If you’re investing in deliberative engagement, you want your organisation, community and project to reap the rewards.

However, instead, we often see missteps made in recruitment that lead to difficult outcomes –including creating unforeseen issues for the organisation and degrading trust in the process.

Deliberative engagement is becoming more of a norm, particularly for the public sector, and that means there are community panels and citizens’ juries happening all over Australia.

Deliberation can be incredibly powerful and transformative and - when used at the right time, and with the right project/question - it can improve decision-making and enhance outcomes for communities.

how to avoid deliberation disasters - a new series

Unfortunately, when organisations are expected to deliberate, it can lead to some approaching it with a ‘tick the box’ mentality. Cutting the wrong corners can have disasterous consequences.

To help your organisation avoid possible future pain, we’re starting this new series on what can go wrong and how to avoid it. It’s an opportunity to learn from (and avoid) the mistakes of others that have deliberated before you.

Our first topic? The complex and very specialised world of recruitment for deliberative engagement.

recruitment - an essential piece of the deliberation puzzle

Full-scale deliberative processes are underpinned by key principles, including that they are representative (meaning participants deliberating are broadly representative of those impacted by the decision based on key demographic criteria).

This involves a randomly selected, stratified sample of panel members to be independently recruited through a process that, ideally, involves at least two phases of randomisation.

This can be a big undertaking, and there are ways to scale recruitment approaches depending on the circumstances of your engagement process.

However, while there can be a little wriggle room, cutting down the process to make it more time or cost effective can be problematic, particularly if key principles or steps are missed.

the success of the whole process is underpinned by not only who is in the room, but how you got them there.

We commonly see errors and missteps when the process is managed in-house by the client or when a contractor that doesn’t have experience in this specialised form of recruitment is engaged.

So, be cautious when looking to save time and money and ask yourself, are we accidentally opening ourselves up to a costly consequence?

COMMON recruitment ERRORS

Open EOI period (anyone can apply) that doesn’t include any randomisation (note that while this can be acceptable in some circumstances, it is always more robust to have a randomised EOI process for deliberation where possible).

Poor promotion of the opportunity to get involved during EOI period.

Lack of independence (i.e. run in-house by the client).

Removing randomisation from the process either partially or completely (sometimes due to low numbers or to expedite the process).

Poor framing of the issue and the group’s remit.

Poor management of recruited participants (i.e. communication delays and gaps, different abilities not catered for etc.).

Recruitment outsourced to an inexperienced provider that does not specialise in random, stratified selection processes or understand deliberative principles.

Host organisation interference in the process (i.e. trying to influence who receives an invite or is selected).

Trying to achieve too much through recruitment (i.e. every group in the community is represented, too many ‘filters’ or targets).

Changing the filters late in the process and/or adding people in later due to a missed filter.

Targeted stakeholders are brought into the deliberating group as participants and make up a large percentage of the group (instead of having their views fed into the panel’s discussions for consideration).

POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES

Missed opportunity to hear from new, diverse voices or involve a broad range of perspectives. Instead, the room is full of familiar faces that you regularly engage with. The discussion is less rich and less likely to include new ideas.

The group isn’t representative of the broader community, so the outputs are less balanced and don’t meet the needs of the whole community impacted.

Low numbers respond to initial EOI and there aren’t enough people in the initial recruitment ‘pool’ to allow for the next phase of randomised, stratified selection.

People with a stake in the issue or entrenched firmly one side of the issue can ‘stack’ the process by encouraging people with similar, agenda-driven views to apply.

Sub-groups form within the deliberating group and work together to undermine the process.

Accusations that the deliberating group was ‘hand-picked’ by host organisation. This results in depletion of trust in the process. Decision-makers and the panel find it hard to ‘stand behind’ the decisions.

The deliberating group is too disjointed to come to agreement and struggles to work collaboratively together, which can result in no agreement being reached around recommendations.

The deliberating group loses confidence in their own representativeness and worries about the broader community’s views on their decisions.

Host organisation loses confidence in the representativeness of the panel and participants don’t want to move forward with the process.

Large drop-off of deliberating participants through the process (although a small drop-off is normal) and less than 65% of the original group participating in the final session where the group agrees on its final recommendations and presents a report to decision-makers.

The deliberating group feels unduly influenced by one stakeholder group or individual and some participants withdraw completely due to a sense of power imbalance in the room.

The media and/or influential individuals (such as politicians) attack the process, using the recruitment missteps as an opportunity question process integrity.

Phew!

That’s just some of the things that can go wrong when it comes to recruitment. If you’re feeling a little worried at this point, never fear. It can be done right!

overwhelmed? get some independent advice

There are organisations that specialise in this field, such as the Sortition Foundation and Deliberately Engaging. The newDemocracy Foundation (nDF) also has lots of resources available for host organisations.

As facilitators, we can also advise around recruitment planning, and in some cases, we manage recruitment for organisations (independently from the client).

GETTING ON TRACK

Recruitment for deliberation is specialised, and there are many steps involved. Here are just a few tips for getting it right.

Spend time understanding your community and think about what a descriptive representation looks like.

Make sure that the topic is worthy of a deliberative process in the first place and it truly is a wicked problem or opportunity that your community will connect with.

Start planning your recruitment early. It takes eight weeks, as a minimum, to bring a panel together and to be ready for your first sessions.

Use an independent recruiter when trust is low, the projects are large in scale and long in delivery.

Think of ways to get 'bang for your buck’ - look at longer or ongoing panels that support multiple topics and decisions and allows expertise of the panel to evolve. Standing panels are starting to pop up, such as the Mornington Peninsula Shire Citizens’ Panel.