Water Workforce Toolbox

Best practice depends on the situation and must always be context sensitive. Each of the approaches summarised in the IAP2 spectrum are relevant for community engagement at different times.

A study on Community Engagement in the Water Sector by the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities (CRC for WSC) evaluated the effectiveness of different ways of engaging with communities. There is a focus in the review on research that evaluates the effectiveness of different ways of engaging with communities. The review also provides guidelines for each of the key types of engagement processes including:

• Initiatives that provide input to the community with the aim to inform, educate or raise awareness, change individual or household behaviour and/or build policy support;
• Initiatives that seek input from the community in order to gauge community opinion and preferences about current water practices and specific policy options, or to explore broader visions for the local area; and
• Initiatives that build active and connected communities, focusing on participation in decision making, building trust and effective long-term relationships between and within water organisations and communities, and building active community stewardship using citizen science programs where community members conduct environmental monitoring or community management programs.

The report found that face-to-face and mass media water education and awareness campaigns were generally successful at increasing knowledge and improving attitudes to more sustainable water practices and policies.

Each of these elements requires a service provider to target the appropriate segment(s) of their community.

Be on Target

Water Service Providers must communicate with a broad range of audiences including consumers who pay for water and related services, citizens with a right to access clean water and related services, the general public, communities of interest (individuals linked by a shared location or interest) and stakeholders that are directly or indirectly affected by an issue.

The review by the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities provided three principles to increase the likelihood of effectiveness of different engagement processes, including:

• Know your audience / community: understand who you are targeting and what their current issues, constraints, knowledge and behaviour are to ensure you develop a program that is relevant to your audience or community.
• Use diverse mechanisms to reach diverse communities: diverse groups vary in their ability to engage and participate, and it is important to provide diverse outreach pathways to maximise your reach.
• Frame the issue carefully: think carefully about what aspects to draw out that will guide people’s thinking about the issue, e.g. messages that appeal to closely held values usually have more traction. Frame your message using local examples and choose words and images that enhance motivation and reduce negative responses.

Producing an Impact-Likelihood Matrix can help service providers select behaviours that will have a high likelihood of uptake but also delivers a worthwhile impact. The example below looked at the projected impact and likelihood of adoption of a range of water saving behaviours. This type of analysis can help in understanding the current position and needs of a particular community.

Community Based Social Marketing

Another technique that is being used by many Councils is Community Based Social Marketing (CBSM). Traditional marketing campaigns focus on providing information, using printed material to inform communities about certain issues and recommending or suggesting ways they could make a difference. These types of campaigns are becoming decreasingly effective due to the large amounts of information people need to process every day, and when used in isolation they therefore have little effect on actually changing behaviour.

Although information intensive campaigns are good as a first point to raise awareness, CBSM offers a complementary approach that uses psychological theories about social norms, social diffusion and self-perception to generate change and foster sustainable behaviour. Some of the persuasive communication and behaviour change tools used in CBSM include:

• A pledge or commitment in writing or verbally can increase the likelihood of adopting a behaviour;
• A reminder through the use of prompts (in a water efficiency project in Perth, the application of prompts like stickers near taps reduced water use by 23%);
• Incentives like the provision of rebates for water saving devices;
• Reinforcing social norms by highlighting the number of people already doing the desired activity can pressure others to conform;
• Providing feedback about behaviour, for example the highly successful Target 140 campaign that provided weekly graphical illustrations of residential consumption over the course of the campaign;
• Making it easier for people to do the desired activity; and
• Framing messages to emphasise the benefits of acting or the consequences of not acting.

CBSM takes a deliberate approach to apply the strategies discussed above including:

• carefully selecting the behaviour to be promoted;
• identifying the barriers and benefits associated with the selected behaviour;
• designing a strategy that utilises behaviour-change tools to address these barriers and benefits;
• piloting the strategy with a small segment of a community, and finally;
• evaluating the impact of the program once it has been implemented broadly.

A number of Queensland Councils have embraced CBSM as an effective strategy to engage with their communities, allowing them to establish what the barriers to change are in their communities and then develop strategies that will drive down those barriers and increase the benefits to change. Here are some Demand Management Case Studies using CBSM campaigns including the Townsville Great Sprinkler Swap and the Cairns Sponge Campaign.

Inclusive and accessible communication

Inclusive communication helps ensure messages are delivered in the most appropriate way and reach the widest possible audience. When developing printed materials:

• Ensure materials and publications positively depict and promote diversity in terms of age, gender, disability, and ethnicity
• Use a minimum type size of 12 font and plain fonts, such as Arial or Verdana. These are often described as ‘sans serif’ (without small curls or decorative features)
• Avoid using blocks of text written in capital letters. Information is easier to read for people with low vision or limited literacy if it is written using a mix of upper and lower case.
• Use lots of white space and a simple layout
• Use bold text for emphasis rather than underlining or italics
• Justify margins on the left-hand side and leave the right-hand margin unjustified
• Use contrasting colours to increase readability such as black text on a white background
• Do not place text over pictures, photos or other images, as this makes the text hard to read
• Avoid using tables, charts, graphics, or images. If you do use these, include a caption explaining the information. Also include an alt text description describing the image.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has a web and document accessibility guide, to help ensure online information and experiences are accessible to the widest possible audience.

It is important that we use language that is culturally appropriate and respectful of the diversity of the peoples we work with. The below outlines key considerations for use of inclusive language, and links for further guidance.

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, First Nations, First People’s preferred over Indigenous - see Reconciliation Australia terminology guide, Australian government guidelines for inclusive language
• Gender and sexual diversity - see Australian government guidelines for inclusive language for gender and sexual diversity
• Ethnic groups / ethnic Australians - see Australian government guidelines for inclusive language for cultural and linguistic diversity
• Use "person living with a disability" rather than "disabled person" - see People with Disability Australia Language Guide
• Use "community development" rather than "welfare, social services, aid"
• Use "marginalised, vulnerable, at risk, disadvantaged" rather than "needy, poor"