How to put together a team for public engagement

Summary

This guide covers key questions to consider when putting together your team for a public engagement project. 

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. Feel free to write who this could be and next steps. Click here to download this table as a pdf

Role	Skills and expertise	Examples of what this may look like	Your team
Procurement	Procurement requirements as part of the wider planning and commissioning process Understanding of budgets and finance Understanding of engagement brief and desired project outcomes	Procurement team
Project and budget management	Project management Identifying resources required in addition to financial  Identifying sources of funding Ensure engagement timing fits with the decision making process you are feeding into Identifying risks	Low carbon or climate emergency team Programme management officers Local Government Association tools and resources
Your engagement and impact champions	A decision maker who has influence to implement recommendations from the impact Enthusiastic and committed to the engagement	Your project sponsor Portfolio holder Head of service
Policy specialist	How to develop and influence policy	Policy team External engagement Heads of service
Technical specialist	Expert knowledge of the subject matter of the engagement	Low carbon or climate emergency team Transport planning Housing
Engagement specialist	Has overview of the engagement process Understanding of the different stages of an effective and inclusive engagement process Can communicate the purpose and outcomes of the engagement	Housing team External partners, for example, community and voluntary sector organisations Externally commissioned organisations
Communications	Able to publicise engagement activities across relevant channels Support to recruit participants, be that in paid ads or visuals Designing messaging and any visual materials for the engagement Skilled in disseminating key messages about the outcomes from engagement to a range of different groups including	Communications team Community and voluntary sector organisations with links to particular groups you are engaging
Learning and evaluation	Capturing information for learning and evaluation Design of learning and evaluation tools and approach Analysis of information Producing learning and evaluation reports in various formats for different audiences Design of processes to embed learning into future engagement plans	Internal analysis and consultation team Externally commissioned organisation
Partnership and Relationship Management	Relationship building Understanding relevant networks Advising on decisions and implementing recommendations which require partnership working	Combined authorities Integrated Care Partnerships Members of partnerships hosted by your local authority
Participant support & liaison specialist	Sampling and recruitment of  participants according to the criteria in your engagement brief Creating on-boarding information Clear communication skills Accessibility awareness and support	External specialist in participant recruitment and on-boarding Members of finance team for payment of participants Equalities advisors to ensure access needs are met
Facilitators	Able to facilitate inclusive and effective engagement activities	Youth and community workers External facilitators

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.