Originally published 20 December 2005. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
Few terms cause more confusion than the simple words – public engagement.
Used very generally, it refers to all aspects of the relationship between Public bodies, the citizens they serve and all other stakeholders; indeed private companies and voluntary bodies also indulge in public engagement, only parts of this process are more likely found in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes.
But used more precisely, engagement is better defined as the actions and processes taken to establish a relationship so that an effective dialogue can then take place. As an analogy, think of a Company that sells expensive goods or services. It has a New Business team or equivalent whose job it is to find new customers, clarify their requirements and to establish effective communications with them; so it’s really about building relationships and creating the right climate of trust and mutual respect. In due course the customer is handed over to an Account Team which manages the day-to-day relationship with its emphasis on transactions. In the world of consultation, the transactions may not be the sale of products, but the principles are the same. The quality of the dialogue is often influenced by the original engagement process.
Much of the work involved in securing and refining public engagement processes goes largely unnoticed. Staff who build and maintain databases of community groups and who gather information, so that Service delivery specialists and policy officers know who they should be talking to, are the unsung heroes of the Consultation process. Here in the engine-room of engagement, invitation lists are compiled, meetings organised, contact details updated and much of the records management, which is now increasingly onerous as a result of the FoIA and other legislation, takes place.
We neglect this at our peril. Whilst sophisticated stakeholder databases are likely to replace the current practice of multiple (equally inaccurate) departmental consultation lists, the mechanical tasks are accompanied by activities requiring diplomacy, tact, insight and specialist knowledge. Engaging with Hard-to-reach groups, for example, is seldom just a matter of writing a letter or even a series of phone calls. Engagement means more than just making contact; it means understanding where a particular group is coming from; what its perceptions and goals are, and above all, motivating it to want to participate in a meaningful dialogue.
How an organisation manages these tasks varies; sometimes they are embedded with the duties of people who also conduct the dialogues themselves. But, increasingly, there is a case for separating the mechanical and record-keeping duties and investing in new technology to automate as much as possible. Whichever way is selected, failures in engagement cost dearly, and there is much scope to improve.
Trigger points
- Make a list of engagement activities and clarify how they are currently undertaken – and to what standards?
- Find ways to eliminate duplicated tasks, and explore the benefits of a single stakeholder database
- Look at the 20 organisations with whom you have recently established a new relationship and ask them how well they were initially briefed ...
This is the 41st Tuesday Topic; a full list of subjects covered is available for Institute members and is a valuable resource covering so many aspects of consultation and engagement