Best practices for community engagement

Use what is already here and do some work yourself before asking others. Students and employees at Waterloo have strong and competing demands for their time, energy, and commitment.

1. To avoid overburdening campus community members with requests for engagement, consider the following before embarking on a project or initiative: 

• What are the objectives in engaging with the campus on this topic? 
• Is engagement needed? And if so, where on the engagement continuum does this work fall (see When should you consider community engagement)? 
• Do other people on campus have similar objectives in their communications work? 
• If yes, connect with them to see if they already have answers, data, information, that can help you meet your objectives 
• Are there information portals that already exist where you can find the information you need? And have you thought through how you can share the information you learn with colleagues? 
• Unsure? Use existing internal communications channels to put out a call to colleagues to enquire if work has already been done in this area 
• Have you thought about the ways your ask can be mutually beneficial? 
• Have you considered compensation and/or acknowledgement? 

2. Avoid transactional engagements.

Develop ongoing relationship with groups to keep conversation purposeful and proactive. Stay connected with other communicators on campus so you can build on pre-existing/shared knowledge as you develop stories.

3.  Create engagement plans that focus on engaging with individuals with an openness and curiosity for understanding their perspectives. As standard, include space and opportunity for those you are engaging with to express their preferences and needs in a way that is safe and comfortable. 

• Consider referring to the Inclusive Meeting Guide, developed by the Equity Office. 
• Considering diverse gender identities and expressions of our campus community, how can you create a safe and welcoming virtual or physical space for your engagement?
• Normalize the use of pronouns where people are comfortable to share them. 
• Consider using profile names in virtual spaces as a way to share your pronoun, if you are comfortable doing