AccountAbility has been at the forefront of developing tools and standards for stakeholder engagement for many years. Originally published as an exposure draft in 2005, the AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard (AA1000SES) was the first international standard for stakeholder engagement to be published. The AA1000SES exposure draft is a principles-based, open-source framework for quality stakeholder engagement.

In early 2009, a substantial revision process began to develop a more comprehensive and robust standard and now, after several months of multi-stakeholder input, the first draft of the standard has been uploaded onto the revision wiki platform for public review.  Stakeholder engagement is increasingly seen as being core practice to any successful organisation. The aim of the process is to capture and enhance current practice - there is a need to move the AA1000SES beyond a CSR process and make it more strategically relevant for engagements across businesses, governments and other organisations such as civil society.

The second edition AA1000SES is being developed on a wiki platform in order for the process to be international, accessible and transparent. The collaborative drafting process let’s us know who has had the chance to participate and what changes have been made. Online revision makes it possible for thousands of individuals and organisations to provide their input without facing access barriers such as the cost of travel to meetings and the difficulty of cutting through dominant voices. The final standard will be published in late 2010.

Register now on the wiki site www.accountabilityaa1000wiki.net to input to the revision and to follow developments.

Our opinion:

Stakeholder Engagement is becoming a central aspect of Sustainability departments within organisations. This AA1000SES is a very important standard to help organisations to get a better feel of what he stakeholders want and require. This revision will make this standards even more relevant and useful for organisations to use.