Identify and Prioritize Stakeholders -

1.2.1. Identify and Prioritize Stakeholders

Where you are::

Description ::

This step concerns identifying but mostly prioritizing stakeholders. According to ISO 26000, “Stakeholders are organizations or individuals that have one or more interests in any decision or activity of an organization. Because these interests can be affected by an organization, a relationship with the organization is created.” Stakeholders can include ecosystems, biodiversity, wildlife etc.

Stakeholder identification happens in the following context:
First, the company is initiating new projects and programs and hence stakeholder engagement is necessary.
Second, in the past the organization has never engaged with stakeholders but now under socially responsible behaviour the company has elected to engage with the stakeholders. In both cases the methodology employed is the same (see methodology). This context is important to understand when prioritizing stakeholders according to their importance. In general, stakeholder engagement is extremely important. This is more so in the case of business social responsibility management.

Benefits offered by stakeholder engagement

1. Gathering crucial inputs

According to ISO 26000 this is one of the critical reasons why stakeholder engagement is important – to gain valuable input and feedback that can provide new insights into issues which can then be used as inputs to solution, program and policy development.

2. Gaining support

Stakeholder engagement is a consensus and participative model where the relevant stakeholders can voice their concerns and ideas related to organizational decisions and activities. This automatically ensures greater support and harmony with the affected stakeholders which can ensure that requisite resources are provided and possible hurdles and bottlenecks are avoided in the future.

3. Building trust and understanding

This is a powerful motivation for engaging with stakeholders, particularly external stakeholders. Transparent, ethical and fair engagement with stakeholders will promote trust and understanding which can immensely impact the goodwill of the company.

4. Planning for the future

Stakeholder engagement can remove hurdles and bottlenecks and ensure smooth implementation of both current and future decisions and activities.

Objectives ::

To identify and prioritize relevant stakeholders
To hold consultative sessions with the various stakeholders
To incorporate outputs from the sessions into the social responsibility program of the firm

Methodology ::

Templates ::

Template 1.2.1.1	Template 1.2.1.2
Template 1.2.1.3	Template 1.2.1.4