Engagement is the process of exchanging information, listening to and learning from stakeholders with the goal of building understanding and trust on issues of mutual interest. CSR being one of the strategic value creation program surprisingly has being considering stakeholder engagement as secondary. Standard corporate practice for years has been to invest and develop sustainability programs with minimal engagement of those who materially affect like customers, suppliers, employees, local communities, investors and others. But in last few years companies have understood importance of stakeholder engagement. Companies are finding themselves dealing with different business realities with more sophisticated, informed and engaged stakeholders and various collaborative models of governance and decision-making among stakeholder networks. In such rich and rapidly changing stakeholder engagement landscape companies are developing new strategies depending on their industry requirement. Over the past few years, a plethora of new communication technologies have come onto the market to reach stakeholders. There are some companies who are looking for ways to make their stakeholder engagement into an idea-generative, innovative, collaborative exercise.
There are many challenges to successfully engaging with stakeholders, but they are small in comparison to the risks of failing to engage external stakeholders in a timely and strategic manner. For companies looking to actively manage their reputations and brands, knowing how to engage stakeholders effectively is has become a critical business function.
An engagement plan will assist in reaching a desired audience. A corporate social responsibility team or individual is needed to effectively plan the goals and objectives of the organization. Determining a budget should be of high priority. The functions of corporate social responsibility planning are
- To add discussion and analysis of a new set of risks into corporate decision-making.
- To represent issues within the corporation that watchdogs, NGOs and advocates represent within society.
- To assess the future. An organizations long term and short term future needs to be thought of
- To help prioritize consideration of socially and environmentally friendly projects that might otherwise lack a corporate advocate.
- To keep corporations aware of potential major societal impacts even when a negative impact may not be immediate, and thus lessen liability.
- To positively influence decision making where societal impacts are maximized, whilst ensuring efforts are within a given budget.