Making engagement ‘meaningful’

Ipieca recognises that there is an opportunity to support companies and practitioners to undertake engagement that moves beyond meeting the minimum expectations, by providing a broader, inclusive and ongoing two-way process for engagement, or ‘meaningful engagement’.

The benefits of conducting meaningful engagement are far-reaching and include:

  • An increased sense of trust between stakeholders and companies, which helps to cement the basis for longer-term relationships
  • Greater understanding of the potential impacts on stakeholders caused by a project/operation/ activity, and how these can be avoided, managed and/or mitigated
  • Improved risk management outcomes, as stakeholder issues/concerns can be addressed quickly and proactively before they become grievances
  • Savings on project/activity costs and a reduced likelihood of schedule delays
  • Greater transparency and accountability in engagement processes and company decision-making

In addition, as the global energy transition proceeds, many companies will make changes to their portfolios to support new low-carbon or renewable energy facilities or look to downsize or close existing oil and gas facilities. In these situations, meaningful engagement will be a vital part of ensuring that the company is actively contributing to a just energy transition.

Accordingly, this guidance seeks to take advantage of this opportunity to support companies and practitioners to make informed decisions when it comes to undertaking stakeholder engagement, and as such, provides practical guidance on how to create meaningful engagement opportunities for stakeholders.

LightbulbTip: Definitions for key terms in this guidance note are provided in Appendix A.

Purpose of this guidance

The purpose of this guidance is to support companies and practitioners to make engagements meaningful experiences for all stakeholders involved. While it provides guidance, it is not intended to provide an exhaustive interpretation of meaningful engagement, the barriers that exist to conducting engagement, or detail every tool/ technique that could be used to undertake engagement.

To this end, this guidance will:

  • Highlight the core elements of what constitutes meaningful engagement
  • Support practitioners to select engagement techniques/tools and communication methods/ channels to suit the stakeholder context
  • Help practitioners to measure whether engagement is meaningful by providing example key performance indicators (KPIs)

Target audience

This guidance has been designed for the following users:

  • Companies undertaking stakeholder engagement activities: this guidance is meant for those ‘on the ground’ as well as those at a corporate or boardroom level. It is intended to be used to help companies integrate stakeholder engagement into decision-making processes and management systems used by various teams within an organisation (e.g. health, safety and environment (HSE) teams working on permitting/approvals, security teams employed.
    to oversee construction activities, engineering teams designing new gas field developments).
  • Practitioners: this guidance is intended to be used by practitioners within companies who are looking to undertake direct/indirect engagement with stakeholders across a range of operating contexts.

When to use this guidance?

This guidance is intended to be used by practitioners whenever they are undertaking engagement with local ‘external’ stakeholder groups (e.g. local communities, local/provincial governments, local non-government organisations (NGOs)) rather than non-local ‘external’ stakeholders (e.g. federal governments, international NGOs) or ‘internal’ stakeholders (e.g. contractors, suppliers), however some aspects may be relevant for all stakeholders.

It is important for practitioners to remember that while the core elements associated with meaningful engagement do not change, every project and/or activity is different, and therefore the nature of the stakeholder engagement conducted will need to be designed to reflect the local context.

In addition, in circumstances where situations do change, such as through amended project design or receipt of stakeholder feedback, engagement techniques/tools and measurement may also need to change to incorporate the new information.

E-mail alerts

Sign up to receive Ipieca's e-news
Climate
Nature
People
Sustainability
Marine spill
Please confirm that you are happy to receive newsletters from Ipieca: