Across all sectors, there is a growing emphasis on stakeholder centricity and on hearing directly from affected stakeholders before making material business decisions. Furthermore, not only are face-to-face engagement sessions popular with stakeholders, they are also often mandated by regulation. Stakeholder engagement sessions include any forum where the organisation and its stakeholders come together, from public participation events to stakeholder focus groups.
However, these stakeholder engagement sessions also pose a degree of risk and can spiral out of control if not properly executed. For this reason, where necessary, G3 Business Solutions can help your organisation determine what the optimal stakeholder engagement structure is for your particular needs, and then to help plan, oversee, facilitate and report on the stakeholder engagement as it happens.
Public participation forums
Formal public participation processes and community consultation forums are legislated in a number of contexts such as environmental and social impact studies.
G3 Business Solutions has extensive experience in conceptualising and executing these processes, stemming from several years of experience in running such stakeholder engagement and public participation forums for leading mining organisations (including Anglo American, Wesizwe Platinum and Lonmin) and community trusts such as the Sishen Iron Ore Community Development Trust.
Even when not mandated by regulation, public participation forums are an excellent way to show openness to stakeholder input, build consensus, and find common themes and goals.
G3 Business Solutions can assist your organisation with facilitation of the following variants of public participation forums:
- Regulated public participation processes
- Community consultation forums
- Town hall meetings and/or roadshows
- Multi-stakeholder forums
Focus groups and co-creation platforms
G3 Business Solutions can also help your organisation plan, deploy and report on a variety of stakeholder engagement forums aimed at research, or co-creation, such as focus groups. Other options in this format include:
- Round-tables
- Panel discussions
- Expert and peer advice sessions