FAQs

Why wouldn’t I run this type of research program?
The truth can be hard to hear from family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and strangers. If you think your colleagues are not ready to listen to the unvarnished truth, you should consider delaying any project until the necessary groundwork has been laid.

What’s the most common mistake you see?
Companies can fall into two common traps with this type of research. First, companies need to share summary findings with the research participants in a timely fashion. Employees who participate in this type of deep research require feedback if they are to invest their time in future projects.

The second trap companies can fall into is failing to take action on the feedback they receive. Research has found that failing to take action delivers far worse outcomes than if you had never undertaken the research.

Do you guarantee employee anonymity?
We will never reveal the identity of an employee who has participated in one of our research studies. Our guarantee of anonymity is central to ensuring employees feel free to share their views and opinions without fear of punishment or humiliation from their leaders, managers, or colleagues.

Fabric, our auto-ethnographic study, inevitably reveals an employee’s identity by dint of them videoing and photographing their day-to-day experience at work. However, we can use face and voice filters to protect employee anonymity if necessary.

Can you outline the research process you follow?
We run projects with a simple, five-step process — brief, administration, fieldwork, analysis, and findings.

Projects kick off with a one-on-one briefing with the project owner, where we identify the key research questions and operating hypotheses. The careful administration of the project ensures budgets and deadlines are met and, ultimately, the smooth running of the study. The fieldwork step is central to a project’s success, and proactive communication strategies secure high participation rates. The analysis phase requires us to granulate, code, analyse, and synthesise raw data into coherent narratives. We complete our work by delivering our findings, primarily through an in-person presentation, although other formats — booklets, infographics, and videos — can be used to amplify the findings.

Can you help with the implementation process?
We do our very best not to. We can maintain objectivity by having no vested interest in arriving at any particular answer (for example, one that perfectly matches a solution we have in our back pocket). Furthermore, the breadth of topics we explore would make it impossible for us to provide expert implementation support. Nevertheless, there will be occasions when you feel our continued involvement is necessary. We will, of course, provide support in such instances.

What’s a typical timeline for a research study?
For the first project with a client, the ideal end-to-end timing for a project is four weeks. This allows a week for briefing and administration, two weeks for fieldwork, and a week for analysis and presentation of the findings.

However, we can accelerate the process once we regularly undertake research projects with a client. For example, we can deploy a Hive virtual focus group within 24 hours and present you with findings at the end of the session.