CSHR announces an upcoming toolkit on meaningful stakeholder engagement
Authors -
Lucy Amis
Coming soon!
This toolkit is an outcome of the collaboration between CSHR and ThinkSport as part of the Innovation Booster - Sport & Physical Activity (powered by Innosuisse).
Are you a sports organisation or a sporting event host/organiser looking to align with international human rights standards as you improve your strategy, conduct due diligence, address challenges, or develop your activities?
If so, you should be engaging stakeholders in the process. Ensuring the process is responsible and effective can benefit your organisation. It can help build trusted and mutually beneficial relationships with stakeholders, build the legacy of sport and sporting events, and mitigate risks of organisations.
As you consider conducting stakeholder engagement, you probably have plenty of questions: How can we benefit from such a process? Who are our key stakeholders ? How can we ensure meaningful interactions? Sometimes, you may need to start from the beginning: What is stakeholder engagement?
To guide you in this process, CSHR is building a digital toolkit to help you transform the way you connect with your key stakeholders - those (potentially) affected by your day-to-day sport activities and events - in a way that is accessible, meaningful, and aligned with human rights standards.
This toolkit will be released by the end of the year. Together, let's create more meaningful, impactful connections in sport.
Why this toolkit?
This project started in October 2023 with an ideation session bringing together participants from civil society, sport organisations and sponsors to reflect on challenges at the intersection of sport, human rights and leadership. Participants pinpointed the need to develop a sport-specific tool to meaningfully engage with (potentially) affected stakeholders, in line with human rights standards, societal expectations, emerging good practice and regulatory demands.
Who is the toolkit designed for?
The toolkit is primarily designed for sports organisations - from global associations to local clubs - and event hosts/organisers. It will be most useful to practitioners operating the process, but should also be explored by leaders, who have a responsibility to integrate meaningful engagement and human rights as part of a positive culture change in their organisation. This tool may also inspire engagement from and good practice among other actors across sport, including civil society, sponsors, suppliers, and more.
How can this toolkit support you?
It is aimed to help you adopt a more responsible, meaningful, people-centric and trauma-informed approach as you start or improve your engagement with (potentially) affected and other relevant stakeholders. Built on insights from sport practitioners and experts, wider private sector, affected persons’ representatives and people with lived experience, this toolkit promotes a collaborative, dialogue-based and accountable model of engagement. It should be used as a follow-up to CSHR’s existing tools, including its Human Rights Playbook series (see below in related articles).
What will this toolkit feature?
This toolkit will help you gradually understand the process of engagement, starting with background information on its role and benefits, followed by clear recommendations on what constitutes robust and meaningful engagement. Further, its step-by-step guidance provides a comprehensive framework to help you navigate the nuances of stakeholder engagement. It also signposts resources on how to engage with specific affected groups and manage situations that require heightened sensitivity and specialist input.
When should you use this toolkit?
You will be able to use the toolkit regardless of your level of experience engaging stakeholders. Organisations initiate stakeholder engagement at different times for a variety of purposes. The toolkit can be useful in different scenarios, including when adopting/revising regulations, policies, governance or strategy or building a human rights policy. It can also be used when developing events’ bidding requirements or leading operational planning for sport events. Similarly, conducting risk or human rights impact assessments, developing remedy and grievance mechanisms or conducting risk assessments for investments can benefit from meaningful stakeholder engagement. Overall, meaningful engagement can help you in adopting positive leadership practices.
This is just the start. On condition of securing further resources, CSHR aims to build on the generic digital toolkit with a suite of supplements tailored to support stakeholder engagement with specific stakeholders’ groups, including athletes, survivors of abuse, fans, workers, volunteers, human rights defenders, and others with intersectional or overlapping identities.
Have a look below for a preview of our toolkit!
Stakeholder engagement is an ongoing process to meaningfully, safely and respectfully consult with and involve those potentially or actually impacted by a sport or commercial entity’s activities in the decisions and investigations that affect them, and having their views taken into account.
Benefits of meaningful stakeholder engagement
Initiating stakeholder engagement that is meaningful, responsible and aligned with international human rights standards can help your organisation:
- Build stakeholders' trust and commitment
- Conduct high quality human rights impact assessments
- Address risks through innovative solutions and collective intelligence
- Promote transparency, accountability and access to remedy
- Mitigate financial, legal, and reputational risks to your organisation
- Enhance risk profile and access to capital, build legacy
Practical tips based on key principles
- Create a safe, independent and neutral space for engagement
- Ensure engagement is based on two-way interactions and mutually beneficial, nuanced and realistic dialogue
- Ensure your engagement is ongoing and responsive, even during short-term activities
- Listen to stakeholders’ interests, experiences and concerns, including when planning your engagement
- Build trusted, long-term, and respectful relationships with stakeholders
- Operate with sincerity and in good faith, and guarantee transparent communication
- Adopt an affected people-centric approach, prioritising vulnerable/under-represented stakeholders, or work with their legitimate representatives
- Adopt a trauma-centred approach grounded in human rights law and ensure stakeholders are treated respectfully and not further harmed by the process
- Ensure your purpose is to create positive, lasting change and social impact
- See stakeholders with their different needs, background and perspectives; recognise and address power imbalances
The toolkit will be published by the end of the year on CSHR’s website. Stay tuned for more information.
Would you like more information on this toolkit? Get in touch!
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