NHS Education for Scotland: Stakeholder analysis

Summary

Stakeholder analysis is a way of identifying, prioritising and understanding your stakeholders.

It is an interest/influence grid with four quadrants. It enables you to plot or map stakeholders based on their level of interest (high/low) and level of influence (high/low). Where you plot a stakeholder guides the actions you should take for involving and communicating with them.

Content

You can use stakeholder analysis to:

• Identify who your stakeholders are; this is anyone who has interest in the improvement project or will be impacted by any changes.
• Use the opinions of your stakeholders to help define your improvement work at an early stage and gain their support.
• Guide the development of a communication plan for stakeholders to help them understand what the improvement work is about, to maintain and build further support for it where possible.
• Identify potential issues which could arise as the project develops, identifying ways to manage negative impacts.