We hope you have enjoyed this 6-part blog series exploring best-practice solutions to common challenges of corporate reputation management. As a complement to these blog postings, we have summarized the key points in a brief entitled Building Resilient Corporate Reputations: A GlobeScan Brief on Reputation Best Practice, which is available for download here.
To wrap up this series, I’d like to discuss the importance of moving beyond the gathering of stakeholder intelligence to proactively engaging with stakeholders more deeply. This is what really allows companies to fully capitalize on their reputational investments.
Opportunities are most effectively unlocked by increasing the company’s proactive engagement with important stakeholders. By reflecting back to stakeholders what you have heard from them and inviting their further involvement in pursuing mutual interests, you can set in motion a circle of feedback and responsiveness. This is how trust is built, leading to reputational benefits.
Engagement can take various forms. It can be a partnership between a company and a government or NGO to advance a particular issue or a cross-industry initiative to change business practices holding back the reputation of an entire industry. It can involve hosting a series of meetings or roundtable discussions with participation from a range of corporate executives and external stakeholders. Scaling this type of personal interaction is also possible via online mass collaboration forums, where interested stakeholders develop fresh solutions to a particular challenge and then work together to set the solutions in motion. GlobeScan has worked with Unilever and BT on two such forums.
Successful stakeholder engagement requires a level of transparency and trust and a degree of collaboration few global organizations can deliver on their own. However, a growing number of leadership companies are gaining the reputational lift that true partnerships with engaged stakeholders can deliver. Perhaps more importantly, these companies are learning how to thrive in an increasingly collaborative world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-5AwCcw1IE
Building Resilient Corporate Reputations: A GlobeScan Brief and Blog Series
Drawn from our new brief, Building Resilient Corporate Reputations, this blog series explores best-practice solutions to common challenges and shortcomings of corporate reputation management. Whether you need to begin, to evaluate or to re-design your reputation management system, the brief and blog series will help you to assess how fit-for-purpose your current reputation approach may be. Femke de Man, Director, Reputation, introduces the findings in the video to the left.
Blog Series: PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6
Download the Brief: Building Resilient Corporate Reputations
Please feel free to comment on this blog or contact me directly:
Femke de Man | Director, Reputation | Email | Twitter | Bio
Click here to find out more about GlobeScan’s Reputation Management practice
About GlobeScan
For twenty-five years, GlobeScan has helped clients measure, understand and build valuable relationships with their stakeholders, and to work collaboratively in delivering a sustainable and equitable future. Uniquely placed at the nexus of reputation, brand and sustainability, GlobeScan partners with clients to build trust, drive engagement and inspire innovation within, around and beyond their organizations.
