Done badly, consultation and engagement can fall into the trap of disproportionately involving those who are keenly motivated or find it easy to engage.
At best this is unrepresentative and at worst it can lead to poor decisions and the squandering of resources. The Consultation Institute (TCI) rules of good practice focus on how you can avoid these traps.
This highlights two challenges. Firstly, the people most energised to attend engagement events are not necessarily those who speak for the wider spread of opinion, but rather those with the strongest views one way or the other.
Secondly, if you only speak to those already engaged, the chances are that you will not hear from those who are time-poor or money-poor. Likewise, those with lower levels of education, social networks, language skills, or confidence in their ability to change things. The loudest voices are sometimes those with the least to lose from the choices at stake.
Everyone acknowledges that accessing the hardest-to-reach groups is difficult. It is not possible to guarantee that the stakeholders you speak to are 100 per cent representative or inclusive. But there are steps you can take to increase your chances.
Useful resources within New Conversations include:
- A range of tips for mapping networks
- An example from York about hearing different perspectives
- A pilot project in Hackney, about developing an inclusive identity through engagement
Use the right channels and don’t just use one
Unless you are engaging with a very specific group, it is important to have a strong presence online and offline. Make sure your efforts go beyond just providing options and find specific channels to reach specific audiences. For instance, you might try and do separate vox-pops, or home visits to a particular group, if you know they are unlikely to attend larger events.
Recruit a cross-section of residents
Use the information you have about the profile of the area to weight your attendees in terms of how representative they are of the wider community. This can be done both with council/census data (e.g. for a particular ward) and with service data (e.g. audience research that a library or children’s centre in question might have compiled). You can use quotas to make sure that the stakeholders you speak to are representative of the wider sample when it comes to faith, background, profession, disability, language needs etc. Some councils use resident panels, so that they have a representative, regularly refreshed pool to call on. Your council will probably have a huge reservoir of existing data so find it and draw on it.
Take small steps to engage the least confident
There are many practical ways of making engagement easier for those with less confidence or faith in the system. For example, always look for venues which the least likely to attend will feel comfortable in – somewhere as local, convenient and familiar as possible. Think through the small issues that might be barriers – refreshments, access, finishing times. Be clear from the outset about whether it is ok to bring other members of the family, as childcare will often be a factor.
Seek out those who know least
Work hard, during recruitment, to identify those with less prior information. Screening questions like ‘Do you run a community organisation?’ or ‘Have you stood as a councillor?’ can help reach beyond those already engaged. This will be likely to require larger incentives and a greater emphasis on convenience but will be worth it. Meanwhile, a good rule of thumb during the engagement, is to assume ‘maximum intelligence, minimum information.’ Make sure the events or surveys you run provide simple explanatory information. For example, you can provide mini-booklets with basic FAQs, so that those not already up-to-speed can have a voice.
Think about social networks
By engaging in advance with faith leaders and local influencers you can find mechanisms to reach further into communities. Individuals already prominent in the neighbourhood are more likely to be trusted, especially by less confident or aware residents. You will need to design easy ways for them to further engage with their networks, such as simple response cards or ways to text in views. Local influencers can also give a sense of existing opinion about the issues at stake. Pre-engagement of this kind can be vital in making sure you know the shape of public opinion and hear from the most disillusioned or hostile.
Be creative and work smart
Apply the principle of first going to where people are, rather than expecting them to come to you. Work in partnership with third party organisations to secure the engagement of hard to engage groups. A modest incentive to the organisation can be hugely cost effective. Designing easy ways for groups to engage their members is also important. Consider designing simple DIY engagement kits to help with this.
These steps are not exhaustive, and they obviously change depending on the type of engagement. But within them are many of the key principles for going beyond the comfort zone.