Ask yourself: Do I need to be engaging?

Over the past few years, I have seen a trend: engagement for engagement’s sake, or, as I like to call it, fake engagement. Across many government departments, engagement is required for every significant policy or program, for each grant, or it is driven by executives who want to say they have engaged with the community.

Progressively, I have seen smart, capable communication professionals add a “survey” or “stakeholder workshop” to their plans even though they know it’s not the right approach. We are being bullied into engaging even when we know it’s a terrible idea—trust me, I get it. We end up in this position as well!

Before planning engagement, we need to think about four things: purpose, people, time and place. This is what tells us if there is engagement potential.

Engagement potential is the likelihood that a particular initiative or activity will effectively capture the intel, participation, and commitment from stakeholders or the community. It is whether it is useful and purposeful, not just a way to tick a box.

Tip: There is a free tool to help you assess your engagement potential at the end of this blog!

Purpose

Before jumping into community engagement, it’s important to get clear on why you’re doing it. Without a solid purpose, you risk wasting time—yours and the community’s—on conversations that don’t lead anywhere. Defining your purpose helps keep things focused and meaningful.

Think about:

What do we really need to know?
Where can participants influence?
Is there time within the project to engage effectively?
Is your organization open to listening and making changes?

People

The next thing to consider is who you need to engage with. It’s time we stopped asking the people who always engage with us and expect that they represent the whole community (read my previous rant about this).

We need a diversity of voices to really understand what we need to be implementing in government.

Without thinking about the WHO, the other risk is always inviting the obvious people. These are typically the people in this highly engaged environment, they are being over-engaged. Asked to participate in everything from everyone.

A peak body or community group does not necessarily mean it is representative. If you asked most people in Canberra, they would be unaware they have a community council that is “representing their interests”. These groups don’t necessarily go out and ask the local community what is important to them. It is about what is important to the individuals that have chosen to engage in this way.

Think about:

Who always engages in this space? What voices have we not heard from?
Do you need to have peak bodies, industry groups or community groups? Do they need to be in the same space as individuals?
Who will really be impacted by the policy?
What information do you already have about the audience?

Place

We are often asked to host stakeholder or community engagements in government office buildings or facilities to save money. This works well for our clients, but making builders park their trailers in the middle of the city on a workday really limits participation.

We have run webinars on WebEx because the department used that, but no one else could access it easily. We have held engagement sessions in a park and had no one show up. We have learnt through experience that if you want to talk to people, go to the people. Don’t expect them to come to you.

Think about:

Where do they gather? Where are they already going to be?
Who do they trust, and do they have facilities you can use?
What facilities can make it easy for them to attend? Parking, accessibility, location.
Is it suitable for the type of activity you are running? 

Timing

Last year, we were asked to deliver stakeholder workshops with teachers in the last week of school because a budget paper had to be written in January… I know.

Timing isn’t just about when you need it to happen. If you really want genuine engagement or even just get people to turn up, you need to think about whether the time works for the people you want to listen to. Squeezing something in at the time that suits you will aggravate the people who do show up, or you will get the same voices in the room every time.

When I worked in government, we were often asked to hold webinars for farmers in the middle of the day because that’s when the presenter was available. We had to point out that not many people would turn up if they had to get off their tractors or out of the shed to come to a government information session.

Think about:

What else is happening in the participant’s world?
What time of day works for them? Do they work? Do they have to pick up kids from school?
When do they have the headspace and capacity to really engage?
Who else is engaging now? Can we coordinate rather than duplicate?

Engagement potential

Let’s say you have a clear purpose and can get the timing, place and people right. The last question is, is this even engagement?

This is the basics of engagement. The fundamentals of the IAP2 public participation spectrum. Are you really consulting? Or do you just need to communicate?

There is nothing wrong with informing, even if all of a sudden, it feels like a dirty word. “We can’t just communicate, we need to engage”. I challenge you to stop and ask do we really?

FREE TOOL

We know having the conversation to say no can be difficult, so we want to help by providing an engagement potential tool that you can take to meetings to ask good questions or do a self-assessment. It is your sense check about whether this engagement is a good idea (or not!).

We would love to hear how you have used the tool and if it has helped you be more effective at engagement! Share on our social pages.