What Is Stakeholder Relations Management?

Effective management of relationships with stakeholders is extremely important to resolving issues facing organisations. By making use of their influence, stakeholders hold the key to the environment in which your organisation operates in addition to the subsequent financial and operating performance of the organisation. Thus the effective management of stakeholder relations is growing as a key focus of PR and organisational activity.

Who Is A Stakeholder?

A stakeholder is any person, group or organisation who is able to place a claim on an organisation’s attention, resources or output, or is affected by that output.  They have a stake in the organisation, in other words something at risk, and therefore something to gain or lose as a consequence of corporate activity.

The goal of stakeholder relations management is to sway stakeholder attitudes, decisions as well as actions for mutual benefit. The stakeholders need to benefit from the relationship with the organisation otherwise they may not be sufficiently motivated to cooperate.

Existing both internally and externally, stakeholders can have competing priorities and needs. In an ideal world, organisations could ignore this clamouring-for-attention and go about the important business of making money – no doubt the reason for their being. No such luck! Stakeholder relationships that are unmanaged or mismanaged have many less than favourable consequences for companies. These include needless expenses as well as a lack of buy-in to processes and initiatives that are aimed at transforming the company.

What Are The Primary Steps In Stakeholder Relations Management?

The primary steps in stakeholder relations management are to recognise and prioritise stakeholders. You then make use of stakeholder planning in order to build the support that assists you with succeeding.

The benefits of making use of a stakeholder-based approach are:

• You can utilise the viewpoints of the main stakeholders in order to help shape your projects at an early stage. This makes it more probable that they will support you. In addition, their input can also assist with improving the quality of your project.
• Acquiring support from powerful stakeholders for your work may help to convince senior management to allot more resources to you. This makes it more probable that your projects will achieve success.
• By communicating with your stakeholders early and frequently, you can make sure that they know what you are doing as well as fully understand the benefits of your project. This means that they can support you actively when necessary.
• You are able to anticipate what your stakeholders’ reaction to your project is likely to be, and then you will be able to build into your plan the actions that will win their support.

You may have a long list of individuals as well as organisations that are influenced by your work. Some of these stakeholders may have the power either to block or help to advance your activities. Some stakeholders may be interested in what you are doing, others may not care. Having identified who your main stakeholders are, you need to decide which of them are the most important. With resources that are , you should only deal actively with the most important ones.

Stakeholder relations management is a vital part of project management.

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