Case Study: Building a unified approach to community engagement

Over the past year, I have worked with a leading provider of integrated infrastructure services driven by a mission to enable communities to thrive.

Despite a strong purpose-driven culture, this organisation faced a common challenge among large enterprises: community engagement efforts were fragmented across business units, resulting in siloed initiatives and inconsistent reporting.

While some teams excelled in local community work, others struggled due to the absence of an overarching strategy and clear processes. This lack of coordination risked diluting the impact of the organisation’s community contributions and made it more difficult to meet and report on the growing expectations from employees, customers, shareholders, and the wider community for visible, strategic social impact.

It became clear that, although many employees were already deeply engaged in community work, the absence of a central framework limited the organisation’s ability to amplify successes, measure outcomes, and tell a cohesive story.

Employees, customers, and stakeholders all valued the organisation’s community involvement, but without shared processes, clear criteria and effective storytelling, much of the potential impact and associated corporate benefit was missed. Leadership identified an opportunity to not only streamline and scale these efforts, but also to demonstrate the organisation’s commitment to social and community causes as a competitive differentiator in tenders and stakeholder relationships.

To address these challenges, the organisation partnered with Forza to develop a comprehensive community engagement framework. This included establishing a governance structure, identifying a dedicated committee was needed to drive the work forward, as well as introducing centralised processes, reporting tools, policies and a draft communication plan. 

The work aimed to break down silos, ensure consistency and provide employees with the resources and clarity needed to engage confidently and effectively in community initiatives.

Within three months, the framework and processes were developed, with agreement for rollout across the first business unit. As a result, the organisation is now in a much stronger position to leverage its community investment and activities, ensuring greater impact and visibility for its social contributions.

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