Mastering Your Stakeholder Engagement Plan: A Comprehensive Guide

Need to plan a stakeholder engagement for an upcoming project? The success of your project will (to a degree) rely on you successfully engaging stakeholders — and that will require a comprehensive plan.

If you’re looking for a basic guide, this isn’t it. Here, we go deeper into the benefits, strategies, and processes behind stakeholder engagement plans. You’ll need to set aside a little extra time to go through everything, but you should come away with all the info you may need to confidently create your own plan — even for a complex, high-stakes engagement.

What Is a Stakeholder Engagement Plan?

A stakeholder engagement plan is a written document that outlines how an organization will engage with their stakeholders, in the context of a specific project. 

But to get really specific about the definition, we’ve broken each word down into its individual meanings:

• Stakeholder – An individual or group that is impacted by, has an influence on, or has an interest in your organization or project.
• Engagement – The process of involving stakeholders in the project or decision-making process — typically encompassing communication, participation, feedback, and reporting.
• Plan – A written document that forms a roadmap for stakeholder engagement, outlining the relevant goals, strategies, processes, activities, and evaluation methods.

The Importance of a Stakeholder Engagement Plan

Do you really need a stakeholder engagement plan? Some smaller organizations may ‘wing’ their way through the engagement process without a detailed roadmap — but this isn’t wise. It would be like a driver counting on their ‘sense of direction’ to guide them through an unfamiliar township until they inevitably get lost and need to ask the locals for help. 

Fortunately, more mature organizations know firsthand how critical a stakeholder engagement plan is to their success.

Above all, stakeholders themselves are important — and therefore, the process of identifying them and engaging with them should be considered a core part of any project. Beyond that, planning for your stakeholder engagement is also important because:

• It can help to identify clear goals and objectives that will help to steer the engagement in the right direction
• It can allow you to determine what resources will be necessary in order to carry out the engagement
• It will encourage you to think about how you’ll report on the engagement and evaluate its success from the very beginning

Benefits of a Stakeholder Engagement Plan

We’ve already talked about the importance of a stakeholder engagement plan, but let’s get into some of the specific benefits it can deliver to your organization or project.

Enhanced Alignment and Success

To begin with, the process of creating a stakeholder engagement plan will encourage your leadership and project teams to consider the goals of the project and organization in light of stakeholder expectations. If you plan your engagement early on, there will be plenty of opportunities to adjust your goals to more closely align with stakeholders — which can lead to less friction during the project, fewer objections, and a much greater chance of success.

​​Improved Risk Identification and Mitigation

Secondly, engaging with stakeholders will lead to new knowledge and insights coming to the surface — some of which may highlight risks (and opportunities) the organization was not previously aware of. For instance, local knowledge might reveal physical risks like flooding in the project area, or you might discover several stakeholder groups that have the power (and inclination) to prevent the project from going ahead. Done early enough in the project cycle, this can allow the organization to avoid or mitigate these risks.

Streamlined Communication and Partnerships

Many projects rely on strong partnerships — and these come from trust, transparency, and good communication. A stakeholder engagement plan can help with identifying stakeholder communication strategies ahead of time that will help to build trust and strengthen stakeholder relationships.

Informed Decision-Making

Better stakeholder engagement planning can lead to more successful engagements and input from a more diverse range of stakeholder groups. And by engaging with more stakeholders, decision makers can tap into a broader range of insights, concerns, and knowledge that help inform their decisions and deliver better outcomes.

Bolstered Compliance and Reputation

Finally, a stakeholder engagement plan can cover off on various legal obligations, ensuring that the consultation process supports compliance measures through appropriate participation opportunities and recordkeeping. The plan may also identify other ways the engagement could positively impact the business, such as enhancing its public image or paving the way for future opportunities.

Comprehensive Strategies for Stakeholder Engagement

Before we get into how to create a stakeholder engagement plan, it’s worth doing some homework (or at least, a quick refresher) on what a modern stakeholder engagement typically looks like.

Here are some of the strategies and methods commonly used in today’s stakeholder engagements:

• Surveys – Questions can be asked online or on-paper in order to gain feedback from stakeholders
• Focus groups – Typically, a representative group of stakeholders may be invited to discuss their views in a small group setting
• Interviews – One-on-one discussions with key stakeholders may be used to build a deeper understanding of specific concerns or perspectives
• Meetings – Face-to-face meetings in public locations can allow stakeholders to ask questions and share their views
• Events – These can be a great opportunity to communicate face-to-face with a larger group of stakeholders, allowing you to share key information and provide an opportunity to ask questions
• Workshops – Key stakeholders may be invited to learn more and then contribute directly to the decision-making process
• Advisory panels – A representative group of stakeholders may be invited to provide guidance or insights into the project and its impacts
• Letters – Letterbox drops are a more traditional method, but can be a practical way to reach residents and local businesses with information on the project and engagement opportunities
• Emails – Key stakeholders may receive personalized emails about specific issues, and a broader group of stakeholders may subscribe to receive regular updates
• SMS – Stakeholders may subscribe to regular SMS updates, or get notified about timely issues that may impact them
• Social media – Stakeholders may follow the project or organization on social media to stay informed and share their thoughts via comment or message
• Consultation platforms – The organization may set up their own platform or website as a dedicated engagement hub, allowing stakeholders to view information and engagement opportunities in one place
• Online chat – Stakeholders may engage with organization representatives, share their thoughts, and ask questions via online chat

Note that it’s best practice to include a mixture of digital and traditional engagement methods to increase the likelihood of engaging different types of stakeholders.

We recommend reading up on some examples of stakeholder engagement campaigns to get more inspiration and ideas.

9 Steps to Developing an Effective Stakeholder Engagement Plan

To state the obvious: every project, stakeholder, and (therefore) stakeholder engagement plan will look a little different. However, each plan should follow a similar overall structure and steps, and the same universal stakeholder engagement principles.

We’ve broken this structure down into 9 steps needed to create a comprehensive stakeholder engagement plan. However, if you’re looking for a more basic plan, we recommend you check out our quick start guide and online, fillable stakeholder engagement plan template.

1. Assessing Project Scope and Stakeholder Impact

Start with some pre-work as you prepare to create your stakeholder engagement plan. This includes considering the scope of your project and its anticipated impact on stakeholders — as this will (in part) dictate the direction of your engagement. Your scope assessment may involve chatting with your colleagues to better understand the proposed or planned project, rough timelines, what might be involved, other similar projects completed in the past, potential stakeholders, and so on.

At this point, you likely won’t know many specifics about your stakeholders and how they’ll be impacted (this will come next) but you may begin to develop a general idea based on past projects of similar scope.

2. Conducting Detailed Stakeholder Analysis

It’s time to review your list of identified stakeholders in more detail and conduct a deeper stakeholder analysis. This will help you understand:

• Who your stakeholders are
• Their demographic info and how to reach them
• Their interests
• Their level of impact
• Their level of influence
• Their preferences and information needs

You should note down any potentially relevant observations and available data on each stakeholder — and then use the appropriate stakeholder mapping techniques to turn that data into practical insights. These insights will lead nicely into the next step…

3. Segmenting Stakeholders for Targeted Engagement

Each of your stakeholder groups will likely vary when it comes to their importance to the project, their interests, and their preferences. An effective engagement will require you to segment your stakeholder groups so that you can target them with specific messages, communication styles, and frequencies. The criteria you use to segment your stakeholders will vary based on the insights you gained from stakeholder analysis and mapping. 

For instance, constructing a new highway might involve the following segmented groups based on their level of impact and shared interests:

• Impacted locals – Nearby residents, local community groups, users of public transport, and impacted local businesses
• Government & agencies – Urban planners, sustainability agencies, and transport regulators
• Suppliers – Contractors, tradespeople, landscaping suppliers, trades groups, and consultants
• Media & PR – Local journalists, industry news groups, local media outlets, and influencers
• Finance – Project investors, banks, and shareholders

By segmenting stakeholders into the above groups, it’s much easier to tailor messaging and engagement activities without needing to engage on a one-on-one basis with each stakeholder.

4. Developing a Holistic Engagement Framework

After you’ve segmented your stakeholders, you’ll be able to create an engagement framework that outlines how you plan to interact with each group, including specific messaging, frequencies, platforms, and activities. This will also be based on the insights from step 2, where you analyzed your stakeholders to understand their interests, impact, influence, and preferences. 

Using the same highway construction example as above, you might outline the following approach for each segment:

• Impacted locals 
  • Conduct a survey and focus groups to gather their concerns around noise, traffic, and access changes
  • Host an event to explain the project plans
  • Set up an advisory group
  • Keep in touch via letters (quarterly), emails (fortnightly), and SMS (as needed)
• Government & agencies 
  • Consult via phone, email, and meetings to understand relevant policies and local plans to ensure alignment
  • Invite to form planning taskforce
• Suppliers 
  • Keep updated on project via email (weekly) & face-to-face briefings (weekly)
  • Meetings to discuss planning requirements and progress (monthly)
• Media & PR 
  • Project status updates via email and phone calls (as-needed to relevant contacts)
  • Regular social media updates to followers (daily)
  • Regular email updates to subscribers (monthly)
• Finance 
  • Risk briefing and consultation (early in the project)
  • Report on compliance, engagement, and project via email and face-to-face briefings (quarterly)

5. Crafting an Adaptive Communication Strategy

Now it’s time to develop your communication strategy based on your engagement framework. The main purpose of this strategy is to plan your communications ahead of time so that you can be more intentional, better prepared, and more cohesive. 

For each of your chosen platforms, outline what you will need to communicate, who you will be targeting, and approximately when you will need to communicate it. Many organizations find it practical to use a content calendar to plan their communications — whether this is in the form of a purpose-built tool, a spreadsheet, or a shared Google calendar. You might also like to view your content calendar in the context of your overall stakeholder engagement timeline or project milestones so that you can align your communications.

Note that your communication strategy should retain some flexibility. Leave space for some ad hoc updates and be open to changing your strategy as you gain feedback, review the metrics, or experiment with different approaches. You may also need to adapt your strategy if the project, stakeholders, or environment you operate in change. 

6. Designing and Implementing Engagement Activities

Next, consider the engagement activities you’ll undertake in order to gain feedback, input, or participation from your different stakeholder segments. When designing these activities, consider:

• Which stakeholder groups are best suited to different types of engagement
• What your stakeholders can (realistically) impact or influence
• Stakeholder preferences and/or accessibility needs
• What input you need from stakeholders at specific steps in the project/planning process
• Stakeholder expectations and obligations
• What options you can offer to encourage input from marginalized groups

Implementing your engagement activities will require careful coordination with your communication plan and strategy. You’ll need to promote your engagement opportunities well in advance to ensure your stakeholders know about them. Incorporate various reminders about any upcoming events or surveys, and afterwards, be sure to report back on how the engagement went (and thank any participants).

7. Monitoring, Feedback Integration, and Plan Adaptation

As part of your stakeholder engagement plan, you’ll need to note down how you’ll monitor your engagement activities, integrate feedback, and then adapt your plan accordingly. For example:

• Capturing stakeholders in your stakeholder software
• Collecting all stakeholder interactions in your stakeholder software
• Analyzing interactions based on issues or sentiment
• Reviewing email subscriptions, open rates, and click-throughs
• Reviewing social media visibility, follows, and engagement
• Tracking survey response rates
• Tracking event/meeting attendance rates
• Tracking specific survey responses and stakeholder feedback (e.g. support for the project, feedback about the engagement itself, etc.)

Record what metrics you’ll track, how often you’ll track them, and when you’ll update your stakeholder engagement plan based on your results. For more ideas on what you could track, check out our examples of stakeholder engagement objectives and key results.

8. Evaluating Engagement Outcomes and Impact

Aside from tracking your metrics, it’s important to track the actual outcomes and impact of your engagement itself. In other words — how is your stakeholder engagement impacting the decision-making process, the project plans, and your stakeholders? 

Choose your evaluation methods and how often you’ll revisit them. For instance:

• Checking whether you’ve met the objectives identified in your plan
• Comparing pre- and post- engagement surveys (especially geared at project awareness, support levels, concerns, and perceptions)
• Interviewing your team members and/or stakeholders to understand the impact
• Tracking what stakeholder input went into each project decision (e.g. comments, survey data, advisory panel decisions)

It’s also a good idea to place any findings into a report — both for internal use and to share with external stakeholders.

9. Ongoing Stakeholder Engagement Improvement

Finally, it’s a good idea to note down how you plan to improve your stakeholder engagement. Engaging with stakeholders can be an incredible learning experience — as you implement your plan, you may discover things that work well (and things that don’t), gaps you need to fill, opportunities worth pursuing, and areas that need more work. 

Apply your learnings so that you can improve your stakeholder engagement plan as you go. You may want to set a quarterly date to zoom out and review your engagement, and then make any necessary plan adjustments. Or if you’ve reached the end of your engagement, note down any lessons learned that you wish to apply to future engagements. 

Enhancing Stakeholder Engagement With Planning

If you could take away one thing from this guide, it’s that planning is essential for an effective stakeholder engagement — and spending a little extra time to master your plan is always a worthwhile investment.

After all, your stakeholders have a significant role to play in the success of your organization and its projects. Through careful planning, you can set yourself up for better stakeholder engagement that leads to fewer risks, better communication, more informed decisions, and many other benefits.

Looking for a stakeholder engagement tool that can support you during the planning process and beyond? Simply Stakeholders includes stakeholder tracking, stakeholder analysis, reports, team collaboration, issues tracking, stakeholder mapping, and so much more. Learn more about how it works or contact us to try a demo.