Two glasses of champagne as a symbol of new year celebrations

FEATURE31 December 2021

Preview 2022: New Year’s resolutions

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As 2021 draws to a close and 2022 beckons, what are the resolutions that the market research industry is embracing this year? Here, we round up a selection of good intentions from some of the sector’s best-known names, including a better work-life balance, aiming to accelerating progress on diversity and continuing to put the consumer first.

Caroline Frankum, global chief executive, profiles division, Kantar 
Being kinder to myself by more consciously taking time out from work to invest in my mental wellbeing by doing at least 20 minutes of exercise every single day. Covid-19 has been a true inflection point for appreciating that time is limited, yet work/life boundaries for many peoples have been severely disrupted, causing us to work much longer hours – something that is simply not feasible to sustain in the longer term.

Shazia Ginai, chief executive, Neuro-insight 
To shift out of survival mode and back into thriving mode. As the CEO of a small agency, I’ve been focused on keeping us going, but I’m already doing some much more enjoyable work around the big picture thinking, which as a business leader I really enjoy. We can see more clearly now what lies ahead, and that gives me hope that I can approach the business differently to the past nail-biting two years.

Sabine Stork, founding partner, Thinktank 
This year I’ve spent some time filling in holes in my marketing knowledge and really look forward to using this more actively in 2022.  I also feel that a lot of marketers, especially in B2B roles, are really crying out for more education about research and would love to partner with someone to put on an educational webinar.

Ben Shimshon, co-founder and managing partner, BritainThinks 
My resolution is to accelerate our progress on diversity within the agency and in our fieldwork. To keep reminding ourselves that diversity is intersectional, comes in many different forms, and requires constant flexibility and openness to truly accommodate difference. I’d really love to develop our recruitment processes to ensure we embrace neurodiversity and don’t unknowingly exclude talent from our business.

Lisa Wilding-Brown, chief executive, InnovateMR
Our primary focus is to increase accessibility to insights and empower professionals with the ability to make insightful choices about the future of their businesses. InnovateMR will continue to be a leading voice for the industry and a centre for excellence in everything that we do. I will continue my passion for helping young professionals navigate their careers, facilitate new learnings, be an accessible CEO and use our voice to create meaningful change for those working in market research.

Jane Frost, chief executive, Market Research Society 
I’d like to stop working such long days. As we’ve seen at many organisations, working hours have increased since the start of the pandemic and burnout is a risk for a lot of people. Everyone has been putting in a lot of effort over the past two years and we need to make sure we’re getting the balance right – managers should be leading by example.

Graham Idehen, director customer success, Emea, Lucid
We plan on continuing to put the consumer first. We need to overhaul the way in which we think about particular aspects of the ecosystem – for example, ‘completes’. We need to humanise ‘completes’ from a buy-side perspective, remembering that they are ‘people’ first. I want to make sure my team is focused on the participant at all times, thinking about how we improve the respondent experience.

Together, we will continue to prioritise building strong two-way relationships with our clients to truly understand their research objectives inside and out, to provide advice and guidance that will both achieve the client’s goals and keep the respondent journey front of mind.

Sinead Jefferies, consultant, Vela
To make sure that I spend as much time as I can supporting teams in figuring out how to make the world of work function for them. I am seeing so much evidence daily of the stress and pressure that people are under, plus companies are struggling how to figure out the most effective way to balance remote and office working. It’s a small piece of the overall jigsaw to ensure our people are happy and fulfilled in their work, but an important one to get right.

I want to ensure that I do as much as I can to support and drive initiatives that make this a sector where people feel fulfilled, motivated and proud to belong.

Annie Pettit, chief research officer for North America, E2E Research 
I’m reasonably confident about my written communication stories but when it comes to converting written stories into memorable visuals, I always struggle. I can recognise great designs but I need to be better at creating them myself. This year, I’m going to make a concerted effort to learn basic techniques of visual design so that I can copy less and create more.

I’ve also signed myself up for ASL classes at my local library. Only knowing fingerspelling and a few basic words is inadequate and I want my industry to be more accessible to everyone.

Jane Rudling, managing director of insight and analytics, Unlimited 
I’m focused on keeping an open mind. There are new technologies and methodologies developing all the time and, while we don’t need to adopt them all, it is interesting to see new solutions springing up.  ­

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