sustainable development. C

What should the focus/aim of the AA1000SES be (i.e. should it remain focused on CSR issues, or should it address wider engagement/dialogue and participation issues) 4 A clarification guideline for what is meant as effective

stakeholder engagement. BC

5 Clarify purpose and process of stakeholder engagement – and set an internationally recognised minimum standard. BC

6 Enable and facilitate the integration of social, environmental and economic responsibility into core business practice. C

7 Strengthen the credibility of corporate / organisational reporting.

C

Are there any gaps in the market that AA1000SES should try and fill?

8 Professionalise stakeholder engagement as a core discipline for employees to support sustainable organisational growth. C

9 Create clarity of organisational purpose. C

10 Be a process for organisational awareness of stakeholders and their concerns. BC

11 Project management with stakeholders as a core component. C

12 Clarify and communicate the meaning of sustainable development as seen from stakeholders’ perspective. BC

What should the scope of the AA1000SES cover?

13 Provide a minimum sustainability audit. BC

14 Clarify link between an operations core objectives and the strategic objectives of engagement. BC

15 Clarify stakeholder engagement’s role and process in the creation of vision, mission, values, goals, strategy, tactics and action plans.

BC

How can the AA1000SES link stakeholder engagement more effectively with strategy and core operation? 16

Demonstrate / clarify the difference between stakeholder mapping and strategic objectives of an organisation and those of the day to day decisions and activities.

BC

17

BC

18

BC

BC

What elements of good practice, and which challenges, does it need to address?

19

Stakeholder engagement is about creating a fair balance between necessary decisions and activities and their stakeholders’ interests. This balance is operationalised through assigning an engagement level for each partnering of decisions or activities with their respective stakeholder group. (note – the traditional third level of engagement is changed from involve to include here as this is clearer for translation purpose).

20

See Annex A, Table A.1 of ISO/DIS 26000 for cross-sectoral initiatives – it needs to provide state-of-the-art stakeholder engagement guidance for minimum standards to achieve the standards vision. Needs to provide this at process, managing and auditing levels.

BC

21 To be fully integrated – the AA1000SES needs its own clear vision and mission drawn up. BC

22 Linked to international conventions (e.g. Espoo, Aarhus, etc) and common legislation (e.g. EIAs, strategic regional planning, etc)

C

Which other standards does it need to aligned with and how?

23 Best practice in communication / marketing, etc guidance C

What should the balance be between requirements and guidance?

24

This should be tied to its vision and mission. Requirement should be enough to ensure minimum adherence. Guidance should enable organisations to more robustly become sustainable (economically, socially and environmentally).

BC

25

This should be tied to its vision and mission. Possible both certification and guidance. Certification should be enough to ensure minimum adherence. Guidance should enable organisations to more robustly become sustainable (economically, socially and environmentally).

C How should the standard function in the market place (e.g. should it become a certification standard, remain as guidance or something else?) 26

The standard should set out to be of a sufficiently high level so that organisations who do put the effort in to follow it do reap the benefits of institutionalised stakeholder engagement. This standard should be such that an organisation cannot simply use it to present a more professionally structured responsibility report that in reality lacks both the spirit and the results of genuine organisational engagement on the ground.

C

Anything else? 28

In an age of so many different management tools, it may be needed to protect the AA1000SES from being perceived to be just another management tool. Need clarity on how SE complements project management, strategy creation, general management, etc.

BC

Special thanks (BC) to the participants, organisers and partners of this one-day consultation on stakeholder engagement in Romania:

Bucharest Stakeholder Engagement Day 3rd December 2009 Participants: Anamaria Bogdan <anamaria.bogdan@maimultverde.ro>, Andreea Mihaila <mihaila.ag@pg.com>, Andreea Koster <andreea.koster@habitat.ro>, Angela Galeta <angela.galeta@vodafone.com>, Armin Hesselmann <hesselmann.a@pg.com>, Camelia Crisan <camelia.crisan@comunicare.ro>, Catalina Pislaru <Catalina.Pislaru@orange.ro>, Claudia Iatan <office@obiectiff.ro>, Cristian Ducu <cducu1@gmail.com>, Cristiana Anca <cristiana.anca@hotmail.co.uk>, Cristina Gross <comercial@procertlaboratory.ro>, Cristina Zorlin <czorlin@mmuncii.ro>, Dacian Lavu <dacian.lavu@AstonEco.com>, Dragos Dehelean <dragos.dehelean@selenis.ro>, Eugen Crai <ecrai@unicef.org>, Ioana Betieanu <ibetieanu@wwfdcp.ro>, Jane Greenwood <jane.greenwood@britishschool.ro>, Jen Kemp <jen.kemp@britishschool.ro>, John Aston <john.aston@astoneco.com>, Kinga Niculescu <kinga.niculescu@AstonEco.com>, Laura Grunberg <L.Grunberg@cepes.ro>, Loredana Caradimu <loredana.caradimu@ogilvy.com>, Luminita Oprea <luminita.oprea@holcim.com>, Margareta Bercher <Margareta.Bercher@petrom.com>, Maria Gheorghiu <maria@ovid.ro>, Mario Demezzo <mario.demezzo@principesa.ro>, Mihaela Cretu <Mihaela.Cretu@ogilvy.com>, Oana Nastase <oana.nastase@rompetrol.com>, Oana Parvu <oana.parvu@tailoredsolutions.ro>, Raluca Dan <raluca.dan@salvatidelta.ro>, Ramona Brad <brad.rm@pg.com>, Ruxandra Soare <goodartofnoon@gmail.com>, Sandra Pralong <spralong@gmail.com>, Silvia Misu <silvia.misu@fdsc.ro>, Silvia Mihalache <silvia.mihalache@provident.ro>, Simona NEGREA <snegrea@hotmail.com>, Simona Apostol <simona.apostol@floyd.ro>, Sorin Victor Roman <sorin.roman@AstonEco.com>