Automation in Research for Doing Good
Automation has become a key theme at any consumer insights conferences and webinars. We at QuenchTec have also written a series of blogs about the effect of automation in market research.
Automation has mostly been linked to faster and cheaper insights generation processes. The impact automation in shortening research cycles allowing agile research practices has been well reported. This time we would like to write about a different perspective on automation in our industry. Not about saving money, not about increasing sales for brands but for doing good. 
Our teams have recently been involved in creating an automated insights solution for a National Health Authority. The solution is aimed at raising national awareness of alcohol related issues at the workplace, as well as helping organisations in creating a healthy working environment and a job culture everybody can enjoy.
We all spend a great deal of our life at work and with our colleagues. Whether at seminars, at work parties or in other situations it is quite common to drink alcohol together with colleagues. How this is experienced will be different from employee to employee. Some see this as a normal way of bonding while for others this might not always be a pleasant experience. It is therefore important that managers are aware of the work related drinking culture within their teams and conscious of the health effect as well as the well-being and safety of their employees.
The National Health Authorities developed a specific information portal for organisations about how to handle alcohol related issues at their workplace. As part of this they encourage managers to understand their team’s views related to this matter by conducting anonymous surveys.
The results of these surveys gives them a good overview of the “situation” at their workplace and can then be used as a background for starting discussions with their employees and taking actions such as creating rules of alcohol consumption in the workplace.
In order to increase the adoption rate of such practices the National Health Authorities wanted to have a low barrier of adoption and that is where the automation approach came into place. The aim was to create a solution each manager of a company can use easily without any training and is able to create the insights needed within an hour.
The QuenchTec team worked together with the Health Authority and their Research Partners to codify their proven approach into an easy to use yet powerful automated solution. The task was to create a solution with a templated survey, an easy process to invite employees in a secure and anonym’s way, inbuilt mechanism to keep all steps anonymous and an automatic report creation for the manager to act on.
At end of the process the manager can, with one click, invite their teams to a meeting to share the results and discuss what kind of workplace they want to create. The whole solution is based on QuenchTec APIs and all steps are automatically triggered for easiness of use and speed.
The project is ongoing but already now some key messages crystallise:
- 7 out of 10 employees want clearer rules for the use of alcohol in employment
- 9 out of 10 want guidelines for alcohol use during working hours
- 8 out of 10 believe that the workplace should have arrangements for employees with problems related to alcohol use
Being able to contribute to such projects with our automated solutions makes us proud and gives us a sense of purpose for doing good in the world.