Using stakeholder dialogue to guide future strategy

Challenge

As sustainability management demands that businesses adjusts to evolving issues and meet changing expectations, it is becoming increasingly challenging for organisations to develop long-term strategies that appeal to all stakeholders. Wanting to better understand the issues most relevant to them, global drinks company Diageo enlisted Corporate Citizenship (an SLR company) to provide vital insights on stakeholder expectations and map them to Diageo’s sustainability efforts.

Solution

Corporate Citizenship ran a Diageo sustainability workshop to identify stakeholders for different regions and map the extent of existing stakeholder dialogue. We then recruited global opinion formers to represent each stakeholder viewpoint and conducted in-depth interviews on the relative importance of different issues for Diageo. From this analysis we identified gaps in Diageo’s existing CR strategy, as well as emerging issues that could be addressed to establish a leadership position in sustainability.

Impact

The results of this project helped Diageo to develop a new, long-term, sustainability strategy, gain insight into key emerging issues and increase employee engagement.