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Using technology to have a more effective dialogue and develop better services

By Louise Brown

Louise Brown of People’s Voice Media discusses their Community Reporter Programme and how organisations can benefit from using social media to support people to have a voice, challenge perceptions, and describe their own reality.

Social media is very much integrated into our every day lives – even if you choose not to use it you probably know how it works – but how well are we using it to really influence what happens around us?

As was shown during the UK riots, the Arab Spring and the occupation of financial institutions around the world we’re very good at using social media to report on what's happening in our lives. The in-your-pocket technology means it's quick and easy to tell stories, share recommendations and voice our opinions.

We're also using these tools to connect with people that share our interests, those that oppose them and people who tell us interesting news. But this tends to be organic and on our own terms and there is still a real disconnect between people and organisations. We might think we're giving valuable feedback on services, for example, but if there is no formal mechanism for 'catching' his feedback then what difference can we really make?

What impact could be made if we joined social media up at the top and the bottom - connecting the people on the ground with the people in the offices – could we make something amazing in the middle? The work that we do at People's Voice Media is all about finding the answer to that question, seeing how can we harness these technologies for real social change by connecting communities with those that develop the services.

Getting organisations in the right place to engage

Our work as a community development organisation has taught us that effective dialogue is easier said that done. We work extensively with communities to give them the confidence and skills to be able to tell their stories in the way they want to tell them. The confidence comes from having a clear understanding of the responsibilities of being a reporter – what we call Community Reporter Best Practice Guidelines. The skills enable them to create written, picture, video and audio media content and then effectively share that content with the world in order to tell the story of their lives and what matters to them.

But what use is this content if there's no one out there to look at it? The other side of our work is to help organisations to use these valuable insights to consult on developments, get feedback on services or co-develop solutions. It takes a real commitment from organisations to put this kind of engagement mechanism in place but experience shows us that the insights they get from it are over and above any paper-based exercise.

Public consultation

Consultation is usually such a dreadful word. For anyone who has been consulted it can send a tingle down your spine. Many consultation exercises appear to be tokenistic efforts, public bodies being seen to be taking the views of stakeholders. Rather than a real opportunity for people to influence how things develop, they are often an exercise in rubber stamping decisions that have already been made.

But just imagine another option. What might the outcomes be of a real, meaningful consultation - one where people were empowered to give real feedback by using the immediacy and potency of social media to share their opinions. And increasing dialogue by sharing these views on community channels. Or where people were empowered to gather feedback from their neighbours, friends and peers. For organisations that really care about what's happening then an effective consultation can do wonders for their reputations, integrity, service user buy-in and general engagement levels.

Here's one example of what can be achieved.  

Tenant voice

Giving residents the confidence and skills to be able to tell stories about what matters to them makes them feel valued and it's also a really effective way of reaching those people that wouldn’t traditionally engage. That's why we've worked with numerous housing associations to help them use Community Reporting as a tool to engage with their residents.

Completing the Community Reporter Programme gives residents practical skills but more importantly it helps with confidence levels, increased self esteem and community awareness – whilst also creating a stronger bond and mechanism for dialogue between them and their landlords. Feeling valued and listened to can support effective participation, can catch problems before they become real issues and be a real opportunity for better development of services.

There are examples of these pieces of work – and the content that people have created – in this video:

Embedding these methods in your own organisation

It needn't take much to embed these feedback channels into your own organisation. The tools themselves are free or low cost but what it does need is the support of management and time resource to set up and monitor the systems.

10 steps to using technology to have more effective dialogue and develop better services

1. Recognise that to get a real representation of views you need to reach the people that won't respond to formal consultations
2. Use pre-existing networks, groups, communities and communal locations to promote that you want to hear people's views
3. Recruit people from the community to get views from the places you can't normally reach
4. Give lots of different ways for people to interact with you such as email, phone, letter, videos posted on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook page and make it easy for people to use them
5. Encourage the use of “technology in the pocket” tools; video recorders on phones, small digital cameras etc
6. Sign up public places with computers, such as libraries or advice centres, as places to collect feedback
7. Support people to be able to use the online engagement tools such as printed or online guides on how to get started or dedicated drop-in or training sessions
8. Be sure that all of the responses can input into your decision making or service development
9. Feed back to the community in a timely way on how their input has affected your decisions
10. Keep the communication channels open to ensure continual improvement of services

In operation since 1995, People’s Voice Media is a community development organisation specialising in using social media to support people to have a voice, challenge perceptions and describe their own reality. People’s Voice Media’s Community Reporter Programme, has trained over 1000 reporters.