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When is engagement necessary?

Before proceeding with any form of community engagement, you must first determine whether or not engagement is the right option. Consider the following questions and tips:

Key questions Tips for good management
  • Are there opportunities for communities to influence decision-making?
  • Is engagement necessary?
  • How confident are managers that they know what the issues are for the community? Is this confidence based on previous recent engagement or some other reliable source?
  • What level of engagement is necessary and/or desirable?
  • What resources exist to support the engagement?
  • How can the community itself have input into what engagement is appropriate?
  • When will there be enough engagement?
  • What transition strategy would suit a particular

Consider the situation from the community side:

  • What interest would people have, what is being asked of them?
  • What information do they need?
  • Who might you talk to within the community to check community feeling?
  • Does the agency have the time, motivation and resources to fully complete an engagement exercise (no matter how small)?
  • Managers need to consider on what issues, or in what circumstances, community members want to be engaged, and what advice should be provided to executive managers or ministers about acting with or without community contact. This advice needs to weigh up the most appropriate level of engagement for different communities. It also needs to judge when it is not appropriate to engage community members.
  • How do government agencies ask communities how they want to be engaged? Engagement needs to be well planned; an element of that is to have input from communities on what processes for engagement suit them best.
  • When is there enough community engagement? Managers need to consider when an appropriate level of engagement has been reached or attempted. Before engagement starts, they need to judge an appropriate transition and exit strategy.

Capacity to engage

Community engagement requires considerable capacity and skill, both for agencies and for communities. Community members often need to manage expectations, represent others, cope with engagement requests and opportunities from many different sources, provide input with few resources, and manage emotion, power and self-interest. Agencies need to develop the skills, attitudes and resources to coordinate and manage relationships with communities. They also need to be ready, interested and informed.

Agencies need to consider what capacity exists in the community in relation to the engagement topic and process. It is sometimes helpful to deliver capacity-building strategies as part of an engagement process, to achieve more useful and reliable outcomes for both government and community. Agencies also need to develop in their officers the skills, attitudes and resources to coordinate and manage relationships with communities.

Community engagement activities which reach out to and engage those who do not usually have a voice in community matters have the potential to disrupt community dynamics. It is important that public servants are able to recognise and respond appropriately to these changing dynamics in order to achieve community engagement and community-building outcomes.

Key questions Tips for good management
  • What are community and stakeholder expectations?
  • How do people prefer to be involved?
  • What are the engagement skills of staff and how can they be supported?
  • What potential conflicts are there?
  • What existing capacity do communities have and how can this be recognised?
  • Consider who has the best relationship with the community and work through them.
  • Consider online engagement and other processes that allow people to engage at a time and place that suits them.
  • Consider how engagement activities can be social and suited to families.
  • Consider how you can incorporate engagement action in natural situations where community members gather.
  • Support, debrief and mentor staff.

Some key issues in developing the capacity to engage follow:

  • Government often faces a strong history of dissatisfaction with engagement in many communities. Community engagement often involves criticism, anger and lobbying. It requires considerable managerial skill to appreciate this perspective, validate concerns, and understand community expectations.
  • Consider the precursors for effective engagement in particular situations – what protocols, attitudes, organisation, and relationships exist? What key individuals might need to be contacted initially? What expectations would the community have?
  • Understand and appreciate the existing capacity, networks and skills of communities.
  • Community engagement involves more than listening better. Engagement can be seen simply as a better means for communities to tell government what their needs are and what government should do. However, engagement can also be a dialogue incorporating not only what government (and communities) can do alone, but also how they can add value for each other.
  • Managers need to consider the quality of engagement. It is easy to think that the more community people are involved, the better, or that an open meeting draws a representative sample of people. This is rarely the case, and community engagement activities need to consider community dynamics, incentives and barriers to diverse participation, and insights in community feedback.
  • Staff often need support to develop the skills, knowledge and confidence to conduct community engagement.
  • Engagement often involves conflict, and conflict needs to be well managed.
  • Engagement is best if it is enjoyable and social, but at the same time there is the legitimacy to make decisions.
  • Online engagement enables community members to engage at times and from venues which are convenient to them.