Guidance

Virtual visits toolkit

Published 9 December 2022

1. Introduction

A virtual visit is different to an online meeting in that it mimics actually visiting a person or place through video conferencing technology. It is is a useful way to get a view of complex policies and the people they affect. It brings public and frontline staff into a space where they can give policymakers honest challenges and feedback, which leaders can use to inspire changes.

Sometimes a virtual visit will better meet the needs of your event. As well as the cost and environmental benefits of reduced travel, a virtual visit can be more inclusive to those colleagues who might find travel more challenging. It will also provide opportunities for sharing information among wider audiences and from multiple locations.

This toolkit aims to support senior leaders and their teams to set up virtual systems visits. It has all the advice you will need to take your own virtual visit from a concept to a reality, including:

• how to get started
• organising planning stages and creating an itinerary *preparing for the day itself
• top tips and pitfalls to avoid
• what to do after the visit
• a case study of a previous virtual visit looking at the food system

If you have questions or need advice while developing your visit, contact LeadershipCollege@CabinetOffice.GOV.UK

1.1 Why we created the virtual visits toolkit

The concept was created in 2020 after a group of permanent secretaries spent time reimagining how senior leaders could continue to connect with citizens, service providers and users during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

As part of this, they decided to arrange a number of ‘virtual visits’ on issues that were cross-departmental. These visits let leaders from different departments experience relevant systems in a relatively short space of time.

The visits, hosted on video conferencing platforms, helped attendees better understand particular policy challenges, and reflect on the complex systems they’re part of. There was also time built in for group discussions, thinking about how policy outcomes can be improved through systems leadership.

The first visit to take place was on the Government’s COVID-19 Shielding Programme. The second looked at the impact of COVID-19 across a single place. The third visit was titled “the food system; a visit from fork to farm”.

Due to the success of the visits and the positive feedback from attendees, the permanent secretary champion of the visits programme, Tamara Finkelstein, has sponsored the production of this toolkit. It gathers all the learning gained to date across the visits series.

We hope this will enable civil servants across all departments and agencies to take the concept, the learning, and the templates to create their own visits, opening them out to leaders across all departments.

2. Getting started

It’s great that you want to organise a virtual visit. Here’s how to get started.

2.1 Setting the vision and thinking about your audience

As you get started, work out the following:

• be clear on your vision — what system are you looking to open up to attendees?
• consider your audience — who is your virtual visit for and what should they gain from it?

We also recommend securing a senior sponsor early on. Ideally, this should be a director general or permanent secretary who will sponsor, champion, and introduce the virtual visit on the day. Having a senior sponsor helps draw in other senior attendees from across government.

When visiting the COVID-19 Shielding programme, we wanted to ensure that leaders across government had the chance to see the full system, which spanned across multiple sectors and involved multiple departments across government. The goal was to work even better together as one Civil Service to deliver for the people who needed help. In this instance, that was people who were clinically extremely vulnerable to COVID-19.

Another aim was to ensure leaders had an understanding of the experiences of those people who were shielding. We also wanted leaders to understand how other parts of the public sector, in this case local government and charities, were involved in providing support and any challenges they were facing in terms of working with central government. Finally, we wanted them to hear about how the private sector had been involved, specifically looking at how the national food delivery contract was running, providing food directly to the doors of those who needed it.

2.2 Choose your task and finish group

Once you have a clear vision, map out who you need to involve in the organisation of the visit. We recommend setting up a ‘virtual visit task and finish’ group, bringing in key officials you will need to work with to bring your vision to life.

To do this, think about which elements of the system you want to showcase. From there, identify named policy leads across relevant teams and departments. Bear in mind, they may need agreement from their own senior civil servants to be involved. You might need to allow time for clearance or have a back-up plan.

Once you have chosen your group, have a meeting to share your vision. Together, you will go on to develop the detail of the visit and ensure it is a success on the day.

Involving the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department of Health and Social Care was an important initial step in the example above. We worked to bring in named leads from each, and set up a task and finish group which the officials became members of.

3. Developing the detail

You’ve got your initial pitch, other important colleagues round the table, and you’re ready to get going. Your next steps are:

• developing a timeline
• developing the itinerary
• working with your senior sponsor

3.1 Your virtual visit timeline

As part of your planning, work up a provisional timeline to develop and implement the visit. Here is one we’ve made based on our experiences. We will come back to some of the points in more detail later.

Month 1

1. Identify the system being visited.

2. Scope the objectives for the visit.

3. Scope the policy areas that the visit will look at. Together, these should show at least part of a complex system. Past events have often used 4 sub-visits but it doesn’t have to be this way.

4. Have a policy lead for each sub visit. This is your task and finish group. Get them together to explain what a virtual visit is and what you hope attendees will gain from yours. Ask them to go and think about how their part of the visit could best meet the objectives. What and who do they recommend visiting to help bring your vision to life?

Month 2

1. Bring the leads for each sub visit back together. Develop proposals for each sub visit, ensuring they are shaping up to form a comprehensive, coherent single virtual visit.

2.Create a brief for the senior sponsor. It should explain the concept behind this visit, pitch the objectives and an outline itinerary, and seek approval to  proceed.

Month 3

1. Continue to work with policy leads and stakeholders to develop the visit, with approval from your senior sponsor.

2. Advertise the visit at least 4 weeks in advance.

3. Create the welcome pack for attendees.

Month 4

1. Finalise the welcome pack.

2. Ensure those you are visiting have everything they need.

3. Push the invite to ensure enough people attend.

4. Do a trial tech rehearsal.

5. Hold the visit.

6. After the visit, send thank you messages and do a visit write up.

3.2 Build the itinerary

Getting the itinerary right is critical to running a successful visit. Working effectively with your task and finish group will be key to developing this. It may take a couple of meetings with reflection time in the middle.

Think about the following:

Timings

Think about how long your visit will be, what you want to showcase and what format you would like this to take. A typical visit has an introduction, 4 roughly 30-minute sub-visits and reflection time at the end.

As visits tend to be 2.5 hours, you may find the sub-visits become squeezed. You might consider a slightly longer visit or a smaller number of sub-visits.

We don’t recommend extending visits beyond 3 hours as you will get fewer attendees and sitting looking at a screen for longer than this is tiresome, no matter how interesting you try to make it.

People to visit

We recommend all sub-visits involve people affected by the policy. You should carefully consider the right approach to take, but centring visits on the experiences of the public is highly recommended.

How to best engage with members of the public will depend on the policy area and relationships with other stakeholders who may have connections already.

When visiting the COVID-19 Shielding programme, we worked with the government’s Policy Lab. They had undertaken ethnography with people who were shielding and so were able to share a video clip to open up this section of the visit. They followed up with a live conversation with people who were shielding. With the visit to the food system, we heard from members of citizen panels set up by the National Food Strategy team.

Key points

With one session ideally focussed on hearing directly from the public, you will want to think about what other elements of the system are important to show. Ensure these fit together to form a single, coherent, strategic visit.

Authenticity

We recommend ensuring every single sub visit is exactly that. A visit rather than a meeting. You should be going to ‘see’ someone, ideally in their own setting.
For example we have ‘visited’ a farmer who video-called from his farm, a food distribution hub from their warehouse and a vet in their place of work. With the visits being virtual, it is important that you do all you can to ensure the visit feels like exactly that. A visit, not a meeting.

Share the right voices

With the above point in mind, don’t just speak to other officials. With every sub-visit, try and make it as ‘front-line’ as you can. You may want a civil servant or another official from the sector you are visiting to provide a few minutes of context, but no more than that. The visits are all about ‘getting out’ and hearing from different voices.
You will need to work hard to make this happen. It’s easy to default into the ‘meeting’ rather than ‘visit’ space if you don’t make it really clear what you are working to achieve, or think creatively about who to visit.

Consider pre-recorded videos

If you can’t ‘visit’ some places you would otherwise have liked to, think about using short pre-recorded videos. This worked well on the food visit. We had a pre-recorded video tour of a farm for a few minutes, then the farmer joined us on a conference call to share a little more ‘live’, before opening up to questions and discussion.

Your format

A format that we have found to work well is for each sub-visit to have 2-5 minutes of context setting by an official, then 10-13 minutes of sharing from those being visited, then 15 minutes of open discussion between them and the attendees. We recommend adopting this format.

Review

Reflection time at the end of the visit is very important. This should be with the civil service attendees only. We recommend securing a senior facilitator for this section of the day who can prepare in advance. It should be someone with a link to the policy area.

Emily Miles, Chief Executive of the Food Standards Agency chaired the reflection section during the food visit expertly. She drew out reflections by asking probing questions of the civil service attendees.

Senior Sponsor

Having a senior sponsor adds weight to your visit and will also help you ensure your draft pitch for the format of the visit is appropriate for a senior audience.

We recommend securing and meeting with a senior sponsor early on. Seek approval from them at key stages, namely finalising the itinerary before reaching out to external ‘visitees’, and clearing the pitch to be sent out as invite.

You will also need to provide them with a short brief ahead of the visit so they are  comfortable with their role and any points they should share when opening the visit.

4. Preparing for the day itself

As you get closer to the date of the visit, the work will intensify. Here’s advice for the later stages of visit planning, including:

• assigning critical roles

• organising the technology

• preparing briefings

• thinking about challenges that could arise and how you can mitigate them

4.1 Assigning critical roles

The roles you need to assign will depend on the shape your visit is going to take. You will usually need these people:

Visit coordinator

The working level official with responsibility for planning, organising, and executing the visit.

Senior sponsor

Ideally a director general or permanent secretary sponsor who will champion the visit and open the visit on the day.

Leads for each sub-visit

Working level officials who will take responsibility for organising a particular sub-visit, under your leadership. They will be policy experts and hold the relationships with their stakeholders.
While they will need some guidance from you, the visit coordinator, on what you are looking for, you will need their thoughts and advice on how a sub-visit could be arranged to meet the brief.
They will liaise directly with relevant stakeholders to devise and pitch the sub visit to you, subsequently implementing this so it runs smoothly on the day.

Tech lead

The person responsible for setting up the video conferencing tool, and managing the running of the visit on the day. They need to be comfortable with the software, the timeline of the visit, and know who to admit and remove and when.

Facilitator

They will run the visit on the day. This can be the visit co-ordinator or someone different.

Note taker

Someone to take notes on the day to capture learning and support with the visit write up.

4.2 Organising technology

When thinking about the technology you will need, consider what will be most accessible to all attendees. Video conferencing tools have worked well in the past. Their holding room functions are important. When a sub-visit is over-running, it lets you keep attendees that may have already arrived for the next sub-visit in the waiting room and bring them in at the right time.

4.3 Preparing briefings

You will also want to consider what materials you will need to create as part of planning the visit, and the clearance processes associated with these. As a minimum, this will likely include:

• the itinerary for the visit
• an invite
• background information for stakeholders you’d like to be involved
• a welcome/pre-reading pack for civil service attendees
• a visit write up

Contact the Leadership College for Government if you need a template for any of these.

5. 12 top tips for a successful virtual visit

As part of your visit planning, spend some time thinking about challenges that could arise and how to mitigate them. We recommend:

1. Ensuring the visit coordinator has strong organisation and relationship building skills. They will need to manage the senior sponsor, the task and finish group, and ensure the visit runs smoothly on the day.

2. Ensuring very close working between the visit coordinator and the policy leads for each of the sub-visits. Effective, open, collaborative working is critical to successfully organising each sub-visit, and ultimately the visit as a whole.

3. Using existing relationships. This links to the point above. Trust policy leads who know their policy areas and stakeholders and listen to their advice on what  could make a good visit.

4. Being clear from the start with those you are ‘visiting’ that this is about open and honest reflections. We want to hear directly from them about the reality on the ground. They shouldn’t be afraid to provide constructive challenges and ideas for change.

5. Factoring sufficient time for delays into your project timeline. This includes time for seeking clearances and finding diary time for the task and finish group to meet increasingly regularly as the visit nears.

6. Thinking about how to ensure you set up the right culture across the visit. Don’t let the visit become a ‘show and tell’ or simply champion the positives. The visits are about getting honest challenges and feedback into the public sector and encouraging more effective working across different layers of a system. When setting up the visits, you should be really open about what it is you are trying to create. Avoid partners thinking they have to paint a rosy picture. If the government has created challenges they think are avoidable, create a culture where this can be said.

7. Avoiding trying to fit too much into each sub-visit. The best sub-visits to date have involved one or two external attendees speaking. When stakeholders have to fit, say, 4 people in, it gets too squeezed. Also, PowerPoint should be avoided. This is a visit, not a meeting.

8. Thinking about how to get the right number and type of attendees to your visit. What pitch and sub-visits will ensure that the visit is suitable for the intended audience? How will you ensure the visit touches on policies that sit across multiple departments? How and where will you advertise the visit?

9. Have an invite strategy. Use your own contacts and all members of the task and finish group to do targeted outreach. Which senior leaders, roles or departments should definitely be attending? Think about who should do tailored outreach and how to try and secure their attendance. You will also need to keep an eye on sign up numbers. A week or so after the original invite was sent out, you should consider opening up the visit to directors and deputy directors in relevant departments to increase attendee numbers. We recommend aiming for a minimum of 25 attendees. Some people will drop out on the day.

10. Encourage attendees to think about questions they want to ask in advance. The questions should help to build their understanding of the policy system under the spotlight.

11. On the day, ensure that the tech lead, facilitator and note taker are 3 different people. All 3 roles are full on and it is not possible for any single person to take on more than one of these roles.

12. Also on the day, remind attendees that the visit is being held under Chatham House rules.

6. Post-visit actions

First up, well done on leading a successful virtual visit! Once you have taken a breath, we recommend you complete these actions to wrap up the visit, thank all attendees, and capture the learning.

6.1 Thank you messages

Within 24 hours of the visit we recommend:

1. Sending separate thank you emails to each person or group who you ‘visited’. Their willingness to get involved and share their experiences should be acknowledged. They will likely have put in a lot of work behind the scenes to prepare. You may want to tailor your message by adding specific feedback from attendees or highlighting particular points they shared that were particularly memorable.

2. Thank those who worked to secure and support their attendance: your task and finish group.

3. Thank the attendees themselves and encourage them to share any feedback with you directly. You may want to do a very short survey to support this.

6.2 Reflections

As well as the ‘thank yous’, we recommend 3 further actions:

1. Capture your own learning from the visit. What went well? What would you do  differently next time? Include any feedback from attendees.

2. If there were any specific actions emerging from the visits, capture them and pass them to the relevant private offices or officials. For example, if a director committed to having a separate conversation with one of the external attendees, email the director afterwards with a reminder of their commitment and the relevant contact details. The action required will depend on what comes out of the visit.

3. Write up a summary of the visit. This will capture information you already have,  bringing it all together in one place. A template to use is available on request. We recommend noting the itinerary, attendees, key points discussed, feedback received and any learning. Share this with all public sector staff involved in creating the visit. Remember to use the right security marking for this document, and to follow the appropriate information sharing protocols.