It’s currently 6.30am and I’m sitting in a hotel room in Hong Kong, thinking about the day ahead... I’m here to facilitate the final round of employee focus groups for a client research project – eight more sessions to complete the qualitative programme and then it’s reporting time.
This is the culmination of the third phase of the project – preceded by qualitative interviews with the leadership team (phase one) and an all employee survey (phase two).
We used the initial interviews to identify key themes to explore, to investigate perceptions of internal comms by the top team and to understand their needs and expectations of the function. We then used the focus groups to ‘get under the skin’ of the issues identified in the survey, to test the findings and explore some of the themes in more detail. All in all during this process we’ll have canvassed the views of more than 2,500 employees and actually spoken to around 150 in person.
What this project has reminded me of is the enormous power of qualitative research in general – and focus groups in particular – and the importance of doing communication research in a thorough, joined-up way.
Now we get asked to design and run a lot of communication surveys and benchmarking projects on behalf of clients – and they’re always useful and enlightening exercises. But I have to confess that the real value often comes from the qualitative side, where the budget permits this to happen (and unfortunately it doesn’t always).
Useful as the numbers are, the really rich insights often emerge from conversations – whether it’s the one-to-ones with the senior team, or focus groups with a selection of front-line employees. Indeed, this is so important it’s something we try to incorporate into every Gatehouse research project.
We are, of course, lucky to be working with a client right now who really understands the value of research and genuinely wants the insights this sort of approach brings - and who is willing to allocate a meaningful budget to enable it to happen (particularly commendable in this economic climate).
And insights it will bring by the bucket load. It is, for instance, fascinating to contrast the results of the survey with what’s said in the focus groups – to get to the reality behind the numbers and really understand why people answered (or not) in the way they did. It’s also extremely eye-opening to talk to employees in different regions – the US, Europe, the Middle East and Asia on this occasion – and to see how different their views and perceptions on organisational communication are. We often forget the impact of culture on employee attitudes and opinions.
Had we not been able to talk to people to the extent we have been, we just wouldn’t have unearthed half the insights we have.
I can’t go into the results of this research for obvious reasons, but it has once again provided a range of genuinely valuable perspectives on internal comms – from all levels and across a wide geography – which will inevitably have a direct impact on the activities and approaches our client adopts next year and beyond. Put simply, it will change the way they do things and help improve the quality and effectiveness of their employee communication. And that's the acid test when it comes to investing in research – whether it makes a difference.
Having seen this project through from the start, it’s a process I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to other clients. In fact, i think every in-house internal comms chief should do comprehensive research along these lines every three or four years – backed up by a more frequent survey to keep tabs on the trends. This exercise has been so valuable it should be mandatory.
No matter how strong and connected you are, the truth is that as a full time communicator sitting in head office you rarely get the opportunity to immerse yourself in the organisation like this. But the value that comes from doing so is immense.
The other challenge in-house practitioners face when trying do do something like this themselves is around honesty – and therefore the overall reliability of the results. From the leadership team down, employees are more likely to open up to a third party – and that’s when the really interesting views begin to emerge. That’s why it makes absolute sense to bring in a consultancy like Gatehouse to conduct the research for you.
I’ve always been pro-research but my recent experience has renewed by interest and belief in it. I’m now a qualitative research evangelist!
L
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