Live 'Discussion Forum' event

What are the challenges you face by working from home and how are you overcoming them?

Facilitated and summarised by Katie Toohey.

The top tips for working from home are:

1. Set up a dedicated space, whether it is a room, desk or corner of a bench - try to keep it just for work so you can 'arrive' at, and 'leave' work
2. Close the office door when you finish work, or put the laptop away in a cupboard so you get the sense of leaving work
3. Use a 'work' coffee cup and start drinking from it at 9am and put it away at 5pm to help you get a sense of a work day
4. Finish up your day by 'shaking it off' - go outside, dance around to music, take the dog or kids for a walk...
5. Use Skype for Business, Zoom, slack or other chat spaces to check in and chat with your colleagues - make a conscious effort to do this regularly throughout the day. E.g. one of our participants has a daily Morning Tea Zoom with their colleagues to chat and connect about work and social things
6. Use video calling (I personally really like Zoom) to catch up with colleagues instead of a phone call - it gives you that face to face connection and is important to keep your work communication flowing, so much of our communication is visual
7. Using a separate web-meeting tool to connect more formally with clients and stakeholders, such as Go To Meeting.
8. Video calling is initially uncomfortable but you get used to it quickly :-) Many people are reporting that they are finding their colleagues are becoming more comfortable with the 'new normal' including video calling
9. Ensure that everyone has the opportunity to attend your meetings so that you are not accidentally leaving out staff members - video calling really helps in this space as you can have a bunch of people in there, a phone call only has two, three at most.

Some key challenges are:

1. Managing kids concurrently to work is difficult
2. Interruptions to work meetings as people (and pets) unintentionally interrupt
3. Getting online and connected as a team initially
4. Managing time and space with everyone at home
5. Sorting out technology for those who are not used to new tech

Please feel free to use the commenting function below to add in your thoughts and comments!

What off-line or other engagement tools can you use to compliment your online presence?

Facilitated and summarised by Nicole Vaughan.

Thank you all for your in valuable contributions in todays forum topic around what offline or other engagement ideas you could consider to promote inclusiveness and compliment your online presence.

We talked about lots of wonderful ideas in this forum:

• Doing mail outs and thinking in a creative way - included in food hampers, including children's activities or colouring in in them or a light hearted touch. Partnering with a local print business who may be struggling in return for inclusion of logo and recognition in the mail out
• Building capacity via digital mentors
• Utilising print packs for children and school work
• Promoting hot lines and phone numbers for people to call and engage
• Having traditional owners online to provide support - engage with them in video calls prior.
• Utilising essential service points and perhaps collaborating with likes of Centrelink, schools, supermarkets
• Tap into and take the lead on existing community led initiatives like green and red card. A woman delivered 200 letters to people in the streets around her house. Inside was a green card and a red card. The idea is that you put a green card in your front window (that you can see from the street) if you are ok. You put the red card up if you need help. Local people walking around can look and see. If they see a red card they could knock on the door and see if the person is ok. She also included her phone number for anyone who needs someone to get them supplies!
• Using Places tool is a great way to get community thoughts. I love the idea of using the mapping tool to showcase community spirit like the chalk art, teddy bears in windows, street concerts etc.
• Also love the use of Ideas tool for people to share creative outlets for ''çhecking in'' - what resources people are using, how are they checking on neighbours. Council could also take a shared approach in helping each other by creating a ''check in'' neighbourhood form for people to offer assistance and people to ask for assistance via EHQ Survey form in a safe environment rather than broader social media groups
• Getting community ideas for a post Corona Virus event and gathering ideas for celebration and togetherness when restrictions are lifted
• Building a directory of information and services in EngagementHQ as a central hub for community
• Using 'reply paid postcards' many times to get people involved.Its even better if you can 'hand deliver' them, but a quick and easy way for people to give feedback on a particular topic.If you set it up with a 'tear off part' that is already postage paid, you can include the instructions and basic project info on the other part that they keep.I have found this to be a cheap and easy tool to use

What are the positive things you want to retain after Covid-19?

Facilitated and summarised by Lauren Keating

We had such a productive forum chat today. It's nice that in the face of adversity and social distancing, the group came up with many positives to our new way of life.

Key takeaways which popped up today include

• A hope that flexible working conditions will continue post pandemic.
• The desire to keep appreciating the small things once 'normal' life returns (stepping into the garden, sunshine, more time with children and pets)
• An appreciation of connecting with colleagues and clients, and the benefits of the humble phone call
• A drive to improve internal processes for the future; more online engagement, and more online functions to reduce face to face processes that are quite cumbersome.

So many more things came up, but I think this covers the general themes. Thanks for your outstanding contributions and for keeping my fingers very busy, flying across the keyboard. I feel very connected in the time of COVID.

What has been the biggest challenge you have experienced so far, in shifting towards a digital first engagement approach?

Thank you for getting involved in today's discussion. I have summarised some of the key topics and takeaways below:

key challenges identified:

• Accommodating for varying skills sets and confidence levels within the community is hard
• How do we prioritise those within the community who do not have friends and family to support or connect with them?
• Do people have the simple tools they need? Quite often not.
• Not every organisation has the resource or budget to make the transition right now
• Knowing what we should be engaging on, is it the right time?
• Making sure that our communities maintain a sense of belonging, and have plenty to do with their time

Positive observations and takeaways:

• Many are feeling more connected than ever!
• In the workplace, we are able to build deeper connections with our colleagues, and even our colleague's family members and pets.
• Those working in a organisation with relatively high levels of confidence around technology, are adapting well.

Overall, the engagement highlighted the importance of understanding the individual needs of our communities, staff and stakeholders. Through deeper understanding of 'how' people want to be engaged and 'what' topics they want to be engaged on, there's a chance to accommodate specific needs and prioritise the most vulnerable members of the community. Could SMS engagement be a preferred method of engagement for members of the community? Could targeted mail-outs be used to deliver something tangible to those that are not tech-savvy? e.g. postcards, kids packs (see here for offline ideas).

A simple community satisfaction survey could perhaps offer a valuable starting point. If you'd like to see some examples of how our clients have used EngagementHQ to draw out these needs, then please get in touch.

Facilitated and summarise by Jodie House

Should we be engaging during the current Covid-19 crisis?

At a high level, there is a confidence that engagement should continue at this time, just in an albeit considered way.

Key challenges highlighted:

• approach to existing engagements are adapting
• deeper consideration about future engagements against some evolving criteria
• still, a challenge to ensure reach beyond the digital (inclusiveness)
• promoting engagements with the volume of other messages
• getting the attention of executives at this time

Positives:

• teams have been able to upskill in approaches (video creation, etc)
• the shift in focus for some projects to be mindful of current circumstances
• overall a feeling of adaptability and moving forward.

Thank you to everyone who participated.

Facilitated and summarised by Joe Waller