As some offices re-open and others continue to work remotely, how are research teams managing with the ongoing changes and volatility.
We catch up with James Endersby, CEO of Opinium which has offices in London and New York. Because of government guidelines the London office has to work from home (WFH) when possible. To protect people’s mental well-being, the office has been open for the last six months on a Thursday and Friday. Endersby comments “This is for colleagues who live alone in a small flat or have to WFH in cramped settings, sometimes with small kids. The office is desktop COVID safe and staff must take a lateral flow test and have their temperature checked to enter.
“If the government rules change, we will open the office in July so people can come in on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday if they want. We aim to build up to September when Monday to Wednesday will be WFH and Thursday and Friday in the office, and then in October, Monday and Tuesday will be WFH with Wednesday to Friday in the office but we’ll stay flexible to see how it works out.
“The NY office has been open for about a month. In consultation with our colleagues, our hybrid model means we’re open on Tuesday and Thursday with WFH Monday, Wednesday and Friday.”
Dispersed
Meanwhile, Nikki Lavoie, CEO of MindSpark Research International, says that they closed their office space and are working from home (WFH) for the foreseeable future. This works for her as she gets to spend more time with her young baby. The team is now dispersed from Paris, three are in different parts of France, one in Spain, two in Hungary, one in Germany, one Canada and one in North America and some of the team miss the interactions with colleagues.
To help the team connect, they use services that integrate with Slack, their primary communication channel to keep each other up-to-date on projects.
Lavoie comments “We schedule fun activities like a team quiz or karaoke to ensure we do fun things. Some companies offer counseling and access to a therapist via Slack, so you can post a message or question to help mental health balance. We had a core group of five or six in the Paris office and a few people working remotely but the team dynamic has changed now that everybody is working remotely. My team is quite young. They were always hard-working and productive but some of the younger ones have a hard time switching off work now they’re WFH even if we tell them to close Slack and email and give them mental health days off when things are slower.”
Hybrid
Opinium did a lot of research into workplace mental wellbeing in combination with the MRS and ESOMAR. The stats show that about 40% of people in last year’s research said WFH has positively affected their mental wellbeing and 41% said it had a negative impact so solutions need to try to take everybody into account.
Endersby says that Opinium will keep a hybrid solution. “Monday and Tuesday will be for high concentration work at home preferably with no meetings. The other days when people come to the office will be for collaboration, creativity and learning to strengthen the team spirit that binds an agency together. We need those moments where junior members can overhear and learn from conversations, those water cooler moments.
“My top tip is to experiment to maximise those two sides of the coin to benefit the team and clients. Keep communicating and stay flexible as this is new for everyone.”
Self-care
Lavoie underlines that younger folk should realise that senior people can see that they are growing and ready for new opportunities without them needing to work nights and weekends. Whilst many companies are paying attention to caring for their staff’s mental health, she underlines that young people also need to know that self-care is part of being a good employee because employers don’t want them to overwork or get sick.
“Being a strong employee who is able to grow into new opportunities, means taking good care of yourself. We’re discussing this in research spaces because women as caregivers have always spread themselves too thin and have taken on even more during the pandemic. I have great respect for women in the workplace who have children where sometimes the father is not contributing to home care. I was flexible for an employee, so she could stay at home if the kids were sick or pick them up from school but her spouse’s workplace did not offer the same arrangements. That’s unfair as all employers should give both parents flexibility because otherwise, we continue to put all the childcare responsibility on women.”
Her team is planning their first get-together in a long time. “We used to do that once a year and will do it more often because there’s chemistry and energy when we’re in the same place, so we can bond as a team. Especially with such a young team, it helps to highlight we are working in a unified way even if they are great at working autonomously.”
Opinium research shows that a big concern in returning to the office is about commuting on crowded trains and buses. The company has a bike-to-work scheme and will offer flexible times to avoid the rush hour. Another concern is losing flexibility in the work life balance and the company asked a consultant to provide advice on how to prepare for returning to the office.
Communicating with clients
According to Endersby, communications with clients have improved so instead of sitting around a spider phone talking with clients as the past, they are now showing material on shared screens such as draft report before its presented to the board, to work more closely as a team.
“We can do this at short notice and there are some great collaboration tools so we will harness all the options. Hopefully the future will allow a combination of distance and in person contacts as we would love to meet our clients, attend brainstorms and deliver results in person as there’s magic in in those moments.
“We have never been busier as clients need research to help them respond to huge societal changes. Not just the type of research commissioned but the deliverables are also changing. Virtual presentations need to be more engaging and shorter. More people can be invited to a zoom call so you might not be presenting just to key stakeholders. This provides the opportunity to bring more ideas together, but we might also need to moderate client groups and with more people present, think how to encourage clients to ask questions to ensure they understand.
Lavoie comments “Pre-pandemic, we had a lot of business referrals where one client might recommend us to another and we would meet up after having worked together if I was in town. We used to also meet new clients at events and hope they will come back as it’s difficult to leave a strong enough impression that somebody wants to refer you if you can’t meet to solidify the relationship.”
“As so much of the work researchers do is based on relationships with clients, those research companies who figure out how to strengthen and solidify relationships, both digitally and physically, will be the ones to succeed.”
Research needs
As conditions for shopping, traveling and entertainment change almost on a daily basis, how are clients’ requirements evolving to stay abreast with the volatility?
Endersby sees growth in motivational mapping as clients are keen to understand the white space areas and how they can pivot and own this new world. Opinium is also doing more online quantitative research.
“There’s a demand for shorter projects that capture the mood or experience with quick feedback if business stakeholders make a change or launch something. We also see clients wanting to understand the perspectives of diverse voices and extreme users who might push the boundaries of mainstream.”
“Online has evolved massively. We do pop up communities where clients can dial in as if they are sitting right next to us virtually but we are still big fans of face-to-face groups. We need a range of approaches to solve different problems so they can be important for testing a product or packaging as part of a 360-degree window into consumer behavior.”
What are the greatest challenges as some markets reopen? Lavoie works primarily on the qualitative side and says that as they now do group conversations using online platforms, they can include people who might not have come to a central location like a focus group facility, or been comfortable in a room full of strangers.
“Many clients cannot wait to go back to face to face but we should not lose contact with these difficult-to-engage people. Brands need to pay attention to the ROI in addressing a broader range of voices, as the more people who know their product or service the better. Society has had to reevaluate racial and gender equality and brands that can connect in a more inclusive and accessible way will be more successful.”
“It used to be all about point-of-sale and now it’s also about companies’ online presence and direct-to-consumer channels. Clients need to understand how digital interactions work as we won’t automatically go back to doing everything the way we did before. It will be a combination of trying to understand the changes physical places underwent because of the pandemic and maintaining digital communication channels. There are different nuances to which behaviors will stay including those who switched to digital shopping but prefer face-to-face interaction, those who were never comfortable with digital and the younger digital natives who are thrilled to do everything digitally.”
