What is meaningful engagement? Experiences at a conference

I recently attended the Health Service Journal conference titled Achieving Meaningful Public Engagement in London on the 12th March. It has been a while since I have been to a conference. I arrive from Manchester after a night of storms and high winds that had delayed my train.

It was an interesting and varied day. I appreciated the time to think and reflect without the responsibility for leading or speaking at an event.

The stand out presentation for me was by Dr. Jeff French on social marketing - debunking the myth that this has anything to do with advertising or spin. The essential point was that the main thing we can learn from a marketing approach is understanding peoples’ insight and what is important to them - and then apply this to social good as opposed to economic good which is the traditional territory of marketing.

I noticed a real difference in the words and language used by different speakers. It illustrated for me the gap between the mechanical approach to engagement and the more bottom-up, user focused approach. Some of the speakers presented engagement as a technical process - it felt cold and separate from the real world of peoples’ lives. It was a relief in the afternoon when speakers started talking about personal journeys, trust and appreciating different world views. I also feel ambivalent when engagement is presented as an industrial process that can be replicated, scaled-up and shipped out to communities. Surely engagement needs to be more nuanced and personalised with a real appreciation of the communities and local people where it is happening.

There was an interesting debate around the metrics of engagement and how we can find ways to measure and quantify the value of this work. To argue for more resources and investment in engagement we are going to have to demonstrate it’s benefits and how these represent value for time and money invested. The challenge for me is how we do this in a way that retains the richness and uniqueness of peoples’ lives - I fear that some metric models might simply reduce our work to numbers and statistics that alienate our stakeholders and mask local change. More work is needed in this area - and more creative thinking that can draw on metrics that use non-traditional methods such as art, drama, visual and experiential data.

The conference talked a lot about meaningful engagement. But what does this mean - and meaningful to who? The local people or the organisations doing the engagement. Organisations who often have a set idea of the data and contributions they are looking for. That is not to say that organisation pre-decide the outcomes of engagement. Simply that by having the power to set the approach and boundaries of any engagement activity you are immediately influencing and to some extent controlling the process. What if those who are being engaged have an entirely different vision or agenda to the engagers? What if the topic of engagement actually bears very little relation to the day-to-day lives of local people? And where are the opportunities for local people to be the engagers - with the time, money and authority to take control of the engagement process and start to describe agendas from their own perspective.

It is important that engagement does not get reduced to another tactic or prescription that the powerful offer to the less powerful. I think there needs to be space in conferences like this one for organisations to reflect on their power and their abilities, whatever their intentions, to do harm as well as good. Engagement is not easy - it should be a constant process of dialogue and reflection. Organisations need 'critical friends' in the community who can challenge them on a regular basis. This starts to make engagement meaningful in my view.

Towards the end of the conference I also reflected on the customer experience of attending an event - from how important the first welcome is to how first impressions as a participant can colour the whole day. When we arrive at an event we may all be carrying all kinds of burden. We may have had a difficult journey, we may be stressed or we may have our minds in different places. Good events prepare for their customers and create a positive first experience. The first impression is often the last impression.