Accelerated by COVID-19’s online adaptation, hybrid engagement is a nascent practice and its potential and innovation for public participation is still evolving. By lessening participatory barriers, it promises to increase and broaden participation. However, failure to keep the participant experience front of mind in both online and in-person interactions can eventuate in an unequal experience in engagement activities.

Hybrid engagement involves the integration of real-time digital and in-person engagement activities to enable community members to participate in an engagement process and have an active voice in issues and decisions affecting them. It intersects online and face-to-face elements into a single or simultaneous engagement process, bringing in-person and online participants together and in communication with each other. An integrated hybrid approach to engagement relies on digital capacity, resources and facilitation meeting participant needs.

Hybrid engagement can be an instrumental step for engagement practices in broadening participation. It brings a wider net of community demographic into participatory activities, including harder to reach and under-represented groups who often find it difficult to participate.