Building trust with others

Transcription

1 Building trust with others Stakeholder analysis A guide for staff

2 Overview of the stakeholder analysis guide What is the aim of this guide? 2 What are stakeholders? 3 What is a stakeholder analysis? 3 Why do a stakeholder analysis? 3 What do I need to do before carrying out a stakeholder analysis? 3 How do I do it? 4 Stage one List all stakeholders according to categories 4 Stage two Refine your stakeholder list 5 Stage three Capture information about stakeholders 6 Stage four Identify knowledge gaps 7 Next Steps 7 Who can help me and what support can they offer? 7 Copyright jointly held by the Environment Agency and InterAct Networks llp 1

3 What is the aim of this guide? This is a practical guide that explains how to do a stakeholder analysis. This is the who step in the Building trust with others approach. The Building trust with others approach Step one - what do you want to do? Step two - why do you need to work with others? Step three - who do you need to involve? Step four - how will you involve them? Step five - let s do it! Step six - how did it go and what did you learn? DON T FORGET! It is important to remember why you are doing a stakeholder analysis to gain a good understanding of who your stakeholders are. It is a means to an end, not an end in itself. This is step three in the building trust approach, as shown above. Copyright jointly held by the Environment Agency and InterAct Networks llp 2

4 What are stakeholders? Individuals, organisations, partnerships or groups of any kind who are (or could become) involved in, or affected by our policies, activities or decisions. What is a stakeholder analysis? It is a practical set of steps, to identify and improve our understanding of stakeholders. Why do a stakeholder analysis? It helps you to decide who to work with by: understanding issues from the stakeholder s perspective being clear about what you are trying to achieve in relation to a particular stakeholder focusing your efforts to get the best results for the environment considering all the relevant stakeholders (not just the usual suspects!) doing a stakeholder analysis is step three of the building trust approach What do I need to do before carrying out a stakeholder analysis? To help you consider the issues that affect your work with stakeholders from a range of perspectives, make sure you talk to people from different parts of the organisation to plan the work. You may need to set up a small team (for example, external relations/ corporate services, media team, technical experts, senior management). Choose the team for their knowledge of the issue, stakeholders and/or ability to get senior buy-in. You should be following the building trust approach in planning your work with stakeholders (as summarised in the diagram above), which means you will have already thought about what you are trying to achieve (step one) and why you need to work with stakeholders (step two). Here s a quick overview of what you should have considered: Agree what you are trying to achieve (business objectives) It is important that the project team has a shared understanding of what it is you re trying to achieve. See examples below. Agree why you need to involve stakeholders (communication and involvement objectives) To help you define your communication and involvement objectives, think about what success would look like and what you need to do to get there. Copyright jointly held by the Environment Agency and InterAct Networks llp 3

5 Examples of business and communications and involvement objectives: Example 1 Example 2 Business objective To reduce farm pollution incidents caused by burning and burying waste on farms. We want to reduce the risk of flooding for residents. Communications and involvement objective To make farmers and the wider agricultural sector aware of new agricultural waste regulations that must be complied with. We want to work with the community and others to understand the most acceptable way to manage flood risk. Tip Think about stakeholder needs when you decide on your communications objectives. Remember that working with stakeholders is a two-way process. You need to understand why they want to work with you, how they view the problem, and what their objectives are. How do I do it? Overview of a stakeholder analysis Stage one - list all stakeholders according to categories Stage two - refine your stakeholder list Stage three - capture information about stakeholders Stage four - identify knowledge gaps Stage one list all stakeholders according to categories Work with the project team to develop your list of stakeholders. You might find it useful to categorise your stakeholders. You could do this according to: Sector (public, private, voluntary, community) Function (user, service provider, regulator, landowner, decision-maker) Geography (living within postal district Y, living in flood risk area) Socio-economic (income, gender, age, length of time living in area) Affect (directly affected, indirectly affected, able to affect the work/issue) At this stage the purpose is to be as inclusive as possible. In drawing up this list it may help to think about the following issues, so that you don t miss anybody: Who will the work affect (positively and negatively)? Who might think that the work will affect them (even if you don t)? Copyright jointly held by the Environment Agency and InterAct Networks llp 4

6 Who could be interested in the work? Who is likely to support or object to the work? Whose input or knowledge do we need? Who has been involved in the past and what have we learnt? Who could influence the work (opinion formers and leaders such as MPs, councillors, media representatives and interest groups)? Are there people or groups who are difficult to reach or work with, who should be involved? For example, have you vulnerability, diversity, age, interest, geographic areas, deprived areas, ethnicity? Who has the ability to deliver our desired environmental objectives? Who can help fund the initiative? Who will have an impact on the environment? Who will affect our reputation (positively or negatively)? Stage two refine your stakeholder list To help you identify the most relevant stakeholders, you need to agree on the most important criteria for involving them. We recommend that you choose up to three. Look back at what you are trying to achieve with your stakeholders, as this will help you select your criteria. Examples of criteria include: Influence: who can influence others or have an influence on the decision or work (positively or negatively)? Affected: who will be affected (positively or negatively) or may think that they are affected? Interested: who could be interested? Environmental impact: who will have an impact on the environment (positively or negatively)? Reputation: who will affect our reputation (positively or negatively)? Supporters/objectors: who is likely to support or object to the work? Funding: who can help fund the initiative? Now you ve chosen your criteria, you need to use this to refine your list of stakeholders. There are many different ways of doing this, for example: Example one - scoring method I. You can use numeric scores to help refine your list of stakeholders. This is a way of assessing the relative importance of each stakeholder based on the criteria you have chosen. For each stakeholder, score them against each criteria you have chosen (for example, 0, 1, 2 or 3 where 0 = low and 3 = high). For example, the Welsh Assembly Government would score 3 for influencing but might score 0 for the extent to which they are affected by the work. II. III. Add up the total score for each stakeholder. You can use these scores to help you assess where to focus your effort. For example, which stakeholders will require a greater level of involvement? You must think carefully about the meaning of the scoring. Scores can sometimes be misleading and you should consider them in the context of your project and its objectives. Copyright jointly held by the Environment Agency and InterAct Networks llp 5

7 Example two axis method I. Put your chosen criteria on an axis on flip charts, as shown below. This example uses the influencing, affected and reputation criteria. Most influence Most influence Least affected Most affected Low impact on our reputation High impact on our reputation Least influence Least influence II. Write the name of each stakeholder on a post-it note, and place it in the appropriate position on the flip chart axis. This is a very practical way of finding out which stakeholders are particularly important, based on your objectives. Stage three capture information about stakeholders To help you work with your key stakeholders (as identified in Stage 2), you will need to know much more about the groups you ve identified. You can use the example template below to record the results of your analysis. Be as specific as possible about each stakeholder (include names and contact details if possible). Ref Stakeholder (contact name and contact details) Description of stakeholder Stakeholder interest in issue What they want from us What we want from them Current contact with stakeholder (who has contact and what kind of contact?) How do they like to be communicated with? [ , post, phone] Score High Enhanced Standard This table will help inform your initial plans in working with the different stakeholders, but remember to be flexible. Stakeholders will all have their own objectives and preferences about how they want to be involved. Think about how you will find out what these are and consider how you can incorporate their needs in your plan as well as your own. Copyright jointly held by the Environment Agency and InterAct Networks llp 6

8 Stage four - identify knowledge gaps It is likely that you will have gaps in your knowledge about some of the stakeholders. For example, are you clear about who the key contact is for each stakeholder, what are their objectives and how do they want to be involved? You can address these gaps in many ways, for example by talking to the stakeholders or people who have worked with them in the past, or by using desk research (using the internet), or conducting market research. Next steps Now you have completed your stakeholder analysis you should know more about your stakeholders and what you re trying to achieve. You now need to decide how you will involve each stakeholder, which is step four of the building trust approach. You should develop a plan setting out what we want to do with them, when, who will lead on it and how you will know whether it has been successful. For more information about the building trust approach go to the head office External Relations Easinet site. Who can help me and what support can they offer? Please contact one of the following people for advice on stakeholder analysis: Area planning and corporate services teams Regional external relations teams National external relations team, for example: Cath Beaver, Annabelle Lillycrop or Cath Brooks. Copyright jointly held by the Environment Agency and InterAct Networks llp 7