News

Linking Businesses with Public Audiences

Friday, 18 September 2009 10:55am

Science Oxford has recently completed a project funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Ingenious Grant Scheme to help local engineering companies promote the work they do to different audiences. Five local engineering companies worked with us to develop a variety of activities, events and resources, ranging from interactive workshops for careers days, recruitment material, public events and website resources. “We’ve been really pleased with the quality of the activities and resources produced by the engineers, and this project has also been a great learning experience for us as well”, says Emma Wightman, Events and Exhibitions Officer at Science Oxford.

One of the most challenging aspects of the project was recruiting companies to take part. We trialled a ‘top-down’ recruitment method (i.e. where a company is recruited to public engagement from the top level, such as through a Director). We found that the top-down approach is possible, but very difficult, and have drawn the following conclusions for recruiting companies to public engagement.

Expect a low hit-rate – contact many more companies than you want to work with, expect to chase and understand that they will have other priorities.
Using personal links and contacts was the most successful recruitment method, either by drawing on our own contacts, or using another organisation’s.
Generally, we found that companies are unclear about what public engagement is. By repackaging the Ingenious project to explain public engagement in the context of company needs (e.g. recruitment, CSR, CPD, etc.) lead to increased buy-in.
Make it as easy as possible for companies to become involved. For example, invite them to take part in events/activities that are already taking place, make suggestions for possible events/activities that they can do themselves, and provide plenty of support when developing and delivering events/activities.
Offering staff training can encourage companies to become involved.
It is important to raise awareness of what public engagement groups can do for businesses, and how they can work together, either through individual group publicity, or promotion on a national level.

For further information about the Ingenious project, please contact Emma Wightman – emma.wightman@scienceoxford.com