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An Approach to Engaging With Stakeholders

An Approach to Engaging With Stakeholders

Adapted by D Caspersz for enactus Australia, August 2013

Engaging with stakeholders requires..

• Thinking and planning/preparing for engagement

• Engagement • Responding and measuring engagement • Reviewing and adjusting future engagement

Thinking and Planning

Choose one project and answer these questions: 1. Why you want to engage with stakeholders? 2. How will doing so benefit your project? • Complete Identifying the Stakeholders.docx to

identify your stakeholders• Use the worksheet ‘identifying the key issues

of concern to the stakeholders’ to list what the key issues are that concern your stakeholders.

Thinking and Planning

• Use Our enactus Project Stakeholder Engagement Plan.docx to develop a plan for working with your stakeholders.

• Use the worksheet Risks and Opportunities in Engaging with Stakeholders.docx to develop a risk management assessment of what risks you may face in engaging with the stakeholders.

Preparing for Engagement

• Define your work, position, the reasons for engaging with stakeholders and your capacity to meet their needs. Use Clarifying Stakeholder Expectations.docx to help you with this.

Develop a stakeholder plan• Identify how often you should be communicating with your

stakeholders • Define the mode of communication; face to face, phone

call, email, etc • Who will be in charge of this communication?• It may be easier to present this information in a table• The important lesson is to ‘stay in touch’!

Preparing for Engagement

• Undertake a ‘strength’, ‘capabilities’ and limitations exercise for your own team. A SWOT analysis may be useful.

• This may identify the gap that stakeholders may be able to fill

• May realise weaknesses you have in engaging with stakeholders.

• For example, if you don’t have someone able to engage with electronic tools, this is a skills gap that can weaken your stakeholder engagement.

Preparing for Engagement

Define the process to engage with your stakeholders using the

Our enactus Project Stakeholder Engagement Plan.docx

worksheet.

Engaging

Engage with your stakeholders according to your plan!

Responding & Measuring

• Act and review. • Put your stakeholder engagement plan into

action• BUT also indicate how often you will review

the ongoing effectiveness of your plan.

Responding & Measuring

• Report your findings• All enactus projects are able to be audited by

enactus Australia and you have to report on your project at the National Conference.

• Create strategies to continuously gather information about the effectiveness of your stakeholder plan to assist with the above

• Use minutes of meetings, your project plan updates, or other documentation