Partnerships & engaging others
Why is this area important to embedding sustainability in my organisation?
Stakeholder engagement is an essential part of embedding sustainability within an organisation. Asking people what they think enables you to understand what they expect of you. This understanding will enable you to develop an approach that reflects all stakeholders’ priorities. The process of engaging stakeholders is also beneficial because, by involving key players from the start, you can help to raise awareness, educate, overcome cynicism and create greater support for identified solutions.
Your discussions with stakeholders can also help you to begin to identify an appropriate set of qualitative and quantitative performance indicators that will help you to monitor and report on your performance. Further details on monitoring and reporting can be found in the Strategic Approach module. Some examples of guidance on how to engage with stakeholders successfully include the following.
- The Sigma Framework Stakeholder Engagement Toolkit which provides a good introduction to key issues.
- AccountAbility's Stakeholders Engagement standard which also considers some of the key issues.
- The Stakeholder Engagement Manual, AccountAbility & UNEP 2006 which provides examples (Volume 1) and a practice framework (Volume 2).
Partnerships are a key component of stakeholder engagement. Most organisations work with others to deliver their objectives – from producers of raw materials needed to manufacture products, to delivery agents involved in implementing programmes or delivering services. For an organisation to act sustainably, the principles of sustainability must be built into its relationships with its partners and stakeholders throughout its value chain.
How can sustainability be taken into account in building partnerships and engaging others?
In partnership working, it is important that all partners agree the objectives for a programme of work at the outset, including defining the sustainability outcomes. Parties should consider:
- whether there are any key environmental objectives, and how these should be represented in project documentation;
- whether there are any environmental factors that will affect the project outcomes, and how these can be represented in the Key Performance Indicators for the project; and
- what real or potential environmental risks there are to the success of the project, and how these can be dealt with using a risk register.
In order to achieve sustainable partnership working, it is important that the team includes the necessary sustainability skills, or has access to someone who can give expert advice where necessary.
A key resource to consult to help establish effective partnerships is The Partnering Toolbook and the Case Study Toolbook produced by the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF). In addition, the Partnering Initiative website provides access to the latest resources on cross-sector partnering, practice-based learning case studies, partnering tools and signposts. A further useful resource is People and Participation.net which provides information, case studies, a process design tool and details on methods for those looking to engage with others.
In relation to engaging others, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has produced a presentation looking specifically at sustainable development and Local Strategic Partnerships and Community Strategies which contains a section on the importance of community involvement to sustainable development. It includes a list of principles for good community involvement, all of which can apply more widely to general stakeholder engagement. These include:
- allowing sufficient time for dialogue;
- making it of interest and relevant to all involved;
- basing it on good information; and
- providing feedback about what has changed as a result of the dialogue
The NHS Good Corporate Citizenship toolkit contains a number of resources that can be used by NHS organisations and more widely to facilitate community engagement.