A successful engagement process requires collaboration, building relationships, and engaging with the relevant stakeholders. Authentic communication and reciprocal relationships are extremely important.
Engagement can be neglected in the rush of a big project, so we outline some principles below that can help with making a successful engagement process and how to make it part of your normal process.
The Initial Engagement
Early engagement is crucial when developing your project. This is where you consider who are the relevant stakeholders for the project and then you need to ensure you have strong engagement with them. This can be very time consuming and requires a lot of effort. However, a failure to build solid relationships with your stakeholders can risk the success of your project, confidence of your stakeholders in your processes and reduce the trust in them engaging in the future.
The initial engagement requires multiple opportunities for collaboration, communication and consultation. Develop their trust and build that relationship. Work out your stakeholders’ wants from the project and how you both can come together to deliver a successful project.
Engagement Hub Platform
A successful engagement process requires meaningful engagement with your stakeholders including keeping them in the loop with what is happening so that they feel respected as an integral part of the process. This also helps strengthen the relationship between yourself and the stakeholder. Discuss expectations with the stakeholders and how they would like to collaborate and communicate with you.
An online engagement platform like our Engagement Hub software can transform this process. You can use this to communicate with one another, directly consult in a variety of ways, keep records of all stakeholder engagement plus generate instant reports. This dynamic and digital form of collaboration opens up the engagement process to your whole spectrum of stakeholders and increases accessibility and engagement rates.
Ensure you are Spending the Right Time, Effort, and Money on the Engagement
Each stakeholder has a varying level of impact on the project so it is up to you to identify the crucial ones for the project at hand and prioritise resources effectively. You then need to factor in what the current engagement with the stakeholder is, and what is the desired engagement tier for the stakeholder. Each stakeholder will be at different tiers and each engagement is also linked with the selection of engagement activities and methods Identifying the proposed method to achieve the target level of engagement will help an organisation to identify and cost the resources necessary for the engagement process.
You may also like:
- 10 tips on creating authentic stakeholder engagement
- Measuring the effectiveness of your stakeholder engagement
- 5 essential tools for stakeholder analysis
For more information on Engagement Hub features, unique stakeholder management system and to see case studies from our clients, please visit the website. Book a virtual demo directly with us here to see behind the scenes of this powerful software.
