Make An Impact Podcast
Make An Impact Podcast
Community Engagement: The Missing Link in Social Value
Emma Smith, founder of Nia Avanna consultancy, reveals why community engagement is the crucial missing link in creating genuine social value. Drawing from her experience working with police forces and later in the private sector, Emma shares practical insights that challenge businesses to move beyond fear and embrace meaningful dialogue with their communities.
The conversation dives into why many organisations struggle with engagement – often viewing it as opening a Pandora's box of complaints rather than an opportunity to strengthen relationships and improve operations. Emma dispels these fears with straightforward wisdom: "The issue is still there whether you've engaged or not. If you can be proactive about it, it can make such a difference."
What makes this discussion particularly valuable is Emma's practical approach to a subject often wrapped in jargon and complexity. She explains that effective community engagement doesn't require massive investment or specialist skills – it simply demands willingness to listen and respond. This refreshing perspective transforms social value from a corporate obligation into an opportunity for meaningful connection.
The episode tackles the disconnect between social value requirements in tenders and the reality of implementation. Emma highlights the challenge of promising specific initiatives years in advance without knowing what communities will actually need. Her solution? Start with your "why," build relationships before problems arise, and focus on creating lasting positive change rather than quick wins.
Whether you're a business leader seeking to improve your community relationships, a public sector professional working on social value initiatives, or anyone interested in creating sustainable impact, this conversation offers valuable insights into making engagement work. By following Emma's guidance to "don't decide what's best for communities – go and ask them," we can all contribute to more meaningful social value creation.
Ready to transform your approach to community engagement? Connect with Emma through Nia Avanna on social media or visit niaavanna.com to learn more about putting these principles into practice.
Hi, I'm Heidi Fisher, the host of the Make an Impact Podcast. I'm an impact measurement expert, passionate about helping you make a bigger impact in the world by maximising the impact your services have.
I can help you to measure, manage and communicate the impact you have better to funders, investors, commissioners and other stakeholders, and to systemise your data collection and analysis so that it frees up time and doesn't become an additional burden.
I love helping you to measure social and economic impacts, including Social Return on Investment or value for money assessments, as part of understanding the change you make to peoples' lives.
You can get in touch via LinkedIn or the website makeanimpactcic.co.uk if you'd like to find out more about working with me.
Welcome to Make an Impact podcast, where we dive deep into the stories, strategies and solutions that drive real change. I'm Heidi Fisher and I work with organizations on a mission to tackle poverty, reduce health inequalities and create lasting social impact. In each episode, I bring you inspiring conversations with changemakers, social entrepreneurs and thought leaders who are making a difference. Whether you're looking to boost your impact measurement, learn from innovative projects or find fresh ideas to transform your work, you're in the right place. Welcome to today's episode of the Make an Impact podcast. Today, I'm joined by Emma. Emma, would you like to just introduce yourself, please? Hi.
Speaker 2:I'm Emma Smith and I run a consultancy called Nia Avanna that helps small to medium sized businesses with their community engagement.
Speaker 1:Thanks. I love the name of your organisation, your consultancy Nia Avanna. It sounds like children's names. How did you come up with that name?
Speaker 2:So when I was thinking for what I was going to call the business, I wanted something that meant something, and Nia means purpose in Swahili. I really liked that because I always found like community engagement, finding my purpose, it's doing something bigger than just profits and all of that kind of thing. So and I really liked Ni a, but it'd already been taken. So I was like, oh, now, what am I going to call it?
Speaker 2:I had a vision of what it was going to be called, but I didn't quite know what it was going to be called and I knew I wanted to be something feminine and and then I came up with Avanna. I looked through a list of names and I came up with Avanna and I found somewhere that it meant gift from God and I was like, oh well, that's kind of like giving back that kind of thing. Now I'm not 100% sure whether it does mean that, because I did a bit more research and I was like, oh, maybe it doesn't, but I still like them together. It still means something to me and it still has the purpose thing.
Speaker 1:That that's where it came from well, it sounds good to me and I'm convinced that it means what you said. It means that will stay our secret until this podcast goes out and then everyone will be like, oh, we're googling that to check it. So you said you do community engagement work with businesses. What is that? What does that look like?
Speaker 2:So I've got a background in community engagement. Previously I worked for the police and then I moved into the private sector, so it's about talking to communities really. So when I worked for the police it was getting out there getting. Obviously, when people report crimes, they speak to officers and they have that dealt with in the way that it goes through that process. But when it comes to just report in general, things like fly tipping and ASB and kind of stuff like low level crimes they didn't always get the feedback from the police officers. It'd be dealt with but it was too big a job necessarily to deal with one-on-one. So we'd get a lot of kind of feedback that people didn't know how it was being dealt with, didn't know if it'd been resolved, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So my role was to help police officers engage with their communities in that way and communicate with them. So it would look at that through social media, media releases and things like that. It would look at how we could communicate and do beat surgeries and all different ways like face-to-face or online, digital, traditional methods. So my role would help them with that kind of thing and also looking at how you reach specific groups. So say that we had a spate of distraction birdlets on the elderly. They might not be on social media. It was a few years ago that I worked for the police. Obviously now people are getting older and people know how to use social media a lot more, but back then it still wasn't a thing that people older people necessarily use it. So it would be like how do we reach those people? How do we look at where they live, what kind of demographics, how do we get messages out there? So it'd be that kind of thing as well.
Speaker 2:And then I moved into the private sector and that was again it's different, but the same thing looking at how you want to communicate with communities around the businesses. So whether that's them if they've got changes to operations, or whether it's around communicating their corporate giving and corporate social responsibility, social value, all of those things that would looking at how you reach those communities and engage them that way and to wake up communication as well, and how do you encourage that. So that's kind of now what I now taken into my new business, because I've realized there's a gap there. I think that when it comes to social value or ESGs and CSR, everybody's like we know that we need to be doing this thing. But community engagement is the missing part in that, I feel, because a lot of the times we're saying we'll go and support this or go and do this project or do that, but nobody asks necessarily is that the thing that is needed in this community? So my expertise is to teach people how to do that.
Speaker 1:Wow. So would you go out and talk to the community when you're saying you'd train someone in the business to be able to do that?
Speaker 2:so training people to do it themselves. I think that it's all really good and there are situations where consultants are great for community engagement, like if you've got planning, big planning, extensions and things that you want to do. In my old role we would have consultants that would assist with that because it is quite specialist. But I think generally, day-to-day that needs to be done in-house, because if you aren't prepared to engage with the community, they see through that. If you've got issues, if you're getting complaints, if you're not prepared to challenge that head-on, then you kind of lose what you're trying to achieve. It's about taking responsibility and accountability and, even if you can't necessarily fix everything, it's about showing that you are willing to try and willing to work with the community and obviously there's so many different benefits to that. It can make your operations smoother, it can increase your customer base, even if you're not a direct consumer business.
Speaker 2:If you're not engaging well with your community and you've got complaints, those businesses that you might want to work with who are looking at their social value or call for responsibility, won't want to work with businesses who have that kind of reputation.
Speaker 2:So it's an important thing to do it in-house and to understand why it's important and to not be scared of it, because I think people are a bit like oh, we're scared to engage, we might find out loads more problems, people. They're going to start telling us what's wrong, but those things are already there If you've got issues and people will be complaining, even are already there. If you've got issues and people will be complaining, even if they're not complaining to you. So your reputation will still be bad. It's just that you don't necessarily know about it. But if you're out there, engaging, putting yourself out there, you can fix those problems or you can tell people why you can't fix those problems and what the limitations are within your business. So I definitely think that it's important to do it in-house and to implement that and have the confidence to do it.
Speaker 1:Wow, I think there's a lot of people in their businesses are now shaking in their chairs at the thought of having to learn how to engage with their communities.
Speaker 2:But it's not that difficult. I think it's just being willing to listen and to do your best. There's no magic thing. It's a hard thing or thing go and listen, and people are reasonable. Where the problems are is that when you're not willing to listen, when you're not willing to do anything.
Speaker 2:If somebody comes to you with an issue and community engagement isn't just about issues but if somebody does have an issue and they come to you and you're like well, this is why this happens, explain the reason behind it and then talk about what you can do. So it might be that you can't fix it because it's a part of your operations, but is there something that you can do to alleviate whatever that issue is? It's about working with them. A lot of times, if you are willing to communicate and engage with them, that's half the problem solved. I've definitely experienced people being scared to do it but, like I say, the issue is still there. Whether you've engaged or not, you can. If you can do and be proactive about it, it can make such a difference and it can just have such a positive impact and knock-on effect overall about how your business is perceived definitely.
Speaker 1:I think part of this is about just allowing people to be seen and be heard. It's not necessarily whether you do anything, although I would just say that that's where you can approximately have the greatest impact and most benefit, but just enabling people to be seen and to be heard in a community is one way to just make people feel better and like they've got more power in their lives.
Speaker 2:I just don't think that, when it comes to businesses, that we should be having a negative impact on people's lives. Nobody wants to. If your community and you live around a business, doesn't matter what business is. If that business is having a negative impact on people's day-to-day, that should be a problem and we should be doing something to alleviate that. None of us would want to live next to a business that does that.
Speaker 1:So I think that we all have a responsibility to make sure that we are limiting that impact as much as possible yeah, are you typically brought in when there's a problem or do you find you're brought in when there's nice stuff to be done around community engagement?
Speaker 2:I'm going to say for the companies I work for, they have been proactive in wanting to improve their community engagement. But in my last employer we had over 400 sites and when I worked for the police I managed I think it was seven different police stations. So they all have their different little issues and their little and different approaches to things and sometimes my thing is to get on the front foot of it, engage proactively, get out there. Don't wait until there is a problem, until you start engaging. And if you do that and you've built your stakeholder relationships and you know your community and they know what you're like and people feel that they can come to you, that's going to reduce your problems. It's going to have so many less problems if you do that. But if you leave, it until the last minute.
Speaker 2:People think you're unapproachable. They're already talking about you. You've already got that reputation. It's really hard then to get back on the front foot of it. So I would say the best thing to do is get in front, get ahead of it and put yourself out there, and that will help you when there are issues. But yes, I think a lot of people do leave it till it's too late and they're getting a lot of complaints and it is becoming an issue and you've got the media ringing you about things and the back. But then I think the best way to do it is to be proactive.
Speaker 1:Fair enough, it sounds like good advice, rather than waiting till it's too late. So it sounds to me like this is a lifetime career. So did you always know you were going to work in community engagement? How did it come about then? You didn't always know were going to work in community engagement. How did it?
Speaker 2:come about then you didn't always know. I used to work in recruitment. I started off in recruitment. I started off in admin for recruitment back in the day when you would pack envelopes and send out mailings and type up CVs. When I started working in recruitment I really thought it was about finding people jobs and that that would be the thing, and obviously there is a lot of reward to get from that. But there was a lot of reward to get from that, but there was a lot of sales pushing in it as well and some of the decisions that I had to make in that weren't necessarily the ones that I thought the best thing to do. So put yourself first. Don't necessarily think about the candidate. Don't think about job the candidate, just think about the money. And that didn't really sit very well with me and I'm not saying that's what all recruitment agencies are like, but that's the experience that I had at some points and it just didn't feel good to me. So I left recruitment and I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't have another job and one of my old managers and somebody I used to work with they'd moved on to a different recruitment agency and they placed me at the police and this is a completely random thing but they placed me in a role as a community engagement assistant. I think it was and this is not that I ever tried this I ever aimed for this and it didn't really occur to me until probably a couple of years ago that this is a link into it. We had a team of advisors who would ring victims of crime to do satisfaction surveys and I would oversee that team and manage the results and do reports on it. So it's kind of hands-off. On the actual engaging side, it was more looking at what the outcomes were.
Speaker 2:And then I went off and I went traveling for a bit and I came back and got another job with the police as the PA to the head of HR and then I applied for that job when it became permanent because these were temporary jobs. But I wasn't sure if I would get that job because when you work for the public sector you have to go through the same interview process as everybody else and you have to do the scoring. So at the same time I am applied for the job. Community engagement I think it was communications and engagement coordinator, I think was the job and I didn't really know if I'd get it. But looking at the job spec, it had quite a lot of the skills that I've got in recruitment, like interviewing people and things. So I applied for that and I got both jobs and typical. So I decided to go for.
Speaker 2:Even though I really enjoyed being a PA and really, really loved working with the head of HR, I thought that this had a different kind of career progression and I went into it in that way.
Speaker 2:But it was a role that nobody really got to grips with, even though there was others within the role.
Speaker 2:We all kind of managed it differently and dealt with it differently and we had all from different backgrounds and, having never done anything like that before, I just made it my own and went with it and I lived it because I was out in police stations working with officers, learning all about how everything worked, and it was just a lot of trying and ever and trying to see what works best and what lands and what doesn't, and then passing that information on to training officers and it just became obvious that this was my thing and I really enjoyed the communication side of it.
Speaker 2:I really enjoyed the writing and the press releases and all of that, but then also like the face-to-face kind of stuff and and seeing the difference that you can make. I think that that is really rewarding. And like the same when it comes to working in the private sector and the corporate, giving and volunteering and seeing and the benefits it has both for the community and for employees and there's just so much good. Like people focus on it can help with your the negative response, but actually it's the good stuff, all that good stuff that you get out of it, which is what you should be focusing on and what I think are the huge benefits yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:But I don't want to say you've ended up in this career by accident, but you definitely didn't plan it.
Speaker 2:No, I think most people do finish up in stuff by accident. I think when you're a kid you can't. You don't know what you want to do, and I always loved writing. It doesn't go down like a journalist route or anything like that, so I think it was meant to be, but sometimes you have to take a bit of a wiggly road to get there, don't?
Speaker 1:you? Yeah, we all take wiggly roads to get to where we end up, definitely. My next question, then, is you've touched on CSR, esg, social value, obviously the changes ever ongoing around social value. Do you see that there's more demand for what you're doing as a consequence of what's happening around social value, or is it not really affected you?
Speaker 2:definitely.
Speaker 2:I think it's definitely the feeling of social value, but I think there's still a lot of work to do around where we're at with social value. I think that the community engagement part is missed a lot of the time and I think that that is the missing link that kind of data, that feedback, making sure that what people are doing around it is actually what is needed and that we're looking at long term goals and aims and change rather than just short term wins. I think engagement in the community is definitely what needs to happen and that's why I wanted to do this. I can see that there is that gap and I think that businesses are being asked to do social value and put it into bids and tenders and all that stuff, but they don't necessarily have the skills to know how to engage and that kind of thing. So I think there's challenges, but I think, with the kind of experience that I've got and the kind of stuff that I've done in the past, that it can definitely help.
Speaker 1:I know you talked about working with businesses. Would you work with the public sector, who perhaps need to work on their community engagement? And figure out their own social value before I start slagging off the public sector, which I love really, I love really. How would you see that working? Would you say it would be very similar, or do you think there's other issues involved around community engagement and like local authorities or public sector bodies?
Speaker 2:I think that it's difficult. I think we need to be more innovative with it. Local authorities do try, but I think they stick to very traditional methods like surveys and that kind of thing. I get them from my council a lot and I think how many times do I fill them in? Even though I advocate for this stuff, we need to be reaching people where they are and looking at how we get that feedback from them and not just expecting people to follow those traditional methods and accepting that that's good enough. I think that is also the thing. We sent out a survey. We didn't get this many results. Everybody's happy with it. It must be what they want.
Speaker 2:I think that needs to be more done around that, around consultation but making it more exciting. I think that's the thing. I think a lot of times it can just become a tick box and we need to be looking at how we can make those kind of things more fun, because when it comes to social value, I mean, obviously it's sometimes tackling tricky issues, but it's doing good and that should be seen in a positive way and be made to feel like it is. I think that's what I've always felt about social value and a lot of things that just feel so heavy and I feel like it shouldn't feel heavy. I feel like it should be that this is something that people want to do.
Speaker 2:This is a great thing. This is the legacy that we're going to leave, beyond the profits that are made by businesses and you know the day-to-day. This is that legacy and you can if you're looking at it from that kind of lens, then, and how you can do good and how you can leave that long-term impact. I think that's where we need to be coming from. So, yeah, I think we need to kind of get rid of the fee kind of image of social value in ESG and make it a bit more fabulous and yeah, well, esg is a bit dull because it's got the word governance in there you know, it's just something that we have to deal with, but social values is still in its infancy, really it's it's kind of only a few years old, so people are still dabbling in experimenting, really, aren't they?
Speaker 1:have you found that businesses will decide what they want to do around social value and then go out to get it rubber stamped by communities, as opposed to properly engaging them in deciding what that social value looks like?
Speaker 2:yes, I think it's really hard because I think at the point where they are putting the tender in, it can be like years in advance. So it's really difficult at that point to say what social value you're going to create. And I think that is where you see a lot of like oh, we'll go for the easy options, we'll go for the friendships, because this is stuff that we can actually say that we can do. Or it's when it comes to if you've got a contract that's for four years time, you could go out to speak to the community now, but then that's not going to be what's needed in four years time. So I do think that, in a way, that businesses have a challenge there. I have certain meetings. We've gone. Well, how can we promise that we don't know that we're not going to? So I think that there should be something that looks at that.
Speaker 2:And is it that I don't know whether the councils are saying this is what we want to achieve on the project? Tell us, if you win this, how would you go? I think that that's where it falls down, because you can't promise something that's going to happen in four years time. So there needs to be something more to it, but I'm not a social value expert. It has come into my role and I have touched on it. But when it comes to bid writing and stuff that isn't my area of expertise, I can see that we need more, and I think it's challenging for businesses because they don't necessarily know what's wanted from the council's perspective, the local authority perspective. So I think there needs to be a bit more guidance around it and a bit more of actually what would make an impact, and I think looking at things a bit more innovatively as well is really important and how we can tackle challenges long term.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm all for long-term impact and long-term social value and I would advocate for a social value plan that's for 10 or 15 or 20 years, where it's really clear about what's going to change and happen within a community. But it needs to be regularly reviewed. And that's where your work comes in, in that they're regularly engaged in the community to make sure that what's in that plan is still appropriate. They're regularly engaged in the community to make sure that what's in that plan is still appropriate. It's not just about we'll put a play area in a community and that's it. You know, we've ticked our box and we run away approach which we quite often see.
Speaker 1:So my next question is we've talked a lot about community engagement how you're doing doing it, and you've talked about being more innovative. What would you say good community engagement looks like? I?
Speaker 2:think it is being open to listening that is the first thing and opening feedback channels up and thinking about how you perceive locally. So I think a lot of times, if you're a customer-facing business in the community, you are thinking about how you're going to bring those customers in through community engagement, and when you're a b2b, you might kind of shut your gates and not think about it outside of that. But so I think it is about thinking about how you're perceived by those around you. How do you want to be? Just starting with your why is really important when it comes to any of this stuff. So I think, how do you want to be perceived? Looking at your impact, what impact are you having on the community? What can you change? And understanding who your stakeholders are and building those relationships and being willing to go out there and talk to people and look at the impact that you want to make. So don't just think we talk about negative impact, but what positive impact you want to make, and it doesn't have to be cost a lot of money, it doesn't have to be a massive investment. There are things that you can do to support the community, that you can do for free. But it's about thinking about what difference do you want to make? And I think, starting with your why and communication, being open to feedback, being willing to act on feedback, all of those things and just listening and not deciding for the community.
Speaker 2:If you're doing donations, don't just make decisions. Don't decide what's best for them. Go and ask them. And I always say to people go and introduce yourself to the parish council, doesn't matter whatever council it is around you. Go and speak to them. It like we said, they might tell you that if they've had some complaints about you, you can then fix them. But then you can then start building that relationship and looking at where you can improve. And once you've got that relationship, they will tell you if there's issues before they become bigger issues and you're being proactive in it. So it's just doing. It's not about necessarily really big things that you need to do. It's about taking those small steps that you can do that can improve what you're doing generally. Make sure that what you're doing is having the impact that you want it to do and is what communities need and are asking for.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. So loads of tips in there for how to do it right and to do it well. My next question I don't know whether you'll be able to answer this, but is what's the toughest work you've done around community engagement? So where there's been a real challenge or issue, you may want to make it so that it's not obvious who you're talking about. If you can answer that question, there's always challenges.
Speaker 2:I think the hardest thing is when you're a big organization is being perceived as just this big organization that doesn't care. And I think the biggest challenge for me has been working in an organization that have independently managed sites where everybody does things a little bit differently and everybody has a different approach and trying to pull it all back together and get everybody thinking of the same kimchi and having the same approach to it. So I think, um, that's a challenge. Some people are a bit nervous to do it and scared, so I think that that's been a big result. But those people that do it well, you see how much that they get out of it and how many less issues they've got.
Speaker 2:When you've got people that you can see doing it well, that shows the other people that this actually can work and this is actually a good thing. And that is what good looks like when you're working on planning applications or on sites. That can always be challenging, but where I've seen it work really well is where they've had good community engagement in place to start off with. So you're never going to necessarily have everybody agree with what you want to do, but when you've already got that relationship there, people know that you're approachable. People know that you are willing to listen and make changes. That makes those kind of contentious issues and difficult issues a lot easier to deal with, because you get the community support in that way.
Speaker 1:Okay we don't like this, but they're reasonable.
Speaker 2:They'll listen to what we've got to say. We'll be reasonable back, rather than it becoming kind of like everybody's against each other in a different opposite ends of it. There are challenges, but it's how you approach them, whether you're open to them. It makes life a lot easier thank you.
Speaker 1:My final question for you, then, is if people want you to find out more about your work, and how can they get in touch with you?
Speaker 2:okay, so I've got a website which is niavanna. com, and we are on LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook as well, so they can find us there. I'm a little bit more difficult to find with a name like Emma Smith, but you can also find me on all of those places as well.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining me today, Emma. It's been really nice talking to you. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Make an Impact podcast. I hope you found today's conversation as inspiring and thought-provoking as I did. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with others who want to create positive change. You can connect with me on LinkedIn and learn more about my work at makeanimpactciccouk. Until next time, let's keep making an impact in the world.