Making it happen

Here are some tips on putting into practice your ideas for involving people in your organisation.

Build on what you're already doing - consider how you currently involve people and use that as a starting point.
Start informally if you need to: you can introduce more formal approaches later on.
Be aware that people tend to get involved gradually, so be patient and don't expect too big a contribution from people too early on.
Target people who you know are already interested.
Go to where people already are and find out how people want to be involved, rather than expecting them to come to you.
Make involvement as easy and as enjoyable as possible.
Pay expenses, including the costs of caring commitments.
Offer incentives such as training, a good lunch, treats or outings.

Acting on people's input

The biggest incentive you can provide to someone is to make it clear from the beginning how their involvement will make a difference. To do this, you need to monitor and evaluate the ways you involve people, act on the views expressed and feed back to contributors.

Make links to your organisation's strategy and impact

Never forget that the ideas, comments and suggestions that people give you, from unsolicited feedback, to in-depth commentary on your plans, is extremely valuable information.

Regardless of how or why this information came to you, be sure to make use of it to support your organisation's wider organisational strategic planning processes and its efforts to plan, evidence and report on its impact.

For more hints on how to reach your target audiences, take a look at our introduction to marketing or browse through some examples of tools and techniques for involving people.