Person imagining a face to face engagement

Due to changing times in the wake of COVID-19, we are hearing about numerous projects, face to face consultations and engagements that have been cancelled, postponed or deferred. We wanted to provide practical support and recommendations for your team to implement and share internally.


In mid-March IAP2 Australasia held a webinar, Connecting with your community in times of disruption. Here are a few tips we gleaned from listening in:

  • Reconsider which projects you engage with in next month - community fatigue and anxiety is high.
  • Consider delaying engagement on non urgent projects - community looking only at most relevant right now.
  • Give people more time to respond to proposals - people are overwhelmed at the moment.
  • Create opportunities for people to share stories digitally of hope and coping - helps build resilience and promotes social connection.
  • Be creative and resourceful.

The HiVE is a fully featured digital engagement platform that can be substituted for various face to face options such as workshops, roundtables and information/drop-in sessions.

Internal engagement is also a growing use of The HiVE helping to bring internal teams together to make decisions and participate in strategic conversations as working from home becomes the norm.

Refer to the table in the PDF or document below for a description and links to examples.

With public and community face-to-face engagement opportunities likely to decline in the next few months, digital engagement is there to step up and fill the void. Further ideas for how to support your community during COVID-19 and beyond can be found on our blog, along with other resources.

Please contact us if you need additional support with adapting your face to face activities using The HiVE’s toolset. Visit our website for further information.