From investors and board members to employees, and even the general public, your stakeholders have high expectations on ESG issues. Working with them to identify and address these topics can be challenging, however, with diverse priorities and values amongst the group.
Materiality assessments are a key part of your toolkit here, helping to prioritze and communicate the issues that matter most to your organization – not to mention gleaning valuable insights into stakeholder opinions.
But that’s not all, because materiality assessment is also a great opportunity for building relationships with the people who matter most – your stakeholders. Done well, it’s the perfect opportunity engage and align both internal and external stakeholders, creating sustainability champions that will drive your organization’s ESG efforts forward at pace.
Let’s explore how organizations can use the assessment process to improve stakeholder engagement.
who is a stakeholder?
Anyone who is impacted by the actions of your organization is a stakeholder. They are generally divided into two categories:
Internal stakeholders include people who are in a direct relationship with the organization such as employees, shareholders, or members of the board of directors.
External stakeholders include anyone, or anything, that could be affected by the actions of an organization like customers, investors, regulatory bodies, governments, communities, and more.
what is stakeholder engagement?
Despite the fact that different stakeholder groups can have very diverse perspectives and interests, you will need to plan and implement action plans to drive connection on important topics or issues. Stakeholder engagement refers to this process of communicating, interacting, and building rapport with all stakeholders.
At its core, engagement is about building a positive working relationship between your organization and those who influence its success.
how assessment can drive stakeholder buy-in:
Materiality assessments can help determine what is relevant to your organization and provide an initial point of engagement with those that matter most to your success. Here are three ways you can use the assessment process to further improve stakeholder relationships, creating sustainability champions and buy-in:
Involve stakeholders early
The first and easiest way to start engaging stakeholders is to involve them in the materiality process from the beginning. Remember to cast your net wide in order to ensure that all stakeholder concerns and opinions are considered.
Involving stakeholders in this way helps them feel a sense of ownership around sustainability initiatives and goals. This drives not only deeper engagement, but also significant motivation to address these topics and issues. To help build this sense of ownership, you need to be transparent about the process, results, and progress of materiality assessments. Doing so helps build trust among stakeholders in your efforts to address the issues they care about.
To further build this confidence, organizations should inform participants about the full assessment process, including other stakeholder groups and current sustainability goals and strategies. Where appropriate, inform stakeholders on assessment goals, what they might be looking to address, and why.
Share & use assessment results
Once you have completed an initial assessment and mapped the results on a materiality matrix, it’s time to share the results with stakeholders. This transparency not only fosters trust but also increases future engagement as people like being able to see the outcome of their contributions.
Materiality assessment results should inform your sustainability strategies, determining priorities for the short and long term. With limited time and resources, however, not every stakeholder issue will be addressed or addressed quickly, so it’s important to communicate the assessment outcomes and priorities, as well as the decision-making process behind them.
You can help set reasonable expectations by communicating how often you will conduct assessments, reporting on progress, and evaluating strategies. This can help to keep stakeholders engaged for future requests if they felt their concerns were not addressed in an initial assessment or strategy.
Continue the conversation
The relationship between your organization and its stakeholders is essential to developing a comprehensive ESG and sustainability program. By staying connected as you develop a sustainability strategy, you can continue to build rapport with different stakeholder groups.
But reporting assessment results should not be the end of your communication. Stakeholders should be encouraged to share their feedback and insights continuously. Again, when stakeholders feel heard and valued, they become more engaged in the outcomes of the overall process and want to contribute to program success.
Keep in mind that valuing stakeholders means attempting to connect in a convenient and reasonable way for them. Not all stakeholder groups will have the same access or means of communication. For example, some customers might not have regular internet access to answer an email survey. It is therefore important to customize outreach to ensure that everyone is given a chance to contribute their thoughts.
Efficiency is also key to secure participation. Surveys should not only be accessible but kept short and to the point to respect the valuable time of all stakeholders.
creating sustainability champions
By incorporating materiality assessment results and stakeholder feedback into your sustainability strategy, it is not only possible to build a comprehensive ESG program, but also to improve all-important stake holder buy-in. The program addresses things your stakeholders care about.
And when stakeholders see organizations acting on the ESG and sustainability issues they value, they are more likely to offer their support to solve these issues. Garnering this buy-in from the right stakeholders, like your board of directors or investors, is essential to long term program and organizational success.
Ready to tackle your materiality process and make sustainability champions of your stakeholders? The AMCS ESG Solution brings your strategy to life with interactive maps, integrated scorecards, and materiality assessment tools. Enabling you to focus on the metrics that matter most to your organization and communicate your sustainability achievements to stakeholders at a glance.