Jump to: 
1. Who to engage
2. Engagement objectives
3. When to engage?
4. How to engage?
5. What does success look like?
6. Building on success

Effective engagement (or knowledge exchange) activities should maximize the non-academic impact of your work; done well, they can also enhance its academic impact by broadening your research horizons, opening up fresh perspectives and providing access to new research participants or data.

Engagement activities are not necessarily worthwhile in and of themselves. Doing things for the sake of it, without having really thought through who you want to reach and why, can be time-consuming and produce very little benefit. Effective engagement starts with identifying and prioritising audiences and then chooses the right communication channels or engagement activities to reach them.

Engagement is a two-way process - it goes beyond telling people about things, they should have an opportunity to feedback, to contribute.

1. Who to engage 

An impact plan begins by thinking through the potential impacts of your research, who might benefit from them and who could help you achieve them. The next step is to consider when and how you could engage the right people or groups.

Spend some time grouping and prioritising your lists of research users/ audiences/ beneficiaries/ stakeholders. Think about the degree of both interest and influence the groups you have identified will have and where they might fit on the scale of "keeping informed" to really proactively engaging with them (download a stakeholder mapping template). For some groups, making your research visible and accessible may be enough, others will be worth more targeted engagement plans.

2. Engagement objectives

Consider, for each group, what do you want to happen as a result of your engagement? What is the outcome you are hoping for - that they will be more informed about something? That they will take some action as a result? These are your engagement objectives.

To help you, think about why each group would be interested, and why it would be significant to them right now. This will allow you to tailor activities to your audience’s interests and needs and ensure that their involvement is as meaningful as possible. If you don’t know what your potential partners’ or audiences’ motivations for engaging with you are, ask them! The objectives of an engagement project should be as clear as possible, to as many of those involved as possible, from as early as possible.

3. When to engage?

The earlier you engage with your research users the more invested they will be in the research and the more likely to use it in the ways you intend.

For each stage of your research project consider whether there is an opportunity to engage any of the groups you have identified and how they, or you, would benefit from the engagement at that stage. Remember activities can take place at any stage of a research programme, from shaping its scope in the start-up or preliminary findings stage through to project end. Remember, too, that engagement is a two-way process; the groups you are engaging with should have the opportunity to feedback and influence subsequent activities or research.

4. How to engage?

Don’t just think about your outputs and activities, but about how you are going to deliver them and how they will reach the intended groups. In your planning, clearly link each output or activity back to identified target partners, collaborators, users or audiences.

Here are some examples of the kinds of outputs, activities and methods you could consider. You will always have budget and time constraints, so prioritize the most effective activities, with the most influential or important groups.

• Events (including workshops, public lectures or discussions, hackathons, town meetings, citizens’ juries)
• Digital (including online tools, websites, surveys/polls)
• Blog posts
• Short documentary films (either as part of dissemination or to engage research users in the project whilst it is happening)
• Animations
• Reports, executive summaries, infographics
• Podcasts (e.g. appearing on a long-running series)
• Developing teaching or other information resources based on the research for use in e.g. schools, community teaching or online learning.
• Media engagement (if your research is timely and includes a news hook) including press releases, media briefings, op-eds
• Policy engagement (connecting with policy makers, submitting evidence to parliamentary enquiries, writing policy briefings)
• Social media campaigns (e.g. via Linked In, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter))

Browse some more examples of methods and activities for supporting KEI or view these success stories.

Think about your key messages – what is it that you want to communicate? How does this core message differ for different groups at different stages of your project? Keep in mind the importance of language and the need to communicate in a way that is accessible to and respectful of those you are trying to reach.

Share preliminary findings, don’t wait for the end result. You don’t always need to wait until you have finished your data collection or analysis for your work to be useful to non-academics. Interim results are often just as interesting to them, and having external comments and feedback on these might shape the subsequent stages of your work in ways that improve the final outputs.

Consider your own preferred communication styles and skills. Your activities will be more successful if you are comfortable delivering them.

Be prepared to change. Adapt to the needs of the audience rather than rigidly sticking to plans. Ask yourself: Are relevant outputs reaching all target partners, collaborators, users or audiences identified in my plan? Are they all engaging actively and meaningfully with these? Are they finding the process useful? Are they enjoying it? Am I?! If not, why not, and what can I do differently to change this?

5. What does success look like?

Build in evaluation measures at the start of your project so that you'll know if and how you have succeeded in meeting your objectives.

Make sure that your objectives are:

• Specific about what is to be achieved.
• Measurable, so you can test whether the objective has been met.
• Achievable, within the time and budget constraints.
• Relevant to the project and its aims.
• Time-bound, with set deadlines.

You can measure success both quantiatively and qualitatively, for example capturing the numbers of people attending an event, but also their feedback through a short survey or interview. Read more about measuring and reporting impact.

6. Building on success

Think about how you could sustain and maximize ongoing engagement with and impacts of your research outputs. This might include the development of partnerships, research consultancy or innovation.