Embedding engagement
Skills: assessing in-house skills
It is likely that one project manager will not be able to take on all work associated with a community engagement project. The appropriate use of the different specialisms of staff across your organisation will probably reveal a wealth of expertise that you would be unwise to ignore, and will make your community engagement activities easier to manage and ultimately more successful.
Skills assessment questions
In order to deliver your community engagement strategy or a particular initiative, it is helpful to know what internal resources you can draw on. There are certain questions you will have to ask yourself, your colleagues and other members of staff in your organisation when planning work with others around community engagement. You might want to undertake a skills and talents audit:
- Assess job roles and responsibilities in your organisation: where are there skills that are similar to those required to do community engagement work?
- Map the skills needed for a particular project and assess whether these can be found from within your organisation.
Using the list below as a starting point, you can think about what skills are needed at each stage of the project or for each element of the strategy. You can then determine:
- where people with those skills can be found within your organisation;
- whether specific training is needed;
- whether you need to bring in external support.
Skills set.
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Other questions to consider:
- Can people be asked to work on your project, or give advice and guidance as to the skills required?
- Are there people who would like development in this area and could work with you, or others to improve their skills?
- Are there staff with relevant abilities that they do not use at work, but outside, who you might consider?
- What about partner organisations or voluntary and community groups?
- Can you commission work from local organisations and provide extra work in the community?
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