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Welcome to another informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast!
Today, Sima shares the first part of a two-part series she created from the session she moderated at SampleCon, which took place in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. The session was titled Future-Proofing Our Industry and covered topics that included talent topics related to how people will return to work, supply topics, and market dynamics.
The panel includes Patrick Comer, the CEO and Founder of Lucid, Bob Fawson, EVP of Business Strategy for Dynata, Mario Carrasco, the Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow, and Rebecca Brooks, the Founder, and CEO of Alter Agents.
What work looks like for the next six to twelve months
Rebecca:
Alter Agents had an easy transition to working full-time remotely during the pandemic. Their staff also doubled during that time. They decided to allow their lease to lapse at the end of June 2021 and keep on working remotely. It has been challenging not to have the usual opportunities to interact and chat with colleagues. So Rebecca has scheduled time to meet with everybody one-on-one, once a month, to keep connected and talk about business or personal matters.
Overall, her staff is happy and working better than ever. Working from home has released them from some of the stress they were experiencing from being at work. They now communicate with one another fluidly via Slack.
Rebecca’s primary concern is upholding the company values and maintaining its culture.
Bob:
Bob feels a little concerned about onboarding and helping new team members find mentors and learn how to work in a professional environment. They have been pursuing a hybrid model, which was a shift for their company. Bob is not sure that anyone knows what their preference will be six months from now, but he is looking forward to that evolution.
Bob has enjoyed seeing how resilient people are. He hopes to end up with a little more balance between work and non-work life.
Mario:
When ThinkNow was founded back in 2010, working from home was a core tenet. They wanted to be a cloud-first company.
Their leadership works from their headquarters in Los Angeles, and they have sales staff around the country, project management teams in India, and development teams in Latin America. The hardest part of the pandemic was finding themselves unable to see their overseas employees at their annual or bi-annual gatherings. Although technology has helped, they still miss getting together in person and interacting.
They have taken the approach of opening their office and letting people come in when they want to. So far, that has been working well. About 70% of the employees go in two to three times a week, and the rest go every day.
They are looking at people from a holistic perspective, rather than only looking at them only from a work lens, to address some of the mental wear and tear after the pandemic.
Patrick:
Lucid is a global company, so they are constantly aware that the pandemic affects different parts of the world differently, and it is not over yet.
They have done their best to live up to their core value of compassion. The team went out of its way to offer help to Indian people and their families and assist them in staying connected and doing business. Patrick remembers having to remind their team in India that they could have extra days off if they or their families were sick.
Sharing an experience, and knowing that we are all innately very human at this time, has made Patrick a more empathetic person, and hopefully a more compassionate person too.
Connecting people
Bob
It was supportive of Bob’s company culture to see the offices in Europe or the Philippines take on the work that others could not. That connected people across cultures and across the legacy companies that make up Dynata. It has been a catalyst for a lot of expression of good within the company.
Moving forward
Moving forward needs to be an organic process.
The labor market
The labor market is more competitive than ever right now. One of Dynata’s key moves was deciding to move out of a geographic focus on labor and using a nationwide tier. In the middle of Covid, they leveled up many people’s salaries to have a competitive salary rate for the country because geography no longer matters.
Diversity and inclusion
Mario’s company does not do diversity and inclusion. ThinkNow is a mission-based company, however. Their mission is to ensure that historically overlooked voices get represented in research from either a sample or a full-service perspective. Having that clear mission has helped them attract and retain diverse talent.
A turning point
Rebecca’s company experienced an internal turning point after the murder of George Floyd. It prompted them to reconsider their role. So they gave everyone in the company $1,000 to put towards any charity. That spawned a JEDI (Justice Equality Diversity and Inclusion) Team in the company. The members decided to find the best way to ask questions about ethnicity and gender and ensure they reach diverse audiences. Beyond that, the company also took the initiative to play a more proactive role in diversifying its staff. Part of the JEDI mission is to keep on looking for things that the company can do better. As a company, they are doing their best to look inwards and fix themselves.
A catalyst
The murder of George Floyd was a catalyst for Dynata to have internal dialogues across cultures and countries, become more intentional about what they wanted to do inside the company, and have the focus and determination to execute their plans. They even brought in experts to moderate their dialogues.
Sampling
Most sampling gets done in a one-size-fits-all way. The whole industry can aim to be more of a force for good by becoming more proactive and empathetic, rethinking how to do sampling, and providing better representational data.
Several opportunities
The sample industry can change how their customers think about everything from gender to ethnicity to education by changing and reframing their profiling questions.
Defining the profiling
We have the opportunity right now to define the profiling used by this country and others to look at who all the people are and how to engage with them.
Insights In Color
Insights In Color has released standards and demographic questions for screeners to download.
Now is the time
The pandemic has changed how we live our lives and consume products. If we are to make more inclusive updates, we have to do it now. Because as we move out of the pandemic, we have the unique opportunity to be more inclusive as an industry and update how we ask questions.
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