Embed in management systems

1. Embedded commitment: The company has a policy commitment to ongoing stakeholder engagement, and embeds it in its governance, culture, and management strategy.​

Create a Tailored Engagement Plan​

2. Inclusiveness: The company listens to a full range of rights-holders across the value chain and has a process to identify legitimate representatives.
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3. A Focus on Those Most at Risk​:  The company prioritizes engaging with the rightsholders who are most likely to be harmed by its operations​, and therefore where early engagement is critical.​​

Conduct appropriate  activities

​​4. Informed Participation: The company establishes ongoing, two-way communication with affected rights holders that provides affected stakeholders with relevant critical information well in advance of key decision points.

5. Trust and Accountability: The company establishes procedures, tailored to the context, to build rights holder trust and accountability for its actions.​

Ensure follow through

6. Stakeholder-informed Action Plan: The company analyzes information obtained through affected stakeholder engagement and collaborates with rights holders to formulate an action plan.

7. Monitoring, Transparency, and Continuous Improvement​: The company establishes and maintains a transparent and stakeholder-informed monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system.​

Our Approach

financial materiality

Stakeholder Engagement Main Page > Four Pillars > ​Effectiveness Criterion 7

7. Monitoring, Transparency, and Continuous Improvement

The company establishes and maintains a transparent and stakeholder-informed monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system.

what this means

questions for portfolio companies

What to look for

for  workers

High risk situations

A company’s system for monitoring and evaluating its affected stakeholder engagement processes should include the following: 

• Tracking and monitoring “lessons learned” throughout the engagement.
  The M&E system should enable companies to identify the cause of a problem and better detect and address shortcomings in the future. Documenting “lessons learned” helps assess the effectiveness of engagement, strengthens institutional knowledge, and drives continuous improvement. The M&E system should also capture how the company responds to concerns or newly identified potential or actual impacts raised by external actors such as civil society organizations, trade unions, or affected stakeholders themselves. A company’s responsiveness—or lack thereof—is a key indicator of accountability and should be considered material by investors.
  
  To make monitoring and evaluation actionable, companies should develop Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that track both the quality and impact of stakeholder engagement over time. KPIs should reflect the intent of the engagement strategy and be tailored to the scale and risk profile of the company’s operations. Effective ones combine leading indicators—such as the timeliness of follow-up actions or stakeholder participation rates—with lagging indicators, like shifts in stakeholder trust or resolution of grievances. Companies should include both quantitative and qualitative data, co-developed where possible with affected stakeholders, to ensure relevance and credibility.[1] 
  
  
• Stakeholders’ involvement in evaluating the effectiveness of the engagement process
  Rights holders are the first to know whether implemented changes are having the intended impact therefore their involvement in M&E is necessary. The selection of rights holders to involve should be aligned with the prioritization plan developed as part of Effectiveness Criterion 3. 
  
  
• An independent third party periodically monitors and evaluates the engagement process
  The company should retain an independent third party to assess the effectiveness and inclusivity of its engagement efforts, and recommend improvements.
  
  
• Public stakeholder engagement reporting
  ​ Transparency should be more than providing a written report. Companies should consider offering additional meetings with rights holders to explain the lessons learned and confirm whether the takeaways are correct. They may also serve as a convener of stakeholders, including civil society and local government, on pressing issues.[2] Naturally rights holders want to see improvements as evidence that their input was taken seriously. Transparency addresses this by ensuring that the company acts in addressing their concerns.

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[1] “Selecting KPIs,” Ipieca, accessed June 11, 2025, https://www.ipieca.org/resources/meaningful-engagement-practitioner-guidance/section-3-measuring-meaningfulness/selecting-kpis.
[2] Shift, “Using Relationship Data to Improve Business Practices: Measuring Company-Community Relationships at a South African Mine,” March 2021, 11 https://shiftproject.org/resource/case-study-goldfields/.