Module 2 | Engaging with business and stakeholders

It is vital to engage with businesses and stakeholders in your area – to understand the challenges they are facing and to understand the opportunities which data cannot illuminate. Local Industrial Strategies (LIS) require a shared effort to make work, so engagement can build common purpose as well as an understanding of what is happening.

This module outlines why engagement is important for a LIS, the principles for engagement and the different methods of engagement. It concludes with case studies from Oxford and the North East, along with links to further resources. 

It supplements the practical guidance for engaging your business base detailed in Module 1.

Why is engagement important for a Local Industrial Strategy?

Local Industrial Strategies need to be built upon a strong understanding of the local economy, its key sectors, and what the opportunities are to drive productivity growth. Whilst data is helpful in understanding these issues, it is only through engaging with your businesses and local stakeholders (including FE colleges, higher education institutions, the NHS and the third sector), that you will gain a fuller picture of local economic dynamics and the opportunities for change.

Businesses can provide a direct understanding of the challenges they are facing in a way standard datasets do not. The kinds of questions that businesses can help you answer are:

• Questions about growth and the market. For example, what are the main market trends and what does that mean for the business and the number of people it employs? What are the businesses’ future plans for growth? What are the barriers to growth locally? (e.g. inadequate premises, lack of skilled labour, high living costs, etc.).
• Questions about supply chains. For example, who are the main local suppliers? What are the opportunities for supporting stronger local supply chains?
• Questions around skills and availability of a suitably skilled labour force. For example, what kinds of skills are businesses looking for? Are businesses able to find people with the right level of skills? What other hiring challenges are businesses experiencing (for example, high costs of living)? How are businesses engaging with the apprenticeship agenda? How are businesses supporting their workforce to progress in work?
• Questions about finance. For example, is the business looking for additional funding and of what kind? How easy is it to secure financing for this kind of business?
• Questions about innovation. For example, does the business carry out R&D at its local site? How much engagement is the business having with higher education institutes? Has the business accessed any innovation support and how well is this working?

All of this is very relevant in developing a Local Industrial Strategy, particularly where your Local Industrial Strategy is focussing on growth in specific sectors that are dominated by a small number of key employers.

Principles for engagement

Outlined below are some principles for good engagement which have been identified through feedback from stakeholders at the LIS masterclass events:

• Keep the conversation relevant to business - talk about what your businesses want to talk about. Empathise. Don’t use jargon – talking about ‘productivity’ can be counterproductive. 
• Focus on quality not quantity.
• Don’t do broad brush consultation.
• Put in the hard graft – engagement takes time and effort. Build relationships for the long-term, not just the current process.
• Help people connect, organise sessions that actually help businesses network with others that might lead to business opportunities, as well as providing input to your work.
• Don’t be afraid to change plans part way through the process – LIS development and evidence base is a fairly organic process so don’t be fixed in doing something that may not be working.
• Work with trade bodies – they can help in understanding a sector and examples of issues or things working really well – they will also have existing events and networks that you can use.
• Don’t be afraid of doing things more than once.
• Get others to lead events and discussions – businesses talking to businesses often works much better.
• Use the process itself to build networks that last. E.g. get firms in a growing cluster together and then ask if they want to keep meeting or if there are things on which they want to work together.

Methods of engagement

There are a range of different methods of engaging businesses. These include:

• Surveys or a call for evidence.
• Using an online platform – such as Citizen Space
• Getting up and walking the streets, knocking on the doors of local retailers
• Talking to the FSB, CBI, and Chamber of Commerce and using existing local networks.
• One-to-one meetings.
• Running workshops on relevant topics (bearing in mind the above points about jargon and presentation).

When planning engagement, try and remember the following points:

• Engagement can be difficult for businesses – especially SMEs. Think about interesting places to meet that perhaps offer networking / commercial opportunities, and venues that are convenient to get to. Try and put events on at different times of the day – breakfast sessions don’t work for parents doing the school or care run before work. 
• Engagement should be an ongoing and long-term process of relationship building. Local places might consider using a CRM system to keep track of relationships and key issues of importance to different businesses.

Further details on these methods of engagement and their respective strengths and weaknesses, are explored further in Module 1.

Relevant Resources

• Unlocking Regional Growth is a report by the CBI that outlines the disparity between the productivity of different areas of the UK, and sets out recommendations for government on how the UK can unlock growth by closing those gaps.
• Presentations from the business and stakeholder engagement masterclass on 3 April 2019.

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