Community engagement has become the Holy Grail of local government, as the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill makes it essential to involve local people in decision-making.

While frontline staff are working with local residents day in, day out, and community engagement is viewed as desirable in itself, what might be overlooked is the fact that it can also be powerful learning tool. It can help attract, retain and motivate staff, and enable organisations be more innovative and sustainable.

Banks, retailers and multi-national corporations have used community engagement as a way of keeping in tune with customers and developing the skills of their staff for a number of years. The approach originated in the US, where projects such as ‘New York cares' got thousands of volunteers involved in schools and city clean-up campaigns.

Impact Development Training is among the pioneers in this country of what we call ‘community action learning'. For example, we recently worked with Deutsche Bank to get all of its graduate trainees out into London neighbourhoods to work on practical projects alongside local residents.

Since the early 1990s, Impact has worked with BT to build community and environmental projects into its staff development programmes. Oracle Corporation executives have also used these techniques for both team development and to create a positive impact on the communities in which it is based.

An argument against adopting this approach in local government might be that working with local community groups, promoting social inclusion and cohesion, and having a place-shaping role in neighbourhoods are all part of what it does anyway.

But using community action learning as a staff-development tool can help community engagement become engrained as part of a local authority's DNA. Just as work on equalities began as the distinct preserve of professionals employed for that specific role, and has now been embedded into all council activities, community engagement now needs to be a consideration across every department and among staff in every role.

For those who sit behind a desk all day, it can be a way to step outside their usual milieu, gain an understanding of the real needs of the communities they serve and explore team dynamics in the process. This could mean finance officers getting dirt under their fingernails on a city farm, planners spending time with older people, administration officers taking part in a fund-raising event, or a number of staff working on a project with a particular charity or voluntary group.

Using community engagement as one of a range of staff-development tools can be a tangible expression of the public sector ethos that attracts many people to jobs in local government. Unison's head of local government, Heather Wakefield, told the recent Labour Party conference that public sector staff morale was at an all-time low.

While pay and conditions undoubtedly contribute to this, achieving a closer connection between what happens at the town hall and what happens in local neighbourhods could also be a way to re-affirm the public service values which led people into local government. It is a way to get beyond the ‘tick-box mentality' that so many public sector staff find demoralising.

Impact is inviting readers of The MJ  to a free one-day taster event to find out about how community action learning can be used as a team development tool.
Such as project blends individual and team development with understanding real community needs. It is an opportunity to share skills with local communities – from getting involved in practical tasks, through to helping a community organisation develop its capacity and promote social inclusion. And it can motivate staff in the process. 

I was lucky enough to work as a manager in social services under Tony Elson more than a decade ago at Kirklees MBC, at a time when the authority was pioneering service-user involvement among people with disabilities.

I learned the value then of not just asking service-users what they wanted, to be able to tick the right funding box, but of really getting to grips with their complex needs, which, in turn, made the work more rewarding.

For further information, contact Stephen Farrell at Impact Development Training. Tel: 07979-703297  or e-mail: Stephen.Farrell@impact-dtg. com n

Stephen Farrell is a consultant at Impact