Core Values Awards Spotlight with Claire Paddison
The Core Values Awards program is an annual celebration of excellence in community and stakeholder engagement. The IAP2 Core Values Awards recognise outstanding projects and organisations that are at the forefront of public participation and community engagement. Every year the winners of the Core Values Awards are announced at the Core Values Awards Gala Dinner, and this year is no different. This year the Gala Dinner will follow the Engagement #nextlevel Forum in Melbourne, 19 October. Register now to avoid disappointment!
You can see the 2017 Core Values Awards finalists here.
Last year LandCorp were awarded both the Australasia Organisation of the Year and the International Organisation of the Year.
We spoke with Claire Paddison, Manager Community Relations from LandCorp, who gives an open and insightful account of their experience with the Core Values Awards.
Claire Paddison, LandCorp
LandCorp is the Western Australian Government land and development agency responsible for delivering projects supporting the social and economic prosperity of Western Australians.
Operating state-wide, we identify, design and deliver major land and infrastructure projects through a sustainable approach to development. We undertake long-term, complex and challenging projects and work with many different stakeholders to deliver the best outcomes for the State. We work with both private and public sector partners adopting an integrated approach to development. For more than 25 years we have delivered successful communities and projects around Western Australia. Our overall objective is to deliver on Government planning policy while ensuring Western Australia’s economic and employment growth is sustained long into the future. We support the State Government’s Perth and Peel@3.5million planning polices and partner with other agencies and departments to deliver land for housing, business and industry.
I started off my career in Media Relations working for a multi-utility company in the UK. Corporate Social Responsibility was becoming the buzz word and I was asked to develop a plan for improving the relationship between the organisation and their community – the rest is history. If I wasn’t currently practicing community engagement, I’d probably return to the NGO Sector particularly supporting homelessness. Or I’d be a travel writer, I’m always thinking about my next destination.
Dealing with people and managing relationships is what I really enjoy about community relations, and being able to take my skills and apply across a broad range of sectors, which uniquely places you to work with so many different people on a whole range of projects. Being resilient both at an organisational and personal level to criticism/negative feedback and not hearing from the silent majority is a constant challenge. However I actually see this as an exciting opportunity to think and do things differently in the engagement space.
In 2009 LandCorp surveyed our stakeholders for feedback on our performance and the results were disappointing – our engagement approach was described as aggressive and arrogant. Whilst we believed we were partnering with our communities and stakeholders our research showed we were not connecting and people felt like they were being excluded and ignored. Almost 6 years later, our research demonstrated that our relationships with stakeholders had significantly improved. We had overhauled our level of communication and started to really listen to what our stakeholders were saying. This ensured that the successful delivery of our projects was built on what our stakeholders were telling us. Let’s just say, intuition told me we had a good story to share with others.
The application process made us sit back and reflect on our work to date and we realised that we had actually come a long way. Whilst the process of changing our engagement approach had not been fast, we had established a consistent approach, which has been embedded into all levels of the organisation. In fact stakeholder engagement and relationship management has now become a critical part of how we operate as a business.
What we did realise is that we couldn’t rest on our laurels. The feedback we last received from stakeholders was excellent but with a challenging operating environment, maintaining a focus and consistent approach to our engagement practice required continued improvement. Therefore since winning the Awards, we have actually developed and implemented an evaluation framework into our engagement practice, which is playing a significant role in shaping LandCorp’s strategic approach to stakeholder and community engagement. More importantly we have involved external stakeholders in evaluating our performance, providing a great opportunity to continue engaging and building relationships.
Be honest. When we started to develop our application, we were adamant that we would tell our story warts and all as well as acknowledging that there were still plenty of opportunities for improvement. Our key advice would be to provide evidence of what you have achieved and also don’t forget to discuss the application with your referees too – they can help sense check your submission.
To young practitioners or those new to engagement, I would suggest finding yourself an experienced practitioner/mentor and seek their advice. I was lucky enough in my early days of community engagement in Australia to have the opportunity of working with some very experienced practitioners, all of which had different approaches and experience that had been developed across a broad range of engagement activities. I learnt a lot from them and very quickly too.
In regards to difficult projects – that’s the nature of the beast and to be honest if it wasn’t for the difficult projects I probably wouldn’t still be involved in engagement. I’m a great believer that you learn from experience and your mistakes. Be passionate in what you are engaging about. Learn to be resilient, don’t take negative feedback personally and celebrate the successes – they do happen –so be patient!
Entries for the 2018 Core Values Awards open in February 2018. If you would like to receive an entrants’ kit, please contact Cathy Moses on cathy@iap2.org.au.