RICS updates for Member Engagement, Experience and Value

The member engagement, experience and value (MEEV) working group, chaired by Rory Murphy FRICS, a Fellow in practice in the UK, and supported by a cross-section of members from around the world, is pleased to be able to provide a short update on the tangible progress they are helping deliver in partnership with RICS staff.”

Rory Murphy FRICS, Chair of the MEEV Working Group:

 “The range of topics covered as part of the feedback gathered by the MEEV working group means that prioritisation has been vital but the strength of feeling from members has also meant that a focus on tangible, quick delivery in some areas has also been critical. This update focuses just on some of the early improvements we can deliver, but we have plenty of other focus areas being looked at, some of which I will touch on at the end.

As an immediate first step, we have listened to the desire for greater transparency in how the RICS spends membership fees and other sources of income and have worked with RICS teams to produce a chart depicting how spend is allocated across the Institution. Whilst the split is relatively high level in this first iteration, the figures used do reflect the allocation for the 2020/21 financial year. We will update this distribution annually, adding further layers of detail as we move forward.

I hope that many of you will already have had the opportunity to activate your new CPD Member Support Pack, a major initiative for 2022 offering free CPD to members as part of the membership subscription. This is in response to significant volumes of feedback in this regard through the consultation exercise and the Surveys of the Profession. The MEEV working group and I were particularly pleased with how quickly the RICS were able to deliver this change so that it was ready for the start of the 2022 membership period.

Further acting on feedback received from members, the support being offered to members includes the planned re-introduction of face-to-face events as an important part of the mix of activities delivered by the RICS, alongside the digital offering, which we acknowledge has many attractions in its own right. The speed with which face-to-face events can be re-introduced will obviously differ for each region as local covid conditions and restrictions change.

For 2022 the RICS will also now be formally supporting a very significant volume of free local engagement events, where members will play the leading role in the selection of the topics being covered, with RICS playing an ‘enablement’ role, helping the local members with organisation, logistics and promotion of the events. This need for the RICS to play a role in supporting local member connections has also been a key issue raised by members which RICS is now addressing.

Finally, the RICS will also shortly be introducing regular member-to-member newsletters, driven initially by the Chairs of all our regional, national and local boards, allowing for local issues and successes to be highlighted and covered.

You can read more details about these MEEV-driven activities on the new Member Value Hub, which is itself another new initiative from RICS, bringing all aspects of the membership value proposition together in one place for the first time. I know the RICS team has a lot of plans to build on this Member Value Hub as the year progresses.

As mentioned above, we have a list of important additional areas of focus outstanding and so this is very much the start of the journey. In my next update I hope to be able to announce plans related to providing members with greater content, event and communication ‘autonomy’, as well as the exciting launch of a new member-to-member digital community platform.

I will continue sharing details and updates on the delivery of MEEV outputs as RICS teams and our MEEV working group work in partnership in the coming months. Through these efforts our aim is to keep the needs of our membership at the forefront of our minds so RICS professionals receive the support from the Institution that will enable them to continue leading and delivering confidence across the built and natural environment.”