Consultation in the Time of COVID19

We are, undoubtedly, in unprecedented times. For those of us who worked through the last ‘crash’, it was brutal and difficult (and some of us started businesses at the point we thought it was over, only for it to dip again…) but it was also cyclical and – to an extent – predictable. This is not that. We aren’t in recession, but we may soon enter one, and the cause is based not in economic health but on biological health.

With so many of us working from home, the new normal is a very different experience. Lengthy conference and video calls replacing meetings; phone chats replacing coffees and lunches; email banter instead of office banter. On top of this, the household isolation – and particularly the over-70s isolation – may have the unintended consequence of sending divorce rates sky high over the next 6 months. Watch out for a boom in dating apps for the over 70s in 2021…

When your business model depends on face to face engagement through community consultations, meetings with stakeholder groups, meetings with councillors, how can you keep projects moving forward when all such events are cancelled? This is the time to embrace all that digital technology can offer and supplement that with some good old-fashioned snail mail methods.

Our own digital platform https://www.snapdragonconsulting.co.uk/digital-consultation/ offers the ability to reach a broad audience, with the opportunity to target specific demographics and groups who usually don’t engage, or who may be particularly important in your proposals – for example, it’s great to talk about facilities for young people, but wouldn’t it be even better if you actually knew what those young people thought?

But we can go so much further; town hall meetings undertaken as a mass conference call or webinar, Enquiry by Design using sli.do or GoTo – potentially hugely increasing the level of engagement and interest in a managed and versatile format.

However, we are acutely aware that older people may not have access to, or be comfortable with, digital consultation. How do we continue to engage with this demographic when they are being told to self-isolate for at least three months? This is where the old school methods of good information leaflets and local press stories can come to the fore – and when people are confined to their home, what comes through their door is much more likely to be read.

We are entering a brave new world, who knows what collaborations, innovations and inventions may come from this?

If you would like any more information on any of the services we can offer to help keep your project running, please do get in touch. www.snapdragonconsulting.co.uk #digitalengagement #communityconsultation