How to conduct stakeholder mapping

What is stakeholder mapping?

Essentially, stakeholder mapping is determining your audience. It is the collection, organisation and categorisation of stakeholders relevant to your research project.

Who are stakeholders?

Stakeholders are any individual, group or organisation who has:

• The power to change things in your field or
• The interest/desire to change things in the same direction as you or
• The ability to influence powerful people in your field

A rough guide to the hierarchy of influence over policy is outlined in the diagram below. The Government, key Ministers and No. 10 are included at the top as they, arguably, have the most direct influence on legislation and policy. Oher bodies, stakeholders and processes are included lower down the pyramid as they have less formal influence. This pyramid is not exhaustive, but it may help give a rough sense of the political landscape.

The people at the bottom of the pyramid (thinktanks, All Party Parliamentary Groups, journalists) are more numerous and more likely have time to follow passions. However, they may have less power to make change. The people at the top might have the most power, but will be busier, harder to contact and less flexible in their public opinions. We recommend creating a few advocates or champions of your research at each level, starting at the bottom. One lower down contact can often open doors to those higher up, so a little bit of strategy can go a long way in getting your foot in the door.

How to identify stakeholders

The following organisations could hold stakeholders, many of which can be identified from an internet search! Many have a ‘contact us’ page on their websites, providing you with an email address as a starting point.

• Charities and advocacy groups
• NGOs
• MPs (you can find interested MPs based on who belongs to a relevant All Party Parliamentary Group)
• Private organisations
• Thinktanks
• Cultural institutions
• Professional networks
• Academics
• Research institutions
• Scival is also a really useful tool for identifying who from a policy background has used your research previously. Look yourself up on Scival to see where your research has been cited in policy documents. Similarly, look over your Pure profile to remind yourself of who you have worked with previously.

How to map and track stakeholders

*Please be aware of GDPR and security when storing sensitive data*

To start, you may wish to create a long list of people who are relevant to your research- ‘stakeholders'. Stakeholder mapping helps you to understand and strategise what to do with that list of stakeholders: how to communicate with them, work with them, and maximise your time and resources.  

Stakeholder mapper and tracker tool

The CoSS Public Affairs team have created a ‘Stakeholder Mapper and Tracker’ tool. Please email the team - coss-communications@contacts.bham.ac.uk - to request a copy of the tool.

Guide to the tool

The Mapper tab allows you to quantify the relative interest and power of your stakeholders, quickly visualising your stakeholders’ importance to you.

Rate your stakeholders’ power and interest out of ten in each column of the table and see where they land on the chart.

Power

‘Power’ is their ability to enact the change you want them to make. There is no objective way of rating your stakeholders’ power, use your knowledge and experience to judge it. You can also consider this through a relative lens (the Minister for Education/ Prime Minister has 10 in terms of ‘power’, a backbench MP has maybe 7 out of 10 in ‘power’).

Interest

‘Interest’ is the interest a stakeholder has in seeing the changes you want to make enacted. Often charities rate highly in this category, but often lower in power. An MP who belongs to a party that is openly against your idea will rate low in this category, despite having a greater rating in ‘power’.

Once a stakeholder has a rating in power and interest inputted into the table on the spreadsheet, their dot will appear on the graph.

Those above the green line should receive the highest treatment- invites to events, regular updates, asked to be part of decision making, a role in co-creation, etc. Those below should receive descending amounts of time and attention, according to your team's resources. How each category of stakeholder is treated is your you to decide, similarly, you can move the coloured lines to suit your resources and activity. The Mapper uses a power-interest grid as this is designed with a focus on improving stakeholder engagement and communication, the first stage of collecting and managing stakeholders.

Broadly, a stakeholder map allows you to identify how stakeholders will receive a certain category of treatment from you:

1. Informing: the lowest level of engagement. You just expect to create a relationship where you and the stakeholder share information between you.
2. Consulting: the middle level of engagement. You should be sharing information, ideas and supporting one another.
3. Collaborating: the top level of engagement. These are people who should have an active role in the products or outcomes of your project. They will share information, ideas, support, and will play an active, necessary role in achieving your aims

The Tracker collates all the important information about getting in touch with your stakeholders and records your activity with them, tracking the relationship. This is more about stakeholder management than mapping. You should record meetings, actions you or your stakeholder have taken as a result of the meetings, what communications have been sent to them (newsletters/updates, requests for support, invitations). This resource can be especially useful if you are working in a team to share workload and co-ordinate a team’s activities.

After mapping

Stakeholder mapping is never really over - your stakeholder list will likely grow and some stakeholders may change jobs, lose or gain interest, lose or gain power, and will thus need to be re-evaluated by you.

Similarly, tracking stakeholder communication/ the relationship as a whole should also be ongoing. The more up-to-date these records are, the more useful they are as a resource. Recording, evaluating, and learning from successes and mistakes is probably something you do as part of your professional development, and a stakeholder tracker can be a tool in that reflection. Similarly, it can help you to keep records for impact case studies.

Useful links

• More on stakeholder mapping from Miro.
• Scival records all citations in policy documents from countries around the world. Search for yourself or those who do similar research.
• UPEN (Universities Policy Engagement Network). A network for people in public affairs roles and academics to share opportunities for engagement and share best practice.
• KEU (Knowledge Exchange Unit) is parliament’s group for connecting parliament to expertise.
• POST (Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology) regularly ask academics and experts to summarise or write ‘introductions to..’ on all topics, not just science and technology.
• Current areas of research interest for government
• Hansard- a record of everything said in the UK Houses of Parliament- search a few key terms to understand who is talking about your subject.

Contact

The team is happy to advise on stakeholder mapping and any other policy engagement queries you may have.

Dedicated CoSS team: coss-communications@contacts.bham.ac.uk