Engaging Stakeholders

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Stakeholder Management

Influencing Others

These recommendations are based upon the findings of the 'Trialling of Collaborative Online Tools in Business and Community Engagement' Project and as such are not an exhaustive or generic list. The trial projects utilised a range of approaches that have worked well in their contexts.

Start from established groups

Taking advantage of existing initiatives, demand and enthusiasm, and community interest groups can foster greater involvement in the trial outcomes. For example, The University of Glamorgan's partnership with Rhondda Cynon Taf (RCT) Business Club initially provided an introduction to a larger group of SMEs, to add to their micro-businesses in the incubation facility. The University of Leeds also tapped into existing internal academic groups and the Association for University Research and Industry Links (AURIL) network. Whilst engaging with these existing communities, it is important to market the extra value to the individuals and the community of belonging to this new group or using a new tool.

In all communities there are key members who are leading thinkers. To have these high profile, well-respected individuals as initial members of the community will encourage others to join. This is the method employed by the University of the Arts to develop their Community of Practice for photojournalists.

Use familiar systems

Familiarity with a system can create a sense of comfort and a willingness to participate. As the University of Glamorgan found, there is much competition in a crowded social marketplace so being able to use a collaborative online tool that requires little or no familiarisation is an advantage.

One of the reasons why students at the University of Northumbria liked using WordPress was because they were familiar with the type of social software interface.

Also the institution may have already invested in particular ICT infrastructure and tools for other purposes, such as to support teaching or research to facilitate external engagement and in these circumstances Heads of IT services are keen to exploit existing systems rather than set up new hardware/software.

'Early discussions confirmed that the repository and chat/discussion forum would be Moodle. This was considered a reliable platform that some of the project team were already familiar with but a major factor was that there was a Moodle developer in the team.'

Birmingham Metropolitan College

Training & supporting staff/partners

Even if some of the stakeholders are familiar with the online tool, not all will be and so it is important to provide training and/or support material. In some projects it will be possible to have an initial stage of training and familiarisation prior to the collaborative activities. This will build-up trust and confidence in the collaborative online tool and maximise engagement in the collaborative activities. In the trials it found that this was particularly important when using synchronous collaborative online tools such as Elluminate. What may appear to be simple activities such as using headsets can cause problems for those unfamiliar with such equipment and systems.

Knowledge House highlighted the development of a user guide, champion meetings, on-site visits and training sessions as key approaches to ease users into the use of a new system.

Involve senior contacts

To encourage senior stakeholders in institutions and business to engage, it is usually necessary to identify measurable 'hard' outcomes, such as economic return on investment (ROI), development of valuable staff 'information literacy' or knowledge transfer (KT) skills. There is also evidence that demonstrating how new social Web2.0 technologies could enhance existing approaches to Business and Community Engagement (BCE) was more conducive to engagement than promoting new ways of doing new things.

'The project demonstrated the importance of having the IT Services Director on board, which was paramount to the success to this project. The project contributed to enhancing the relationship between IT Services and LTech. This is important as it has led to increased collaboration between these two services.'

Northumbria University

The University of Leeds demonstrated that by adopting the KT2.0 approach, specifically the identification and engagement of external professionals (not employed by the University), business expertise was injected across a spectrum of domains, in which universities cannot hope to employ business development managers/specialists.