Approach to stakeholder engagement

Disclosure focus

Disclosure 2-29 requires an organization to describe its approach to engaging with stakeholders. The disclosure must identify the categories of stakeholders the organization engages with, explain how those categories are identified, describe the purpose of the engagement, and explain how the organization seeks to ensure meaningful stakeholder engagement.

A stakeholder is an individual or group that has an interest that is affected or could be affected by the organization’s activities. Stakeholder identification should therefore be based on affected or potentially affected interests. Factors such as influence, dependency, commercial importance or visibility can be used to prioritise and design engagement, but should not determine whether a stakeholder category exists.

The organization should distinguish stakeholder identification from stakeholder prioritisation. It should report the categories it engages with and can explain which identified categories it does not engage with and why. It is not required to engage with every possible stakeholder category.

Disclosure 2-29 covers stakeholder engagement undertaken as part of the organization’s ongoing activities. Engagement conducted solely for preparing a sustainability report or materiality assessment does not by itself represent the organization’s complete approach. Stakeholder engagement used to determine material topics is reported under GRI 3-1-b, while engagement used to manage a material topic is reported under GRI 3-3-f.

The purpose of engagement can include identifying actual and potential impacts, determining how to prevent or mitigate negative impacts, informing decisions, evaluating actions and supporting the exercise of stakeholder rights. Engagement can itself be a right, as in freedom of association and collective bargaining.

Meaningful stakeholder engagement is two-way, conducted in good faith by participants on both sides, responsive and ongoing. It is often most meaningful when conducted before decisions or actions that could affect stakeholders. One-way communication can form part of the engagement approach but does not by itself demonstrate meaningful engagement.

The organization can describe the type and frequency of engagement for each stakeholder category and whether engagement occurs directly or through credible representatives, proxy organizations or independent experts. Where representatives are used, the organization should explain why and assess whether they have an appropriate mandate and represent affected groups inclusively.

The organization can also explain whether engagement takes place at organization, business-unit, site or project level and how local feedback is consolidated, escalated and used in organization-level decisions.

The organization should consider the human, financial and specialist resources allocated to engagement and the barriers that can affect participation, including language and cultural barriers, gender and power imbalances, disability, digital exclusion and divisions within stakeholder groups.

Specific approaches should be used for at-risk or vulnerable groups where ordinary engagement methods do not provide equitable access. Information should be understandable, accessible and provided through appropriate channels.

The organization should explain how stakeholder feedback is recorded, integrated into decision-making and used to improve activities, policies or processes. It should also explain how stakeholders are informed about the organization’s response and how their feedback influenced decisions. Stakeholder feedback does not have to result in the requested decision, but it should be considered genuinely and a response should be provided where appropriate.

Stakeholder engagement should respect human rights, including privacy, freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and protest. Participants should not face intimidation or retaliation for expressing views or disagreeing with the organization.

The organization should also explain how it works with business partners to support meaningful stakeholder engagement and the expectations it sets for business partners to respect stakeholder human rights during engagement.

GRI 2-29 does not require a mandatory number of meetings, participants, stakeholder groups or engagement activities. Quantitative information can be provided as additional context but should not replace the required description of categories, identification, purpose and meaningful engagement.

If the organization does not have a formal stakeholder-identification or engagement approach, it should report this fact directly. Reasons for omission are permitted where required information cannot be reported. In that case, the affected requirement, applicable reason and required explanation must be provided in the GRI content index.

This LRA educational guidance supports disclosure preparation. For the exact requirements, always refer to the official GRI source.