Government agencies will have a wide range of stakeholders with different interests. Effective management of the stakeholder environment is critical to the design and delivery of services. Corporations and NGOs also need to manage their stakeholder environment to maintain their implicit ‘licence to operate’. Government is often one of the most important stakeholders.
Engaging effectively with stakeholders and involving them in design and delivery allows organisation to tap into stakeholders’ expertise, experience and knowledge. It can also help in identifying new ideas as well as risks. Well-managed interactions will provide useful information to shape the design and implementation of an initiative. The key elements of effective engagement include:
Involve the right people: To identify the right stakeholders, it should be clear why there is a need to engage them and what the scope of the engagement will be.
Use a fit-for-purpose approach: There is no one-size-fits-all approach to engaging stakeholders—each interaction should be tailored. Stakeholders have different expertise, objectives and capacity to engage with government.
Manage expectations: Stakeholders should have a clear understanding of how their contributions will be used and the degree of influence their input will have as approaches to policy design and implementation are formulated.
Use the information: Engagement is not just about collecting information. It involves a process of responding to information to shape and improve the quality of the initiative.
Team experience includes:
Australian Education City – provided support for AEC's $30B proposal to build a new city in East Werribee based around an international education and innovation precinct. Advice included economic impact, government relations, stakeholder management and policy issues
Victorian Farmers Federation, livestock quality assurance – identified through a combination of desktop research and stakeholder consultation what attributes would be required in a quality assurance program to meet the needs of Victorian livestock producers in the medium to long term