Last week, Redefining Communications published the results of an intensive piece of research that came out of our partnership looking into communicating with remote, desk-less workforces. Understanding how these workers are served by the communications channels is a valuable set of insights that promises to help with workplace culture, employee engagement and making better use of digital technology in the workplace.

There is an extra benefit for the SocialOptic team, as becoming a customer for our own products helps us to better understand how our customers use them – we are always ready to listen and learn. The research was a great combination of face-to-face interviews and on-line surveys, all recorded with SurveyOptic. The result was a very rich set of data that let us look at how different communications channels serve remote, hard to reach employees in a wide range of organisations and job roles. It also lead to us developing some new ways to analyse and visualise complex survey data, and these are now built in to SurveyOptic as standard features that any of our customers can use in the platform.

Communication comes up time and time again in the employee engagement survey work that we do. This was a chance for us to focus in on how employees receive information at the front line of organisations, and to delve into what was working and what was not, and why. You can download the full report from this link. It is over 30 pages of analysis, which Alive with Ideas have done a beautiful job of realising across web, digital and print versions. For any SurveyOptic users who recognise the graph styles – yes, you can now produce graphics in your own corporate colour scheme.

Jenni and I presented the research in London last week (we could have filled the room twice over – perhaps we’ll be back), tomorrow (8th of May) we are in Manchester, and then in Birmingham on the 17th of June. There are some other locations to follow, including including some discussions around Europe.

Download the report – “Remotely interested?”