Stakeholder Identification, Monitoring & Engagement

Challenge: Identifying, prioritizing, monitoring, and understanding the third parties and stakeholders watching your company…shaping the issues…influencing outcomes…creating risk and opportunity…and perhaps impacting license to operate.

Stakeholder Identification, Monitoring & Engagement

Who are the third-party organizations that are focusing on your company? What are their interests? What are their expectations (of your board and management team)? Why have they selected your company for focus? What is the focus of their campaigns? The outcomes? (For example, third parties are active in matters related to climate change, supply chain issues, environmental performance and compliance, domestic and global diversity, human rights, labor rights, carbon and water footprints – and many more issues that directly or indirectly may affect your company.) What are the impacts of stakeholders focused on ESG on your company?

G&A Institute team members have decades of experience in effectively working with credible third party organizations on behalf of client companies. We identify organizations active in specific issue areas (those who create and drive the issue, or join coalition focused on the issues); we monitor their activities; identify specific issues in the ESG framework that are emerging in importance; advise on these players and their issues in focus; advise corporate leaders of risks and opportunities related to third party activities; and assist in engaging the leaders of stakeholder / third party organizations to help address and resolve outstanding issues (assisting corporate staff in their efforts).

The outcome aimed for: resolution of outstanding issues and cooperation as appropriate with select third parties to benefit all parties in the engagement process.

Our team's approach for successful engagement of third parties is based on our unique, long-term formula: Know – Monitor - Understand – Evaluate - Engage – Negotiate - Agree – Resolve – Achieve Leadership and Recognition.

About Sustainability Advice – Strategic Counsel – Recommendations for Consideration of Engagement – Managing Third Party Inquiries – Solutions for Questionnaire Fatigue

Regarding the universe third parties: Should you engage…or not? If the decision is "yes," then what and how are the best approaches to engage with activists and advocates and those influential third parties focused on your corporation, your industry or sector? Our team has years of successful engagement with third party organizations and thought leaders…we help clients engage, mediate and resolve issues…we provide clients with solutions to achieve successful engagement. We work as independent mediators helping to bring parties together for successful outcomes.

Got questionnaire fatigue?

Managing Corporate Response to ESG Third Party Inquiries – Advice and Support

With the rising investor and stakeholder interest in Sustainability and ESG analysis and investment frameworks, corporate issuers are being approached in varying ways by an expanding universe of service providers. The result can be questionnaire fatigue. We help staff understand the nature of the inquiry and be more effective in responding to inquiries – to help clients get their story heard and understood.

This is especially important for such initiatives as the Carbon Disclosure Project and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Both have important implications for companies regarding perceptions of shareholders and impact on operations regarding climate change issues. G&A Institute is an Organizational Stakeholder of the GRI and is the North American Data Partner of GRI. We collect and analyze corporate sustainability and responsibility reports and trends, and archive and make this information available to public users. (more information here on our GRI Data Partner information page on SustainabilityHQ)

Bottom line: Just because a financial analyst or asset owner or manager is not asking questions about your organization's ESG performance or Sustainability strategies and initiatives does not mean that they are not interested. Information may be gained from third party providers. Knowing who these providers are is of critical importance now (to corporate managers) for they are shaping valuations, access to capital markets, and influencing corporate reputations. In the New Normal of the markets, ESG information is being utilized by many more players.