The institution designs, reviews and updates social programmes from the user’s perspective by listening to and engaging participants.
By engaging participants in all aspects of the design (or review and updating) of a social programme, the institution gains access to a vast pool of expertise that helps solve problems, generates new ideas and inspires innovation. By involving and listening to participants, the institution will:
- Design and implement better benefits and services that work as intended;
- Reduce design and implementation costs by eliminating errors (e.g. the costs incurred when something new doesn’t work);
- Set and maintain expected levels of service performance, within the institution’s capacity and capability.
Guideline code
SQ_00400
Mechanism
Mechanism
- The management should use a variety of methods of consultation, engagement and co-design (e.g. interviews; focus groups; workshops; consultative forums; user laboratories; concept or experimental offices; proof of concept, pilot projects involving stakeholders and users; social media – Twitter, Facebook, blogs) to assess participants’ understanding of their rights and obligations. Lack of understanding is often a result of service quality gaps within external communication processes.
- The management should establish face-to-face and online participant councils and/or forums, in which to discuss and document feedback on new initiatives and performance as a basis for action. These may be based on participant groupings selected on programme lines or demographics, social partners, other stakeholders and/or a cross-section of different groups. The process should include tapping into existing groups, associations or forums (e.g. confederations of employers or trade unions, relevant lobby groups).
- The management should identify the major participant segments and sub-segments with similar needs and wants, to categorize participants’ voices. Segmentation could be by:
- Programme (e.g. unemployed, retired, family);
- Service mode (e.g. third party, agent, staff assisted, self);
- Societal group (e.g. working age, baby boomer, generation X, generation Y, migrant);
- Geography (e.g. metropolitan, rural, remote);
- Location (e.g. housing estate, apartment block);
- Life event (e.g. birth, marriage, separation, change in employment, death);
- Disability;
- Gender;
- ICT adoption (e.g. early adopter, follower, no access);
- Income.
- The management should allocate responsibility for leading external engagement to a single senior executive who should, ideally, retain the responsibility throughout their employment in the institution, even if they change positions. This ensures continuity of executive leadership, sponsorship and public face, demonstrating the institution’s commitment to and ownership of service quality issues.
- The management should establish mechanisms by which to actively seek and act upon staff suggestions for improvement. Staff are frontline participants in social security delivery, engaged with users and ideally placed to see where improvements in service quality need to be made. Staff feedback and engagement is an essential component of an effective continuous improvement approach (see Guideline 7).
- The management should be alert for signs of communication breakdown as the listening process may reveal patterns in participants’ lack of understanding of the social security system (e.g. of the process intent or their rights and obligations). Service quality improvement may be possible through improved external communication rather than wholesale business process changes.
- The relevant senior executive should use social media to interact with participants. Social media create opportunities for innovation with more frequent and easy government-to-participant communication.
- Where it is not possible for the institution to formally or directly interact with participants or participant segments, the management should nominate experienced staff to adopt the roles of participants and advocate on their issues during the design and development of a social programme. This is to avoid a “group thinking” situation where staff collectively assume they know what participants need and want without formal challenge and review.
Structure
Structure
- The board and management should actively ask participants what they need and want, adopting a segmentation approach as different groups will have different needs and wants.
- The management should engage participants fully in the programme design process.
- The board and management should ensure an appropriate voice for the most vulnerable members of society (e.g. people with disabilities; minority cultural, ethnic or religious groups; refugees; the elderly; the very young), engaging with appropriate representative bodies where necessary.
Title HTML
Guideline 2. Consulting and engaging with participants
Type
Guideline_1
Weight
8