Engagement
4 Engagement
4.1 Introduction
This section of the Toolkit will enable you to gain an understanding of engagement, and how to successfully engage your stakeholders. Key learning points for this section include:
- Developing an understanding of the benefits of engagement
- Developing an understanding of how to undertake engagement
- Developing an approach to developing an Engagement Plan
4.2 What is Engagement?
The term engagement can be broad, and what one organisation takes is to mean can be very different from what another organisation would expect. In essence, engagement is the process of assisting people become involved in decision that affect them. ‘People’ could be stakeholders, or the community at large. A common example if involving communities in the planning, development and management of local services. The key to engagement is the acknowledgment that it is only though listening to the experiences and views of others and involving them in decision processes that lasting solutions that make real differences can be developed. The engagement process is open, two-way and usually on-going. To demonstrate accountability, it is good practice to make key findings as a result of engagement available to the public, for example through a website or using printed materials, as appropriate.
