Post-covid stakeholder survey
What the people and organisations who work with Campbell Tickell really think about us
STRATEGY
Image: Istock
Greg Campbell
Partner, Campbell Tickell
It is inevitable that one approaches a stakeholder perceptions survey with a degree of trepidation. What do people really think about us? What will they say? What if the messages we get back are really difficult?
But at the same time, it is important to understand what the people and organisations we work with on a day-to-day basis have to say about us. Plus, going into this exercise we were buoyed by the great feedback we received last time we did such a survey, three years ago.
It is important though to make sure we are hearing the unvarnished truth – that way, we can be confident it expresses what people really feel and there is no danger of the pill being sugared. So, while CT frequently carries out stakeholder surveys for clients, we engaged an independent third party to do it on our behalf – Jacquie Anglin from Creative Bridge, who also conducted our 2018 survey.
She spoke to 39 people, a mix of those who know CT well and those who have had only limited dealings with us. They were drawn from across England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales; from care and support, charities, commercial housing and property companies, councils, government, health, housing providers, law firms, regulators and sport, including umbrella bodies.
The survey covered a range of topics, not just about CT, but also about how organisations’ priorities have changed, in the context of both the impact of Covid-19 and other increasing pressures such as zero carbon. Participants were guaranteed confidentiality in what they had to say.
“We saw definite progress in terms of, for example, CT now having a much more solidified reputation as the go-to consultancy for many areas of expertise.”
The feedback
Despite the initial trepidation, it is fair to say we were delighted with the interview responses. The report states: “We captured exceptionally positive feedback overall. It is clear that many of the people Jacquie spoke to hold the consultancy in warm regard, some having known it for years, others being much newer clients.
“Underpinning that is the perceived calibre of the individuals running CT and those delivering services alongside the partners. Despite mixed comments about some elements of quality, consistency and awareness, we mainly captured hugely encouraging perceptions about not just the most senior people, but also many of the wider team. We feel this is something CT should be rightly proud of, but have also recommended that the consultancy thinks about how to hone that uniformly across the business.”
And more: “We saw definite progress in terms of, for example, CT now having a much more solidified reputation as the go-to consultancy for many areas of expertise. Using transferable skills and knowledge, it has also continued to successfully diversify into newer sectors for the consultancy and to consolidate across different geographies. Having achieved greater breadth of coverage, the survey showed a strong appetite for CT to facilitate more cross-fertilisation of good practice between different sectors.”
Here are the top ratings from the survey, based on ‘agree-neutral-disagree’ responses to statements about CT.
Areas for improvement
While Jacquie found no major weaknesses, there were naturally areas identified in which we could do better. These included:
- The perceived need to refresh and broaden the offer to match the multitude of challenges facing each sector and continue to meet their changing requirements
- The need to secure a higher profile for more of our team members
- The need to ensure consistent high quality and insight in all areas of work
- Some lack of openness to different ways of doing things
- The importance of further enhancing direct communications with clients
Our response
CT’s partners have committed in particular to:
- Continue to review all our communications, such as CT Brief and our weekly Opportunities Bulletin, to ensure these are properly accessible and continue to reflect best practice in the full range of sectors in which we work
- Highlight further the skills and capabilities of members of our team
- Further strengthen our team of consultants to provide greater capacity and range of skills in-house
- Extend our work on continuous professional development across the CT team
- Ensure that we continue to give high prominence in our publicity material to our strong track record in promoting inclusivity, diversity and equality in governance, recruitment, employment and service delivery
- Aim to grow our networks further across all the sectors where we operate (e.g. sports, the public sector, health, and the commercial sector) and in jurisdictions where we have been less involved than others
- Ensure we demonstrate more clearly our added value in areas of work not traditionally seen as CT’s ‘home turf’, such as business transformation and innovation, ICT, decarbonisation, ESG, and the work of commercial entrants to social housing
- Further develop our approach of seeking continuous improvement and our quality assurance processes to ensure greater consistency in how we present information and recommendations in client reports
- Conduct further surveys at suitable intervals to ensure we hear the views of partners and others we work with
CT in a nutshell
Jacquie asked all interviewees to sum up CT. She took the main words and phrases that cropped up at least twice to turn them into a word cloud – the larger the word, the more often people used it.
