Community relations

Online engagement seems to be the new trend in the stakeholder engagement era. For many community stakeholders, it’s much easier to pick up a smartphone, read about the project, and share ideas or concerns online, right from home. Online communication also makes it easier for organizations to collect information from these otherwise silent stakeholders – whether it’s identifying multiple stakeholder groups in a high-density area through the comments posted on an engagement webpage, or validating […]

While stakeholder engagement has been ongoing business for organizations in mining, oil & gas and energy industries for over 30 years, to the broader business world, it’s now a concern for C-level executives in industries such as retail, consumer goods, transport, food and beverages, pharmaceuticals and more.   According to AccountAbility’s 1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard: “Stakeholder engagement is the process used by an organisation to engage relevant stakeholders for a clear purpose to achieve agreed outcomes. […]

Distribution Network Service Providers (DNSPs) in Australia are facing a stakeholder engagement logjam thanks to the electricity pricing reform enacted by the Australian Energy Regulator (AER),  as suggested by the Energy Australia Network (EAN).   As the first movers, the Victorian DNSPs were required to submit Tariff Structure Statements (TSSs) to the AER for approval, to apply for from three to five years. The TSS requirement implies the broad engagement of all a DNSP’s stakeholders, […]

The Responsible Business Summit Europe (RBSEU), which recently took place in London, sparked debate about how we can transform the world while building great and sustainable businesses. I was inspired by sessions describing how companies are putting into practice processes to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and committing to the Paris agreement, and hope to pay that  inspiration forward just a bit, by writing about it here.   Understanding the SDGs and what […]

A few months ago, I decided to send my resume to Boréalis because I felt that my work could be useful. Just by looking on the website and seeing what the software could do for community relations teams, I sensed that I could have a greater footprint on the planet and its population. So, I was thrilled to conduct my first customer interview; I was able to finally see the impact that we have in […]

Social Licence to Operate : Back in the Day! In 1970, the economist Milton Friedman famously stated that: “The business of business is business.” Explicit within this well-known quotation is the notion that an ethical business needs only to make profits and to obey the laws of the land. No other effort was required of a business in order to fulfil its real and perceived obligations. But then it changed Over the past decades, stakeholders […]