They won the award for their work to develop a mathematical analysis tool that reveals the link between employee commitment, customer satisfaction and business performance.
Working alongside the building society’s planning and development team, ORC International uncovered strong links between people management and its product sales, after analysing data from a mix of HR indicators, a staff attitude survey, sales figures and extensive customer research. This business model has been used to investigate how research data can be combined with management information and performance measures to gauge their relative impacts.
Commenting on the win, ORC International’s managing director, Nigel Maxfield said: “This is an outstanding achievement, and a real credit to everyone concerned. Being able to prove that staff retention leads to better sales figures and that specified changes to employee satisfaction lead to improved retention has been a tremendous result.
“One of the factors that drives positive customer perception and buying intention is the impact of the behaviour of customer-facing employees which is, in turn, driven by their commitment and pride in their employer. Given that the Nationwide is now using the results of our research to inform their business strategies and HR policies, we are all very proud that our contribution has been recognised.”
The awards are designed to champion the role research plays as the driver of company innovation, insight into customer values, and the basis on which many key business decisions are made. Developed to complement the Market Research Society’s own awards, their purpose is to recognise excellence in people, methodology, best practice and effectiveness. Judges were drawn from the most senior agency and client levels and entrants for all 16 categories passed through a rigorous judging process before being selected.
