Interests and issues at first ALN event
At the first ALN event participants indicated on badges, and then on flip charts, what their main interests were in engagement. They also reflected on what had worked and what hadn’t in participation programmes that they knew about.
The exercise was brief - but nevertheless gave some first insight into the range of issues likely to be covered by ALNs.
Summary of interests and issues
The interests people put on their badges, and added to flip charts begin to form an A-Z of engagement:
- Accountability
- Awareness – increase awareness of services
- Benefit – what is the evidence
- Bridging them and us gaps
- Budgets – how to tailor
- Change
- Clarity
- Charities – improving services to them, increasing public confidence in them
- Citizens and democracy
- Communication
- Competition
- Consultation with general publics and stakeholders
- Consumer strategy
- Cross-government relationships
- Culture change within government
- Delivery following engagement
- Embedding engagement in organisations
- Enabling people
- Energising and engaging with individuals
- Engagement; what is it, why do it, how to do it
- Engagement strategies
- Equality of partnerships
- Evaluating involvement
- Events techniques
- Influencing service delivery
- Innovation
- Joining up engagement
- Knowledge sharing and capture
- Learning from others
- Learning – new approaches
- Listening
- Local involvement
- Methods for engagement
- Methods for networking
- Neighbourhood level engagement
- Networking
- Network learning
- Online methods
- Outcomes – measuring them
- People – what works for them
- Policies – getting right from the beginning
- Relationships
- Reaching hard to reach
- Resources
- Self-reliance and how to build it
- Success – what is it, how to measure
- Sustaining involvement
Summary of what worked and what didn’t
This summary of what worked and what didn’t begins to offer guidance on the processes and methods of engagement
Process issues
- Clear objectives
- Being clear about expectations of participants
- Initial creative stages
- Segmenting the market, identifying stakeholders
- Maintaining a dialogue, providing feedback
- Access to resources
- Understanding personalities and differing agendas
Not
- Lack of focus
- Failing to implement
- Jargon
- One size fits all
- Excluding key interests
- Consulting after the event
- Paying lip service
- Failing to feedback, respond to views
- Leaving until the last minute
Methods
- Match methods to objectives
- Face to face interaction
- Inclusiveness
- Ministerial endorsement
- Not white papers
- Evidence
- Using different channel
- Using scenarios
- Using themes
- New ideas, new media