Stakeholder Engagement: Six Tips for Effective Dialogue

By • on June 1, 2009

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By Deborah Fleischer

Stakeholder engagement is a process of reaching out to a range of constituents who are interested in, or impacted by, your business, including employees, investors, suppliers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), consumers, governmental agencies and thought-leaders.

It means opening up your company to feedback, and potentially criticism, from a diverse range of perspectives. So, why would you want to take this risk?

Business case for stakeholder engagement

Before I launch into the key tips for engaging stakeholders, I want to touch on why stakeholder engagement is a solid business practice.

Alex McIntosh, Director of Corporate Citizenship at Nestle Waters, believes that lacking a stakeholder engagement strategy “…is like launching a new product without doing any market research….You are taking a big risk without doing it. Stakeholder engagement is an important, essential element in good citizenship and good business strategy. You need to know what issues are most important to the people that are most relevant to your business.”

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Source: http://www.TriplePundit.com: Stakeholder Engagement: Six Tips for Effective Dialogue