Many organisations, particularly government department and agencies, and local authorities are keen to do more online engagement and are looking for guidance.

This is a big part of Engagementworks’ focus. We’re keen to see a strong and vibrant community of interest grow around engagement in general and online engagement in particular.

Here are links to some online resources that may help engagement practitioners advance their causes within their organisations.

This first document was recently published by New Zealand’s Office of the Auditor General:
http://www.oag.govt.nz/2013/social-media

This resource was created by Queensland’s Government Web Centre:
http://www.qld.gov.au/web/community-engagement/policy-guidelines/guidelines/

Online engagement is a key part of our practitioner series of workshops. We also offer a short course that focuses on this, and can customise that to meet specific needs and audiences.

We’re happy to discuss your needs and ideas. Please send us an email or give us a call!

A question we often hear is “where does community engagement sit with corporate communication?”

Corporate communication is, or should be, a sub-set of community engagement, although many organisations don’t structure or resource themselves that way. Few organisations have a community engagement division or one person tasked with leading and coordinating how that organisation engages across all of its business units or divisions.

Such a statement could be a bit of a Red Rag to corporate communicators, particularly those who have worked hard for their profession to get the recognition and resources needed to make a difference in the organisation that employs them.

A reason for us making that statement, and a starting point for this conversation, is the engagement spectrum. There are many versions of this spectrum, many people being familiar with IAP2’s five-level version or the OECD’s three-levels:

1. Information: A one-way relationship in which an organisation delivers information to communities
   
2. Consultation: A two-way relationship in which communities provide feedback on issues defined by an organisation
   
3. Active participation: A collaboration in which communities actively shape policy options, but where the organisation may retain the responsibility for final decisions.

Corporate communication is, or should be, a major player and enabler in level 1. It should also be a significant contributor to levels 2 and 3, particularly where an organisation’s brand and online engagement channels are key contributors to the engagement process.

Organisations need to be careful of how they silo activities and responsibilities. Community engagement is, or should be, a process that cuts across organisational silos. If it does it will minimise risks and surprises and help contribute to engagement that is well planned and delivered. If it doesn’t, it may create all manner of tensions, particularly those that impact badly on an organisation’s reputation and trust.

Corporate communication can be a silo, particularly where an engagement task or process is owned elsewhere in an organisation, such as in a policy or planning team as one example, or in an infrastructure project team as another.

Cross-functional thinking shouldn't be about belittling specialist skills, knowledge and experience associated with different tasks. Rather it should be about coordinating and empowering all of the necessary resources an organisation may have to deliver the best results. This is what engagement needs to do to be able to succeed. But a challenge can be where an organisation’s engagement champion is located, particularly in terms of their seniority and influence, sometimes referred to as the corporate food chain.

This is why engagement within an organisation is just as important part of the planning and delivery process as the external components. It’s also why senior management teams need to have community engagement constantly on their radar.

Professional corporate communicators may disagree with our belief that they are just a component of engagement planning, rather than engagement planning being a part of communication. Our comments section is always open. Let’s discuss!

There’s more to effectively socialising with key stakeholders than buying them a coffee, sending them a Christmas card or taking them to the rugby. If only effective stakeholder engagement was that straightforward!

Stakeholders are any organisation’s most important asset. They include customers, suppliers, investors, shareholders, members, voters, regulators, law makers, opinion formers and others, not least of which are that organisation’s own employees. All of these people can have a significant impact on an organisation’s success or otherwise.

Managing constructive relationships with each of these groups – remembering that individuals can be in more than one category – is a vital part of what organisations need to do in their marketing/ investor relations/ communication/ member services/ community engagement spaces.

The fact that organisations often have many ways of interacting with the same stakeholders – different touch points in different parts of the organisation, each with their own agendas – is a realisation that should start warning bells pinging. An organisation concerned about how it connects externally may be diverse and complex. So too may be some of its stakeholder organisations. Indeed it’s possible that one stakeholder organisation could be in all of the categories in a contacts database, and in regular contact with all of an organisation’s business units about quite different issues.

Any strategy focused on stakeholder engagement needs to be underpinned by some simple principles that all parts of the organisation share and adhere to. Many organisations already do this for managing things like their finances, human resources and brand. Engagement is no different. Consistently applied internal engagement processes are key.

All parts of an organisation that have relationships with stakeholders need to talk with each other, plan together and have shared engagement principles to guide what they do and how they do it. The value that this will unlock for an organisation will be huge, and reputational risks will also able to be better managed.

A previous blog has focused on engagement principles.

Here’s an interesting link that outlines a way of building some principles and embedding those within an organisation.

And here’s another link that outlines the Six Cs of successful community engagement.

Yes, there’s value to be had from socialising with stakeholders. But like other things in life, success comes from having a clear and shared vision for “success” and a Cunning Plan to get there.

Engagementworks is good at identifying an organisation’s needs, prioritising those and outlining ways those needs can be met, being mindful of the resources that any organisation has to invest. If you’d like to talk with us about this, please contact Don or Brett.

Making a strong investment in planning a project or an event is a good way of ensuring a successful outcome. Project managers are strong advocates for this. So too are marketing managers, communication managers, engagement managers and financial controllers.

So why then do so many projects stumble, fail to meet deadlines, incur additional costs and alienate customers, stakeholders or affected communities?

One reason is that some organisations are not good when it comes to talking to themselves. This includes the relationships and services that a project or event leader needs from other parts of their business and giving good advance notice of what’s needed and what that may entail. Many people probably have at least one example of where their organisation planned to fail by failing to plan.

“We’re launching this new thing on Monday. We’ll need a website for it. And a launch event. And a news release. And we should also let people know what these changes will mean for them. We should be doing something on social media.”

Such announcements invariably cause a measure of panic and confusion amongst those who have just been roped in to help, which is bad enough. Worse is that short timeframes mean that people often focus on meeting the deadline, rather than the substance of what it is they’re being asked to do.

Most larger organisations are multi-faceted. They comprise of teams to whom functional tasks are assigned – like finance, HR, marketing, infrastructure and so on. As organisations get bigger, so too can the gaps between organisational groups, that may even be in different buildings or different towns. Sometimes the only reason these teams talk to each other is because they have to – something urgent has arisen that they need to jointly focus on. Maybe something like a crisis that’s happened because they hadn’t been talking with each other.

Line management structures are not good at many things, particularly enabling conversations to happen across an organisation. Given that the real engine room for what an organisation thinks and delivers happens at level 3, then it’s not hard to see the impact that a reliance on line management for internal communication can have.

Peer group circles for learning and support are highly effective ways of communicating and engaging across organisations. While some circles can form naturally around things like occupations, these shouldn’t be left to chance. There needs to be a strong commitment from senior leaders to the value of these circles to coordinating and delivering key events and tasks. These circles need to have a clear charter and mandate. There needs to be an overarching strategy that they exist to support and even lead.

Circle participants should be appointed and time allowed for them to participate in the circle’s activities. They should be required to actively engage with their home team or group as well as with the circle they’ve been appointed.

Internally engaging provides a great means of building strong teams across an organisation, as well as supporting a culture of innovation and no surprises.

At Engagementworks internal communication is close to our hearts. We’ve both worked for large organisations and are familiar with international good practice. Our courses all touch on the need for good internal engagement, and we’re able to customise these to meet specific requirements. We’re happy to discuss things on a no-commitment basis, so please give us a call or send us an email.