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Case Study: A framework to manage stakeholders and reduce uncertainty

A federal government agency was delivering a number of projects across several jurisdictions that attracted stakeholder and community interest. FPL was engaged to develop a stakeholder engagement framework to support program delivery, ease stakeholder uncertainty and ultimately reduce the number of enquiries about the program to the Minister’s Office. 

 

Situation 

A federal government agency was delivering a number of projects across several jurisdictions aligned with an election commitment. The complexity of the stakeholder mix and inevitable project delays created an environment of reputational risk for the agency and the Minister’s Office was receiving an increasing number of enquiries. 

The agency had to divert resources from proactive engagement to responding to those queries and sought FPL’s assistance to develop a resource effective stakeholder engagement framework that over time would alleviate the reactive enquiries.    The agency identified a number of key challenges including a lack of internal visibility of the range of projects being undertaken as a collective picture, a significant change in internal resourcing and a lack of existing proactive profile building with several stakeholders. 

FPL was engaged to develop an engagement framework that all relevant agency personnel could reference and actively utilise to ensure maximum visibility and proactive management of issues early in the project lifecycle and to provide advice on internal capability gaps to support the program. 

 

Action

FPL undertook an extensive document discovery and review process to understand the agency’s challenges in more detail, current processes and communications protocols. We then built an understanding of the priority projects and key stakeholder cohorts relevant for the immediate program delivery. Following best practice examples including the APS framework for engagement and participation, we developed a stakeholder engagement framework that outlined the intent purpose and direction of stakeholder engagement for the program as whole. 

During this process, one of the key current projects within the program faced a significant setback and as a result of a range of external factors, gained significant stakeholder attention. Aligned with the framework for the program and outside of the original scope, FPL developed a stakeholder engagement plan for the specific project facing issues. As a result, the agency sought to expand the scope of the stakeholder engagement framework to include consideration of similar external issues. 

 

Outcome 

As a result, the stakeholder engagement framework was widely adopted internally as a guide to stakeholder engagement activity, even during its development. The framework provided the foundation for the agency to develop supporting collateral to execute the proposed program of engagement and to identify the skill sets that would be needed to inform their recruitment.

FPL Advisory supports clients across many industry sectors to resolve risks, create opportunities and support government engagement.