The purpose
Engagement practices are ever evolving with the engagement sector increasingly becoming more innovative. We have seen practitioners adopt new methodologies, such as deliberative engagement and participatory budgeting, alongside a growing emphasis on utilising new technologies such as AI. While our understanding of practices has continued to be refined and has evolved, this thought leadership paper considers engagement from a different angle. Rather than discrete initiatives, this paper examines organisational contexts and what is required to embed practices in an ongoing and sustained manner to elevate the organisation’s engagement maturity level.
Our intention with this paper is to shift from the outward-facing nature of engagement practices that focus on methods, recruitment, decision-making, and so on, and look inward instead. Our fundamental question is ‘how can organisations embed engagement practices as business-as- usual’?
Our approach
We acknowledge that organisations are organic entities and are all at different points on their engagement continuum. Elevating engagement maturity is not a one-size-fits-all journey, but a continuous process of building systems, habits and leadership that support meaningful participation. With this in mind, this thought leadership paper offers a variety of strategies and practical actions for embedding community engagement as a core organisational capability. It achieves this through five interrelated pillars of engagement capacity-building: Policy, People, Practice, Culture and Performance.
Outcomes
The publication was launched at the Engagement Institute's annual conference in October 2025.
You can download a copy of the thought-piece here.
A webinar to accompany the publication will be scheduled for early 2026 - join us then!
