Earning and maintaining your Social Licence to Operate - Melbourne

Co-hosted by La Trobe University

Attend one or both workshops in this international master class series with stakeholder relations expert and author, Dr. Robert Boutilier, and ACCSR’s Dr Leeora Black

$950 + GST for one workshop (10% early bird discount expires 30 days prior) for one day

$1,700 + GST for both workshops (plus 10% early bird discount expires 30 days prior)

Workshop Day 1 - June 30th 2014
Learn what your organisation needs to do to build stakeholder trust, earn community acceptance and reduce socio-political risk.

Workshop Day 2 - July 1st 2014
A how-to guide for developing a stakeholder engagement strategy that bolsters your Social Licence to Operate.

The ‘social licence to operate’ began as a metaphor to bring attention to the need for companies to earn acceptance from their host communities. Today, it is a necessary management framework for complex times.

A social licence strategy is essentially a stakeholder engagement strategy for navigating complex socio-political environments. Effective stakeholder engagement builds reputation, fosters a willingness to collaborate amongst different groups and provides innovative solutions to challenges and product or service development. High quality stakeholder relationships make business easier.

The social licence to operate is about getting and keeping access to valuable business resources like markets, financing, talent, raw materials, infrastructure sites, and legal permits by winning acceptance and approval from communities.

This two-day international workshop will provide participants with the framework, tools and case studies needed to create a foundation for truly sustainable community development.

Day 2: Earning and maintaining your social licence to operate workshop objectives

You will learn:

• The evolution of social licence to operate from metaphor to management approach
• The social licence management framework
• The relationship between effective stakeholder engagement and earning your social licence to operate
• Measuring and managing your social licence to operate
• Tactics and strategies for building your social licence
• Good (and bad) practice case studies from industry
• Relationship between social licence and international frameworks for corporate responsibility

Outcomes

This interactive workshop will provide you with practical tools to:

• Develop engagement strategies based on your stakeholder network and clusters of support, opposition or collaboration
• Prioritise your stakeholders according to risk and influence
• Make decisions about investing in strategic issues to mitigate risk, build reputation and foster social capital

Understand the connection between issues management and stakeholder engagement to drive productive and enduring relationships that translate into sustainable community development.

About the facilitators

Dr. Robert Boutilier is a researcher, author, and consultant. He is president of Boutilier and Associates, a social research consultancy based in Canada and Mexico (www.stakeholder360.com). He is an Associate of the Centre for Sustainable Community Development at Simon Fraser University, and the Executive Director of the Atzingo Institute for Stakeholder Network Studies.

Robert’s current work involves the application of concepts like social capital and the social licence to operate to stakeholder relations, community development, and socio-political risk assessment. In order to disseminate his discoveries and innovations in socio-political risk assessment and stakeholder strategy to practitioners in the field, he has conducted seminars and workshops in English and Spanish on four continents, has published scholarly journal articles, and has written two books (Stakeholder Politics, Stanford University Press, 2009; A Stakeholder Approach to Issues Management, Business Experts Press, 2011).

Dr. Leeora Black is one of Australia’s foremost experts in the application of the social licence to resolve conflict between companies and communities. Her book on the subject, The Social Licence to Operate: Your Management Framework for Complex Times, was published in 2013. She has worked with companies throughout Australia to develop stakeholder strategies that earn a social licence and contribute to sustainable development, notably in the resources and extractives, infrastructure and utilities industries. Leeora brings decades of experience in managing stakeholder and community relations and now brings the best of those experiences into this two-day master class on the social licence to operate.