How has community engagement changed in the last two years?

Now that we've more than a year to examine exactly how governments are doing in a time like no other - let's take a moment to unpack our most burning question: "How has the community engagement landscape changed?" with help from Deloitte Insights and our very own data and analytics guru Nishant Seth.

Increased investment in citizen connectivity

The pandemic has been an inflection point in the digital maturity of governments, with many looking to adopt a cohesive approach to transforming their digital capability. To do this, they’ve needed to embrace operational change, invest in flexible and scalable infrastructure (like EngagementHQ), and create intelligent workflows to get them from point A to point B.

• Committing to fully digital services: With Governments taking up EngagementHQ at double the rate of pre-pandemic.
• Designing proactive and seamless services: With more than 130 early adopters using Engagement Embeds for things like customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey at the end of new bin requests.

More employees empowered and engaged in decision making because of the distributed and virtualised work model

Many government leaders have adopted new strategies to stay connected with employees and make sure team members have the necessary tools wherever they are. Instead of managing projects, they now need to manage project teams and cost savings from real estate can be redeployed toward infrastructure, training, education, and flexible arrangements.

• Technology has helped reduce the time needed to complete a task by up to 70%.
• Online interactions cost around 25% less than face-to-face interactions.
• Real-time data has meant a shorter time to value for policy and process updates, with up to a 34% reduction in project turnaround time.

Heightened drive to institutionalise design thinking for better inclusion, equity, and diversity

While the concept of inclusive design is not new, expanding this concept beyond physical infrastructure and accessibility needs is. Governments seek to make their services accessible to every community member; they’re rethinking program structures, communication platforms, and digital capabilities. In addition, they are looking to accommodate those with physical limitations, learning and language differences, and mental health disorders.

• Governments have been diversifying their use of community engagement tools, increasing the use of Questions and Ideas by 1.7x.
• Many governments have used an equity lens in their COVID-19 responses leveraging tools like EngagementHQs Sentiment Analysis to detect, anticipate and address misinformation in more than 3,000 projects.

And while many leading organisations have made significant headway in acting on these measures, more needs to be done to sustain forward momentum; a notion Mel Hagedorn, Head of Client Success ANZ, spoke to at this years IAP2 conference:

"Lead with empathy; if you're feeling burnt out with information overload at the end of a day and can't imagine taking in another piece of 'data', assume that is how your community feels and do everything within your power to meet them where they are."

Across industries, companies are betting big on customer experience. It’s time for governments to do the same.

Reach out to learn more.