STAGE 3: COMMISSIONING YOUR ENGAGEMENT
How to put together
a team for public engagement
This guide covers key questions to consider when putting
together your team for a public engagement project.
❗Please note, you’ll find this resource in stage one and stage three.
A team for the engagement process is a group of individuals from across your organisation and possibly other partners who will plan, oversee and carry out the public engagement.
Why?
Whatever the extent of the project, public engagement requires people with a range of skills, experience and insights to be successful. Everyone on the team should have allocated time in their workload to avoid bottlenecks and prevent delays.
Putting together a team to plan and manage the engagement should come in the commissioning and planning stages. There may be other teams needed to carry out specific tasks (such as engagement facilitation). These may form and disband during all stages of the engagement process.
Putting together an effective team for public engagement
Creating your engagement team
It is important to consider who you involve in planning and delivering an engagement process. Focus on the skills required rather than on who ‘should’ be involved because of their role title or position. Look across your entire organisation for relevant skills and people who can contribute. Some of these roles might be filled by people outside of your organisation, for instance community partners or external service providers.
You can use this table below to help map out your team. Remember, sometimes people in the team don’t belong to your organisation
Click below to read through as well as printing the table as a pdf to write who this could be and next steps.
📩 Click here to download this table as a pdf.
Creating your engagement team
Managing your team
Once you’ve put together your team, it is good practice to organise an inception meeting to discuss the purpose and vision for the project, roles and responsibilities and ways of working. Spending time to build relationships, collaboratively develop an understanding of the project, and clearly identify roles, and explore how you want to work together will set you up for a smooth project.
Pause and Think Section
- How will you clearly outline roles and responsibilities across your team?
- Who needs to be involved in making decisions and approving your engagement work? Is everyone on the team aware of the approval and accountability processes?
- Who else outside of your core team will you be working with (e.g. an advisory group)? How has communication with these groups been factored into your timeline planning?
- Are there any other skills you can draw on to bring your engagement to life? What about creative skills or technology specialists? How could engaging with other skills improve the reach and accessibility of your engagement?
