Keeping safe while engaging in communities – National Safe Work Month

At LKB we love talking to community members, helping them to participate in infrastructure projects or delivering important health messages. We know that projects will always have better outcomes when genuine community consultation is factored in from the start and fed into project planning.

As community engagement practitioners this can mean there is a lot of time spent in locations away from our normal workplaces, and lots of time travelling. Over the past two years, many of our team have been on the road delivering a national community engagement campaign in every Australian state and territory, as well as other engagement projects that have taken us to communities across NSW and Queensland.

While on the road delivering projects, there are some things we do to prioritise our team’s safety and wellbeing. We have a Time in Lieu policy for any overtime worked at events and we encourage our team to take time off in the week after travel to recharge. We always engage in pairs and keep in each other’s line of sight during engagement events. We ensure people take regular breaks during engagement and – being communications professionals – we are good at talking to each other and checking on our team’s wellbeing, especially at events where emotions can run high. During times of travel, our team back at the office keep projects running smoothly and support the team on the road remotely.

We know that we need to resource our events smartly with enough team members to deliver effectively and not leave anyone in stressful situations. We allow our more junior team members plenty of shadowing and training opportunities to build their confidence in community engagement and ensure they are comfortable before engaging at events.

October is National Safe Work Month, a reminder for us all to commit to creating safe and healthy workplaces. This is a great time to reflect on how safely we have delivered our work this year, and what we would change moving forward.

To find out how The LKB Agency can help you deliver impactful community engagement, open a conversation today.