"Enhancing Stakeholder Engagement: Analysis and Strategic Planning for [Your Organisation's Name]" Report PROJ5005

Reflective Report Guide

Referencing: Harvard (provide in text citation and reference list)

The task

In your future employment, you may be required to investigate a stakeholder engagement issue, apply your professional expertise by analysing the situation, and then report to your organisations leadership, or a client, the facts you found and what you conclude should be done.

This assessment item is the opportunity for you as a professional to both demonstrate your stakeholder thinking management skills and to produce a business standard report. You are to use a real organisation (ideally, the one you used for Assessment Task 1) to go deeper into the stakeholder management techniques you consider appropriate for the organisation (or modifications to what is already used). You should also outline a Stakeholder Engagement Plan that is appropriate for the organisation, or a particular project it is undertaking. (If such an SEP already exists, identify what you believe will be the key components.)

The first sections of this Report should be written as a business-style report. Use headings and subheadings (see the Template, p4 of this guide) and write essay-style as much as possible (i.e., Avoid using bullet points unless there are several short phrases or ideas that need to be listed).

You are also required to reflect, in some depth, on what you have learnt in the unit that is personally valuable to you, and how you might apply that learning in the future. (Be as specific as possible). Information on reflection and reflective writing is provided on the next page. Note that this section (7.0) will follow the business report, as it is not normally required in such reports. However, as this is your last Assessment Task for PROJ5005, it is beneficial for you to write these reflections (and how well you do this will be assessed in the second marking criterion (see p5).

Reflection and reflective writing

Reflection is:

• a form of personal response to experiences, situations, events or new information.

• a 'processing' phase where thinking and learning take place.

There is neither a right nor a wrong way of reflective thinking, there are just questions to explore, and learning at both the professional level and personal level are achieved.

Doing this involves revisiting your prior experience and knowledge of the topic you are exploring. It also involves considering how and why you think the way you do. The examination of your beliefs, values, attitudes and assumptions forms the foundation of your understanding.

Reflective thinking demands that you recognize that you bring valuable knowledge to every experience. It helps you therefore to recognize and clarify the important connections between what you already know and what you are learning. It is a way of helping you to become an active, aware and critical learner.

This assessment is an opportunity for you to reflect on your progress through the Unit, namely:

• what have you learnt about stakeholder engagement?

• where you might have difficulties in stakeholder engagement going forward?

• what steps can or will you take to be better at stakeholder engagement?

Reflective writing is a personal style of writing. Its purpose is to help you to understand your course material better, to help you create links between your past and present learning and clarify the relationship between theory and practice.

Greater detail as to the concept of Reflective Writing is provided in the helpful SCU Quick Guide Reflective writing https://www.scu.edu.au/media/scueduau/staff/teaching-and-learning/ctl-document-downloads/as-quick-guides/reflective_writing.pdf

Approach to this assessment task

In writing your paper, consider:

• Your thoughts set out in Assessment Task 1: Short Report, and the feedback on this report.

• Your learnings from participating in the Forum discussions

• Additional academic and industry sources of information, beyond what you provided for Assessment Task 1.

Format of your submission

• The report should be structured so as to communicate your understanding of stakeholder engagement theory or principles and how they can be applied to a real organisation.

• Use the template provided (next page). The Report is to be written with the headings indicated in the template and then subheadings as you see fit. Your Conclusions section is to contain very clear, specific recommendations. This is a valuable skill because, as a professional, you will be required to form conclusions on an issue and make viable, precise recommendations. Your reputation depends on this.

• The Short Report must be written and uploaded as a Word Document. It should be typed in Times New Roman, Font size 12 with 1.5 spacing.

Title-page

• The title-page is the front page that all authors put on the reports and submissions that they write as professionals. Perhaps an image that conveys the subject area.

• Contains a Title e.g. Stakeholder engagement in agricultural water reform

• Contains the name of the author i.e. you.

Header & Footer

• The Header must contain your name and your student number

• The Footer must contain the Unit number (i.e. PROJ5005) and the page number. Page numbering commences after the Title-page.

Reflective Report Template

1.0 Title

2.0 Introduction (brief)

• Background

• Brief Description of organization

• Major activity/s involving stakeholders

• Key stakeholder challenge/s

• Stakeholder management techniques (Specify 3 or 4 techniques you consider appropriate for the organisation, justify why you have chosen each technique and critique the strengths and weaknesses of that technique.)

• Technique 1 4.2 Technique 2 etc.

• The stakeholder engagement plan (Outline the key features here, put a more comprehensive SEP in an Appendix). This section should lead into your conclusions and recommendations to the organisation.

• Key features

• Maturity model for a key service

6.0 Conclusions and recommendations

• Reflections on your learnings

• What have you learnt personally about stakeholder engagement?

• In what circumstances might you have difficulties in stakeholder engagement in your career?

• What steps will you take to be better at stakeholder engagement?

8.0 References

9.0 Appendices