The Beginner’s Guide to Collaboration and Engagement Software Tools
Kia ora | Hello
So you dived headfirst into remote working. You adapted quickly and made some big calls about what work to continue and what to pause.
But you may now be hitting a productivity wall.
Your team may have been thrust into a new remote working environment. You’ve probably lost the anchor of a physical workplace. Your priorities have gone out the window.
Your organisation’s impact will depend on how you collaborate - both internally and externally.
But it’s easy to become overwhelmed with all the online collaboration and engagement tools out there.
This guide aims to help you choose the right tech tool for your collaboration and engagement needs.
In it, you’ll learn about:
The one key question you need to ask yourself before choosing online collaboration or engagement software (skip to this part)
The different categories of online collaboration and engagement software (skip to this part)
How to make the most of whatever software you choose (skip to this part).
So let’s dive in and take your virtual collaboration and engagement to the next level.
Ngā mihi nui | Warm regards
Paul McGregor and the Business Lab team
Part 1: Get clear on your needs
What even is “online collaboration and engagement software”?
You may be wondering what we even mean by “collaboration and engagement software”.
After all, if you google this, you’ll get all sorts of responses. Many software tools use these labels even though they serve different purposes.
Here’s what we mean by “online collaboration and engagement software” in this article...
“We’re talking about software that helps your organisation to work with others to achieve your objectives.”
Yes, it’s a broad definition.
And that’s just the point. When you started searching for online collaboration or engagement software, your brain may have jumped straight to a particular platform you have seen another organisation use.
We encourage you to push pause and first consider your objectives before you dive headfirst into the deep pit of solutions that exist.
Start with this one powerful question
To be strategic, you need to forget about the technology solution to begind with. Your starting point should be the pain you hope the technology will solve.
We recommend this powerful question from Christoph Berendes from Facilitation Analytics:
““What would you do, more or less manually, if you had a large budget and lots of time to address your engagement challenges?””
It’s a powerful question because it forces you to examine your motivations and objectives. “What would you do manually if you had unlimited time and money for this collaboration?”
If the answer is "deliver a carefully customized brochure to each community member", you’re looking for a very different type of technology than if the answer is "hold small group meetings with community members around the clock, all across our region, to be sure we got everyone's informed input".
We’ve taken to asking this question of our clients whenever the subject of online collaboration or engagement comes up. Once you figure out what you would do manually with unlimited time and money, then you can look for technology to help you achieve that.
Other important considerations
Who’s your target audience?
Who exactly are you trying to engage?
You may be tempted to respond with “the community”.
But try to go further than that. As Sioux Campbell explains in “Which community are we on about?" the term community could refer to all sorts of different people in a town, city, region or country. So, which people - or community - is affected by what you are doing? The more specific you can be, the better.
What’s their tech literacy?
Once you’ve defined your target communities, you then need to understand their technological literacy.
Are they tech-savvy?
What kinds of devices do they own?
What’s their social media use?
And so on.
You can get a high-level understanding of this from the OECD’s Survey of Adult Skills. This assesses people’s “problem-solving skills in a technology environment”, which is a fancy description for technology skills.
You may also find a helpful regional breakdown at Figure.nz or Stats.govt.nz.
Beyond that, we suggest speaking to some leaders in your community of interest to gauge the tech literacy of your community members.
What’s your budget?
You’ve got two costs to consider when investing in software: setup costs and ongoing costs.
Sometimes the initial setup cost is minimal but you’ll have significant ongoing costs to make the most of your time investment.
Think about social media. You can create an account for free. But to achieve your objectives, you may need to hire a new staff member, pay for video content, pay for additional software to help with planning and delegating content, or pay for targeted advertising.
Other online engagement options will have significant setup and ongoing costs.
Many all-in-one platforms calculate their price based on the population size you want to engage with. If you’re a small local government authority, you may not get much change from $50,000 each year. If you’re a national government agency, don’t be surprised by six-figure yearly costs.
What’s your capacity and capability for online engagement?
You need to think about who will use the software in your organisation.
Do you want one or two dedicated people to manage the system or would you like people across your organisation to play a role? You may achieve more by involving more people, but you’ll need to spend more time onboarding, training and reminding them to use the software.
You may need to involve a range of people across your organisation to get things set up:
You may need to work with your IT team to decide what software to use and how to implement it.
You may need to involve your legal team, depending on the sensitivity of your work.
Plus you should be working with your comms or design team to help things look attractive and accessible.
What are your privacy and security must-haves?
Your organisation’s IT team should be able to help you out here. And you should be speaking with them early.
You may soon find yourself swimming in jargon. Here’s an example from one software offering:
SSO via SAML
256-bit SSL encryption over the wire
AES256 encryption at rest
SOC2-certified infrastructure
99.9% uptime SLA.
Excuse me?
It’s important that you think of security and privacy as two separate but related issues.
Think about a physical place, like a bank. Security measures are what stop anybody getting into the safe. Privacy measures are what stop you from seeing how much your neighbour has in his account when you’re next to him in the queue.
For security, Mathew Crozier from Bang the Table recommends looking out for three key things:
That the provider follows a systematic approach.
“At Bang the Table we get audited and certified to the ISO standard 27001. I think that external audit process is important - I know it sharpens our focus.”
Look for regular testing.
“Testing should be done regularly and the provider should be able to show you evidence of recent tests. This is easy for any reputable provider. We have new clients run these from time to time and we run our own. Don’t worry if the tests have found a weakness - that’s the whole point. Do worry if there’s not a clear plan to fix any weaknesses found.”
Finally look to see that the software is hosted by a reputable hosting service.
The service should have all the necessary back up, security and redundancy protocols in place. “If it’s hosted with one of the big players like AWS or IBM you can be reassured.”
For privacy, GDPR is the gold standard. This is the General Data Protection Regulations created by the European Union. A provider should be able to show you policies that demonstrate compliance.
All sounding a bit much?
Yes, there is a lot to consider. And that’s before you even start browsing the internet for software options.
To reduce your risk, we recommend starting small and testing the software on one project or with one team.
Or, it can be helpful to get a recommendation and start with that. And that’s what the next section is all about.
Part 2: Let’s go window shopping
Okay, so you’ve done the groundwork. You understand what pain the software needs to solve.
Now it’s time to go window shopping.
Most software tools these days allow you to take the tool for a ride to see if it’s the right fit. Make the most of this to figure out which tech tool will serve your collaboration and engagement needs.
To help you know what to look for, we’ve broken down online engagement software into these categories:
The options are evolving all the time, so these categories are not always clear cut.
Still, we hope this guide will give you a steer in the right direction. If you have any feedback about the categories we’ve created, or want to add your software to our suggestions - please contact us here.
Public-facing community engagement platforms
These are probably what most people think of when they think of “online engagement software.” They are essentially a website that is designed solely with public participation in mind.
This is an example of an engagement platform created through Social Pinpoint.
These platforms combine a whole range of tools. You can choose those which enable cross-communication like an open forum. Or you can choose those which enable one-way communication like a survey. You can turn different features on and off as you choose.
This infographic from Bang The Table illustrates the kinds of tools you can choose from on a public-facing engagement platform.
You will need to invest a good chunk of time and budget into setting one of these platforms up. Some may integrate better with your existing tech tools than others, so keep an eye out for that. And some will have tools that others don’t, such as citizen budgeting. If you’ve done the groundwork we suggest in Part 1 of our online engagement article series, you’ll know what you need to look for.
What kind of manual tasks can these platforms achieve online?
Surveys
Idea generation
Group discussions
Mapping of key features
Sharing of stories or experiences
Group decision-making
Group budgeting
And more...
We aren’t here to recommend one platform over another, but here are some you may wish to explore:
Internal-facing engagement platforms
These platforms give you a suite of tools to track and manage individual relationships with different organisations and individuals.
They are similar to a CRM (customer relationship management) system that many businesses use to track prospective customers and sales. But these systems are designed more with government and community organisations’ needs in mind.
Think back to the question about what you would do manually if you had unlimited time and money. If your answer was something like “We would track every interaction with the public so we could have a deeper understanding about what different people think, want and need…” - then this is the solution for you.
Some options to consider in this category include:
Simply Stakeholders (which is more lightweight than the other two mentioned above.)
You may be tempted to use Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel to manage your stakeholder contact lists. This is great for managing small or one-off projects, but we don’t recommend it for organisation-wide use. You will soon get frustrated with people using the spreadsheet for different purposes and in different ways. Plus you will struggle to extract any meaningful data to inform your decision-making.
Social media
Your organisation is probably already on social media. But it’s one thing to have a page on Facebook and Instagram, and another to actually use these platforms to meaningfully engage your community in your work.
Some people view social media as more of a communications tool than an engagement tool. Ray Scanlan from Bang the Table explains the risks well:
The other challenge with social media is it can place your organisation on the defensive; it’s often a very reactive platform. Somebody complains, and you feel compelled to respond. It’s not your platform, and it can be harder for you to shape the conversation with facts, figures and context.
Having said all that, we have seen some high-quality and well-targeted engagement efforts through social media.
In this case story, Planned Parenthood used Snapchat to involve young people in their organisation’s work to enable access to abortion services. With 3 months of intensive planning, and 5 people on their Snapchat team, they managed to engage with a large audience of young people on a platform that young people felt they owned.
Or there’s this story of an Australian hospital engaging with a group of young mothers through a small Facebook group. They used a Facebook Live chat between 8-10pm when they knew the mothers were most active.
Like the Planned Parenthood example, this was resource-intensive. They had 4 staff members during the session, and it was complemented by three in-person workshops and several 1:1 interviews.
Can you notice a key theme in both these case stories? In both stories, the organisation understands their audience, commits sufficient resources to the engagement, and integrates their online efforts with in-person efforts.
Video conferencing software
These tools allow you to run events, meetings and gatherings online. Your organisation is probably already using one of these - whether that’s Zoom, Skype, Google Meet or GoToMeeting.
Zoom is our recommendation for three key reasons:
It’s become a household name because it’s easy for people to get in and use it.
It has some powerful features to enable interactive dialogue. Breakout rooms, non-verbal reactions, polls and the chat feature work well on Zoom.
You can see 25 video screens at once, which helps to convey a sense of community. Some other tools only show a small number of video screens at once.
Whatever video-conference tool you choose - are you you using it to its full potential? If you want some guidance on how to effectively facilitate online, you may want to get in touch with us.
Collaborative whiteboard tools
How do you run creative-thinking workshops online?
If your organisation spends a lot of time on codesign workshops, you may want to take that process online.
Collaborative online whiteboards come with virtual sticky notes, templates, chat features and timers. Combined with a video conferencing software, they can re-create the power of an in-person workshop.
But there’s an art to doing this well, so we suggest starting small and building from your successes.
We recommend MURAL or Miro for a more comprehensive tool. Our personal favourite is Miro due to its free plan and the reasons outlined in this comparison article.
If you would prefer a simpler tool, try Google Jamboard or Microsoft Whiteboard.
Event engagement tools
Have you ever been to a conference only for the speakers to drawl at you for hours with no audience interaction?
These tools aim to prevent that.
They allow you to survey your audience and get real-time responses to inform decisions.
Some examples include Sli.do, Mentimeter and Thought Exchange. Another new tool to watch out for is AhaSlides with its solid free plan.
Collaborative project management tools
Is your aim to empower people to keep working together on a particular challenge?
Then you may want to look into a collaborative project management tool. Trello and Asana are powerful but simple tools with good free plans. Or there’s Monday.com, Basecamp and so many more.
Resist the temptation to try them all. Choose one, and get going.
Group decision-making tools
Are you trying to make decisions with large groups of people? There are a whole raft of tools that can help.
These are three of our favourites.
Loomio is designed specifically with consensus decision-making and consent-based decision-making in mind.
It is essentially a discussion forum where people can Agree / Disagree / Block / Abstain from a decision.
Loomio is particularly helpful for groups working in different time zones. People can add their thoughts and vote on a decision at a time that suits them.
But the main weakness of Loomio is it relies on people having excellent written communication skills. You’ll hear people talking about how they spent hours drafting a response to a Loomio proposal, only to delete it all before posting it - out of uncertainty about how their view would be received.
Like any tool, it requires good support and implementation to be effective.
Another favourite is Group Map
Group Map is a real-time online brainstorming tool for meetings, workshops and events.
It’s similar to the collaborative whiteboard tools we mentioned above. However, Group Map’s focus is on good process and decision-making, whereas the whiteboarding tools tend to focus more on design and visuals.
What we love about Group Map is its focus on process. First, you design your canvas that people will work on. This could be a SWOT analysis, a Pros/Cons list, a Business Model Canvas or anything else you care to create.
Then Group Map allows you to choose a series of steps for the workshop - as you can see in our example below for a strategy development workshop. This is where the tool comes into its own. It can help your group to narrow its focus in a way that leaves people feeling heard and understood.
The third group decision-making tool we recommend is Consider.It.
Consider.It aims to create civil, organised and efficient online dialogue. Imagine if you combined a survey with a forum. That’s Consider.It.
The survey part of the tool involves you proposing something to your participants, and each participant saying how strongly they support the idea and sharing their pros and cons.
The forum part of the tool involves people up-voting and commenting on other people’s pros or cons.
The free version allows you to create a question with a custom domain. But if your organisation is serious about committing to the tool, you will want to work with the Consider.It team to create a customised website. This usually costs between US$4,000 to US$9,000.
Anonymised discussion tools
Are you working on a project with the potential for significant conflict? It may pay to start with an anonymous discussion - and online technology can enable this much better than offline methods.
Synthetron is a tool unlike any other we’ve come across. It offers a unique, agile crowd-listening methodology for hosting large-scale online dialogues. These conversations happen in real time. They are moderated, scaleable, anonymous, inclusive and conclusive.
Keen to learn more? This video provides a good starting point.
Part 3: How to make the most of your investment in online collaboration and engagement
Great - so you’ve done your groundwork to figure out what kind of online collaboration or engagement software you need, and you’ve chosen your software.
You might think your work is done. But the hardest part is yet to come.
What can happen is that your initial motivation for the software peaks quite quickly as you start to implement it. The big promises you read about on the website soon disappear as you hit resistance within your organisation or community. “Not another platform!”
So in the final part of our 3 part article series on online engagement, we provide some tips on how to make the most of your investment in online collaboration and engagement.
Tip 1: Simplify complexity
Online engagement adds an extra dimension to manage - your community’s tech literacy.
We advocate for the principle of “simplifying complexity”. This can apply in many ways.
First - carefully consider your invitations to collaborate online. Make sure your language is simple and clear.
Try using the Hemmingway App to make your writing clear and easy to understand. The app rates the reading level of your writing. Aim for Grade 6, which is the equivalent of an 11-13 year old’s reading level
Images, infographics and timelines can also help with accessibility. If your organisation doesn’t have a communications or design team, try using a tool like Canva to make your own infographics or designs.
Work with translators if you want to engage with non-English speakers. At a minimum, you could have an introductory paragraph explaining how a person can use Google Translate to translate an entire website. See here for instructions on this.
Tip 2: Start small and build on your successes
Engaging online can sometimes feel like an ‘all or nothing’ endeavour, especially when some of the platforms require a significant upfront cost. You can reduce the risk of wasted investment by starting small and testing the platform frequently with your target audience.
You may want to develop a codesign group who provide feedback on your setup before you release it to your target audience. Or you may want to start with just one project, rather than going all-in across the whole organisation.
The key thing is to test the platform under friendly fire, get regular feedback, and build on your successes.
Tip 3: Get some professional help
Engaging and collaborating online requires some new mindsets and skillsets. Your organisation may need some help to build your capability - and a professional can help with this.
Many of the larger and more expensive online engagement software platforms offer this as part of their software-as-a-service. They may provide a dedicated person to walk you through the system, to train your staff, and to provide feedback on your setup. If it’s included - make the most of this resource!
Or, you may want to involve a facilitator or engagement professional as you shift from conducting your engagements in-person to online. If you’re wondering if that would be valuable for you, this article might help you to decide if that would be worth your investment.
Don’t make the shift to virtual collaboration alone
COVID-19 has created a monumental opportunity to shift how organisations work. We’re excited about the chance to embed a new way of working.
We believe a digital-first approach to collaboration and engagement can provide significant benefits. But this shift in behaviour won’t be easy. It’s going to require new mindsets, new tools and new skills.
Ngā mihi nui | Warm regards
From all the Business Lab team
P.S. Do you have any feedback on this guide?
This is just version 1 and we’ve pulled it together quickly in response to organisations’ needs during the COVID lockdown. We plan to expand and build on this guide in the future and we’d like to know how we could improve it.
We’re all ears. Get in touch with us here.