publications

Focus Groups as Audience Research
Using measurement to enhance employee communication

What is the environment into which the message will be sent? What's the credibility of the broadcaster voice? What do employees expect to hear, and what do they not expect to hear? What will bore them or turn them off so they won't hear the message? What do they least expect?

By understanding these factors, we can target communication much more effectively -- to inform, reassure and energize. We can plan to deliver messages that people expect or are hoping for, addressing their needs directly. Or, we can deliver messages that they are not expecting, using surprise in our favor and getting attention for a new message or campaign and generating the much sought-after "buzz."

Ultimately, efforts to research employee communication needs are the most successful when they reflect the realities of the target audience. Finding this planning sweet spot is the real challenge: How do you combine analytical rigor, the need to get a decent sample size and the need to understand how people influence each other and re-broadcast messages?

The key to understanding these factors effectively is simple: Ask.

Research Mechanisms: Focus Groups and Surveys

Surveys can be powerful primary research tools in the quest for powerful employee communication. They are quick and relatively cheap to administer and enable a researcher to cover a wide audience. Surveys generate findings over a short period of time and allow for a wide range of statistical analyses. They also lend themselves to executive presentations, and by customizing questions, they can be tailored to a number of issues -- including communication.

However for our purposes, they are limited by a basic reality -- surveys capture the thinking of the person surveyed at the time that they are completing the questionnaire. In so doing, they bypass one of the most important aspects of the way information flows in an organization -- that we are social creatures who influence each other and edit, interpret and re-word messages. As employee communication professionals looking to compel an audience -- often to virally re-broadcast our message to each other -- understanding this social factor can make the difference between a successful campaign and one the falls flat.

A large multinational telecom carrier demonstrated this several years ago. Senior executives at that company initiated a series of messaging campaigns that were received badly by employees, despite having been built around the results of the annual all-employee survey. The reason? The survey, designed in the U.S., did not address social factors important to employees outside the United States, including the voice and tone used by senior executives. As a result, these employees misunderstood the messaging and rebroadcast this confusion throughout the company.

In many ways, focus groups -- when used for audience research -- are polar opposites of surveys. They are limited in their coverage (it's not a good idea to try to have everyone in an audience participate in a focus group) and have traditionally been good at generating anecdotal and qualitative information -- not the hard facts that well-executed surveys can deliver.

What focus groups do allow us to do is dig and test scenarios. When a topic comes up in a focus group, the facilitator can ask follow-up questions and observe the way that participants interact with and influence each other.

Yet focus groups tend not to get the respect or the influence with senior executives that survey findings enjoy. This is due to a combination of factors. First, focus groups can get out of hand if the conversation is not carefully planned, prepared and managed by the facilitator. Often, there is one participant who feels strongly about a particular matter and leads others to express similar views. This can lead the researcher to conclude that because that topic dominated the conversation, it must be a dominant issue among this audience when it is simply the social factor at work. This "squeaky wheel factor" has led to misleading findings, poor planning and unsuccessful campaigns…and many executives have experienced this directly.

Second, focus groups tend to yield "soft" information that is packaged quite differently than information senior executives are accustomed to receiving, and the findings they generate tend to get discounted because of it.

Consequently, situations sometimes arise like that of Chrysler's PT Cruiser, which the company approached cautiously despite focus groups that showed the car would be big hit. As a result, Chrysler initially scrambled to meet demand. Conversely, GM may have minimized the negative focus group information it received around the Pontiac Aztek -- a vehicle that has struggled for market share.

Methods for Measurement in Focus Groups

Employee communicators are faced with a dilemma -- they want to gather the right information and use it to get senior executives to approve plans, yet surveys don't present the whole picture and focus group findings can be misleading. One solution is to combine surveys and focus groups as research methods (see graph below). Another solution is to add quantification to focus groups.

Some techniques for this include:

• Frequency of mention analysis -- This is typically done after the meeting occurs and relies on very rigorous notes or a recording of the conversation. For example, a facilitator may ask for the function that a group would most want to use in a new intranet rollout and could capture each suggestion. In combining the suggestion lists from multiple meetings, trends on frequency of mention will emerge and can be charted in findings reports.
• Ranking -- This technique involves asking participants to rank issues or preferences. For example, a facilitator can ask them to write down the first, second and third topics they want to have the CFO address in an upcoming meeting. You can capture that information as part of the conversation and use it in your report.
• Surveying -- A focus group represents a captive audience, and their minds are focused on the topic at-hand. A brief survey administered before, during or after the session can be a great way to help get the conversation going and give numerical backing for qualitative findings.
• Multi-voting or currency -- This technique involves giving each participant a certain number of "votes" or currency to distribute among issues or preferences. For example, the facilitator could list 10 things that the company could do to improve communication and ask each person to spend U.S. $100 in artificial money on the programs they think are the most important to them. By counting up the money applied to each program, you can get a good sense of the audience's priorities.

Any one or a combination of these elements helps make the time spent in a focus group as effective as possible. They provide some numbers that allow for graphs and percentages in your findings. They also help diminish the risk of interpreting the squeaky wheel factor as representing the desires of the larger group by enabling the voices of all participants to be equally weighted.

Timing is an important factor in your measurement exercise.

If you measure at the beginning of a meeting -- or perhaps with a survey before the focus group has even begun -- you will get the most unique responses, as participants will not yet have influenced each other. The main advantage of this technique is that it gets people thinking about a particular topic, kick-starting the conversation. It also gives the researcher the chance to capture attitudes before the social factor comes into play.

By measuring in the middle of a focus group -- for example with a ranking exercise -- you can get a strong sense of the social factor by observing how people influence each other to rank topics a certain way. You can also use the measurement findings to drive the conversation further and generate scenarios.

Measuring at the end of a focus group also tends to capture the social factor and can be used effectively as a way to get the group to summarize what they believe to be the main findings from the conversation.



Both focus groups and surveys get you part of the way to the planning sweet spot, but the most accurate and thorough way to get there is to combine these methods. Here's how they can work together:

• Use focus groups to generate questions for your surveys, and vice versa. Surveys can yield interesting findings and lead the communicator to make assumptions and develop scenarios -- focus groups can be the perfect way to dig deeper into those scenarios and test the messaging. Focus groups can also surface issues that you might want to include in your next survey.
• Use a brief survey as part of your focus group.
• Add a measure of quantification to the focus groups that tracks with survey questions already asked. For example, if you found the top 10 issues on employees' minds in the survey, you can bring those up in the focus group and ask people to vote on which are the most important for them to hear about from a senior leader. Ask follow-up questions and test scenarios. This allows you to combine your findings and have them build on each other.
• Add open-ended questions to your surveys. These do not lend themselves to statistical interpretation but do add an element of depth to survey findings and can help surface issues.
• Mix and match. Employee groups get used to providing feedback in a certain way. The more fatigued they are by frequent surveying or focus groups, the less likely they are to provide you with the information you need - so change the way you're asking.

Conclusion

To be successful, planning an employee communication campaign should involve a mixture of research methodologies. Balancing approaches to include quantification and an understanding of the social factor allows the communication professional to attain the planning sweet spot. This gives an accurate picture of your employees' needs, attitudes and behaviors. It also allows for accurate planning and a successful communication campaign.

Marc Cooper is Senior Manager, Change and Executive Communications at McLean, Virginia-based Capital One. Marc has extensive international experience in change communication and strategic business consulting.


Discuss this topic with other IABC members at: www.iabc.com/memberspeak.