Voice of the Community
Listening to the community. Delivering actionable insights.
At Eris Strategy, we help local governments capture and understand the true voice of their communities. Our evidence-based research and consultation programs translate community sentiment into clear insights that guide better decision-making, policy design, and service delivery.
What is Voice of the Community?
The Voice of the Community framework is a scalable and flexible approach to understanding how your customers and community can be engaged through an integrated surveying approach that leverages engagement to build broader and deeper insights more cost-effectively, even for short surveys.
Unlike the traditional silo approach used by many councils, when a person completes a survey, their responses are used to identify other relevant feedback or engagement. Then they are asked if they would like to provide additional feedback and opinions.
The Voice of the Community approach enables councils to begin with a small set of core needs areas and expand, change, and remove feedback areas as needed. A framework that helps you engage with residents, businesses and even visitors to your region. A framework that provides you with a whole-of-community understanding for improving services, improving the local economy
The four pillars of Voice of the Community
Integrated Surveys
- Shorter outcome-focused surveys
- Customisable to reflect the council and community
- Larger sample; more reliability
- Private and secure
- Flexible and fast
Accessible Reporting
- 24/ 7 live reporting
- Shareable for internal and community-facing needs
- Separate tailored reports for teams
- Easy to understand
‘Always On’ Feedback
- Key feedback surveys that are always open
- Easy to add or change surveys to address changing needs
- Identity changes in community sentiment
- Evaluate impact of service/ engagement changes
- KPI not affected by seasonal changes
Representative
- Integration reduces self-selection bias
- Breadth improves representation
- Able to target specific groups, interests and needs
- Engagement model
- Scalable for small to large councils
A scalable framework that maximises each contact with your community to increase coverage, sample size robustness and understanding. Using listening to build trust and connection with your community.
Service Experience, Community Sentiment and Liveability
Continuous engagement provides a way to build and track a breadth of operational and strategic issues to inform service delivery, strategic planning and corporate plan development. In corporate research, this approach is commonly used to mitigate the risks associated with relying solely on single surveys for key performance indicators.
By using an integrated approach, specific areas can be investigated, and those affected by seasonality and events are better understood.
The Voice of the Community framework delivers actionable insights in an easy and engaging way for your community.
Benefits to Council
- Reliable and actionable
- Reflects council services and strategy
- Timely and actionable insights
- Quick turn-around
- Low-cost and future-proofing budgets
- Flexible and scalable
- Strong privacy and governance
.
Benefits to Community
- Easy to access
- Easy to complete on any device
- Shorter surveys
- More personally relevant surveys
- Only need to provide background information once
- Strong privacy protection
- Voice is heard by thier council
Want to know more?
We understand the challenges of engaging diverse communities while meeting governance standards. Contact us to discuss how we can help your council bring the community’s voice into decision-making at engage@erisstrategy.com.au or visit us on Vendor Panel and Buy Local.
To learn more about our other support initiatives for local governments and community organisations, please visit our Local Government and Community Organisations page.
Local Government and Community Case Studies & Insights
Building Future Communities: What Young Families Need from Councils
This article reveals research on what drives satisfaction and advocacy for councils among mothers of young families, and how councils can improve community sentiment.
Changing Family Demographics in Australia: What Local Governments and Businesses Need to Know
Explore how Australia’s changing birth rates and family structures impact local economies, housing, and service delivery—and what governments and businesses can do to adapt.
How Many People Do You Really Need for a Survey?
One of the most important questions when designing a survey is ‘How many people do I need in my survey?’. Get it wrong, and your survey will miss critical insights, be ignored by decision-makers, waste your resources and time, blow your budget, or exhaust your...
Learn more about how we provide solutions.
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Email engage@erisstrategy.com.au
Offices:
Sydney, NSW, Australia
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