Best Practices for Meaningful and Sustainable Stakeholder Engagement

By Zoe Leeming and Sanchita Saxena

Last fall, Sanchita had the wonderful opportunity to facilitate the second session of the “Responsible Business Conduct (RBC) Academy,” co-hosted by the Initiative for Global Solidarity (IGS) project and implemented by GIZ, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The RBC Academy works closely with academics, researchers, civil society organizations (CSOs), and trade unions (TUs) to effectively navigate the evolving landscape to improve human rights and environmental due diligence. During this session, 21 CSOs and TU representatives from the garments, leather, motor, and construction sectors, as well as representatives from domestic workers organizations, engaged with one another to collectively develop priorities to make stakeholder engagement truly effective. 

At the same time, the Article One team has been working to incorporate learnings from recent stakeholder engagements and perspectives from the RBC workshop into the organization’s approach to reciprocal and substantive stakeholder and rightsholder engagement. As part of this process, we have updated Article One’s Ethical Research and Engagement Principles to reflect what we consider to be best practices. Below we share the takeaways from the workshop in Bangladesh, Article One’s revised Principles, and recommendations for companies to advance their approach to stakeholder engagement.  

Key Workshop Takeaways 

Participants discussed what makes engagements meaningful from a stakeholder–centric lens. Some of the key takeaways were:

• Stakeholders really want to be acknowledged for their contributions throughout the process. This could come in the form of citing their organization in final reports or sharing recommendations back with them.
• Stakeholders want to engage in long-term relationships rather than in one-off consultations;they would prefer to be consulted throughout the process. “Sometimes it [the consultation] is just in the beginning of the project, where we give our feedback. If there are any changes, there should be the option of giving feedback again…,” said one participant.
• Stakeholders felt that the monetary compensation policy should be revised and adapted regularly. For example, the compensation may change if they are engaged multiple times in the process or if preparatory work is required. A fixed amount does not always adequately reflect the time stakeholders put into a project.

Participants collectively agreed upon three main criteria as critical for effective stakeholder engagement:

• Understanding Stakeholders: Understand the strengths and weaknesses of both parties and acknowledge stakeholders (who repeatedly said, “we want to be seen”). Real understanding helps to develop a mutually beneficial and productive relationship.
• Building Trust: Trust is critical to building a long-term relationship. Both parties must come to a shared consensus on mutually agreed upon goals and demonstrate trust through actions over time.
• Managing the Relationship: Continuous engagement, if possible, is important. Managing the relationship is not static and may change over time due to the situation, project, etc.

These three aspects can be thought of as a process where the initial engagement begins with understanding the stakeholder, the relationship develops by building trust, and the engagement is strengthened and flourishes by managing the relationship over time. Transparency, commitment, and communication are required by both parties throughout the entire relationship to make it a successful one.

Article One’s Revised Ethical Research and Engagement Principles

Article One is committed to the highest standards of ethics and integrity in our research and engagement activities, including pursuing meaningful and reciprocal engagement and consultation with stakeholders. We are deeply grateful for the time, expertise, and impactful work of stakeholders striving to advance business’ respect for human rights globally in sharing their perspectives with us, as well as the rightsholders who choose to share their lived experiences with us.  

Key revisions to the principles and our approach include commitments to:

• Respect and safety: our engagements will be conducted in a way that aligns with the needs and preferences of participants. Their language, literacy levels, security, and digital access issues will be taken into account.
• Transparency: we do not conceal the identity of our clients nor the objectives of our engagement.
• Credit: while our default approach is always to ensure the anonymity of participating stakeholders, should expert stakeholders (or their organization) wish to be credited or acknowledged for a perspective or recommendation, this will be honored.
• Non-extractive engagement models: where possible, we seek stakeholders’ participation and co-design in the structure and substance of the engagement, including providing multiple opportunities for input.
• Building trust: we strive to use our relationships to build trust and create direct channels of communication between stakeholders and clients for mutually beneficial and productive, long-term relationships.
• Reciprocity: we share written summaries of the engagement findings and outcomes on conclusion of the project and seek direct compensation for expert stakeholder participation wherever possible.

Recommendations for Business 

For companies seeking to advance best practice models of stakeholder engagement in their human rights due diligence programs, we recommend considering the following: :

• Identify opportunities to share openly with stakeholders to the greatest extent possible, ideally in advance of a meeting. Consider ways to share beyond just publicly available reporting, including case studies or examples. The more stakeholders can understand about a business, the better stakeholders can tailor their insights and recommendations to the business.
• Close the feedback loop. Go back to stakeholders to explain how their inputs informed changes in practice, including what did not and why. This could be through written summaries, roundtables, webinars, and other formats.
• Establish longer-term engagement models. Where appropriate and approved by the stakeholder, consider joining third-party led stakeholder calls to hear stakeholder perspectives directly. Engagements should not just be one-off and should take place at regular intervals.
• Establish two-way channels of communication. Share appropriate contact information with stakeholders and be responsive to stakeholder outreach with requests for information and exchange of ideas.
• Conduct engagements at scale.
• Seek out opportunities to reduce the demands on stakeholders’ time by collaborating with peers on engagement efforts, where feasible. This could include initiatives such as roundtables or multi-stakeholder collaborations.

Article One welcomes the opportunity to partner with companies to develop and implement meaningful stakeholder engagement strategies.