Corporate Community Engagement
Channel Research can provide corporate clients with a unique service in the area of local risk management – helping to get local relations right.
Channel Research undertakes social impact assessments and evaluates community relation programmes for corporate clients. The advice we provide, whether as part of an impact assessment, evaluation or ongoing consultancy on a programme, enables a company to mitigate the risks associated with operating in areas of political or social instability and maintain a positive relationship with the local community.
Our services help companies to meet the increasing demands for accountability by external stakeholders, such as lenders who are signatories to the Equator Principles, and voluntary and mandatory corporate reporting requirements including those of Global Reporting Initiative or annual report and accounts under the EU Accounts Modernisation Directive.
Increasingly companies in the extractive and engineering sectors find themselves operating in conflict-prone environments where the risk of poor external relations is very real. This can lead to a project being unsustainable through the loss of the ‘social license to operate’ or even the withdrawal of the government license. There is also the potential risk to a company’s reputation and share price as the recent cases of Shell in Russia and Asia Energy in Bangladesh have demonstrated.
To enable companies to reduce this risk, Channel Research has adapted the mapping and evaluation tools that we developed for humanitarian aid, to ensure conflict sensitivity is part of a project’s initial social impact assessment and its community relations programme. Channel is able to also draw on the methods it uses for Non-Governmental Organisations (such as Results Based Management and Public Consultation). Our experience in evaluating and providing consultancy services for clients, such as the World Bank, also means that we can advise clients how to enable their community programmes to make a positive contribution to the sustainable development of an area.
Channel Research cooperates with another risk consultancy in running a course for frontline personnel on community relations management and reporting. For further information please visit our training site
For further information, please contact us on +32 2 633 65 29