Topic 4 Role of the stakeholders
Stakeholders can be hub members or just be interested in the hub work and outcomes, being potential future hub members.
Stakeholders have a major role in the hub work, as they are fundamental to link the hub to their own institutions of origin, and to create the communication flow between all hub members. If information is power, sharing information is superpower!
What is stakeholder engagement?
- A stakeholder is an individual or group of people who may have an interest or direct role in a hub, strategy or organisation or may be impacted and/or benefited by them.
- Stakeholder engagement is the process of identifying, analysing, communicating and reporting on all engagement with stakeholders. Often this also involves grouping stakeholders based on their level of interest / impact /demographics and tailoring activity towards each group.
- One of the most important aspects of stakeholder engagement is being authentic and targeted. In our busy lives, good stakeholder engagement has to cut through the noise and be heard and relevancy and transparency are key.
There are 5 main steps to stakeholder analysis:
What are the potential outcome issues, impact and benefits?
Map out how you are going to best report stakeholder sentiment and feedback based on stakeholder groups. Identify your stakeholders – start to list out your individual and stakeholder groups
Prioritise your stakeholders – categorise them based on their influence, interest, demographic and levels of participation in your project/organisation
Understand your stakeholders – get in-depth insights into your stakeholders
Reassess your stakeholders – continually reassessing your stakeholders helps you understand the changing nature of stakeholder perspectives
STAKEHOLDERS
1. Make the hub the epicenter of communication between stakeholders
2. Understand what your stakeholders want to see in the hub and monitor engagement levels to adjust your engagement strategy
3. Create engagement since the early days of your hub, so everyone will be involved
4. Do everything you can to keep the hub at the top of all stakeholders’ mind
- COMMUNICATION IS KEY!