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Stakeholder management

When deciding on the strategy, consider the implications of the changes on each of your stakeholders, how they may view the change and the impact on the Council’s relationship with them. The nature of local authorities means that the Council is likely to already have a regular dialogue with all of these groups, which you can utilise.

Local authorities’ stakeholders can typically be broken down into the following categories:
  • Political - Councillors, Committees, MPs and other elected representatives;
  • Internal – Managers, Employees, Unions;
  • Users of the service – Typically residents and maybe other councils;
  • Local community – Other residents, local groups and businesses based near to the offices;
  • Suppliers – Those people who provide materials or services to the function;
  • The media - The media are primarily a way of communicating with other stakeholders but should also be considered separately.

Each group will have different expectations which may conflict and will need to be addressed through your communications with them. For example, councillors might want to move an office function to an area creating jobs and revenue to support regeneration against a local community not wanting more traffic and parking in their area.

Depending on whether each stakeholder is directly affected by the change or crucial to the organisation, the Council may vary how you communicate. One tool to guide this is the Johnson & Scholes (2001) mapping technique below:

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