ValuesFirst - Getting people involved
Issue 1: April 2011
As the dust begins to settle on the first round of budget cuts, councils and NHS bodies have the chance to look a little further ahead –what will services look like this year and the year after? Plans for new services across the country hinge on getting residents more involved in services – either through tough consultations on cuts or through more ambitious plans to involve residents in service delivery.
The trouble is that making these plans work relies on getting a lot of people involved, at a time when a lot of them are focused on worries about jobs, inflation, and frontline services. Traditional engagement techniques seem increasingly inadequate – too expensive, not representative enough, often focused on deciding how to spend discretionary funds which no longer exist.
Councils need to be asking different questions – not ‘what do you want?’ but ‘what do we want most?’; not ‘what can we do for you?’ but ‘what can we do together?’. Understanding motivation is as important as understanding choices.
Values Modes can help us understand who will get involved in their area and why. By looking at the underlying values which drive people’s behaviour, we can begin to see why people turn up to consultations or why they volunteer – and we can see that this is not just determined by where they live, what their job is, or how much they earn.
- Settlers are concerned with safety, security and belonging. They are more likely to get involved if it will make their area safer, and where they trust the people in charge – but they will be quick to dismiss the authorities as ‘not really caring’.
- Prospectors are more concerned with esteem and success. They will get involved if it will make their area better, and particularly if they can see that other people are also doing their bit.
- Pioneers are interested in personal development and finding answers to the big questions. They will volunteer to make the world a better place – but they can get angry if they think this is used as an excuse to cut services for the vulnerable.
We are running a quarterly reputation tracker with a large English Council, using Values Modes to assess residents’ changing perceptions of their area and their authority. Over the
last few months, we have seen overall willingness to get involved fall – probably a result of the increasing politicisation of public debate about the Big Society.
People will volunteer for their local area from all the Values Modes groups – but Pioneers are four times more likely to do so than Settlers, and Settlers significantly more likely to say that getting involved is ‘not my job’.
Are you new to Values Modes? Values Modes segmentation helps us understand the reasons that different people behave the way they do. Going beyond ordinary lifestyle segmentation, it tells us not just where people live and what they do, but why they make their decisions. This helps policy makers to design interventions that work for everyone in their community, especially people who don’t usually respond to public engagement. To find out your own Values Mode our quick, anonymous questionnaire, click here. To find out about our Insight Hub service, offering wide-ranging public insight services including Values Modes, click here.
This is issue 1 of ValuesFirst, our Values Modes newsletter. In the next edition: Values Modes and social marketing, and a report from TCC's presentations to the World Social Marketing Conference in Dublin.
Last Updated on Thursday, 07 April 2011 10:51
Pioneer
Are you coming out as a ‘Pioneer’? When public sector organisations don’t share the same values as their residents, it can be difficult to communicate effectively or influence behaviour...[more]
Values Modes
How are our clients using Values Modes? Whether it is being used to track differing attitudes towards the Big Society or in behaviour change campaigns, Values Modes offers a framework for understanding how people behave.
A values gap?
Is your result different to most other people?