As a company working within the market research sector, we know how important it is to ask for feedback. That’s why we’ve decided to formalise our methods of measuring success and are offering all of our clients, partners and suppliers the opportunity to recognise a member of the Acumen team.
Our latest initiative allows you to share your feedback directly with us and highlight the work of individual team members in addition to the overall qualitative fieldwork, quantitative market research fieldwork and healthcare fieldwork teams too. In order to start sharing your views you simple have follow the link that has been added to the email signatures of all our team members. This will then take you to a short 1 minute survey where you can give us an insight on what it was like working with Acumen.
The feedback we’ve received so far has been used to highlight the exemplary work of some of our team members as well as helping us to assess our services and look how we can continue to expand our range of services, adding greater value to your market research projects.
If you’d like to tell us what you think about Acumen or just share some feedback on some of the people you’ve been working alongside on your research projects, then simply follow the link at the bottom of one of our emails or access it here. We’d love to hear from you!
We’ve been in a celebratory mood at Acumen this week. We found out that we’ve been named as finalists in not one, not two – but three categories this year’s MRS Operations Awards.
This follows our success last year when Acumen was named as the winner for the Best Data Collection: Face to Face award. That award was in recognition of our “inventive data collection within hard to reach audiences” and our “glowing testimonials”. We’re over the moon to learn that this year we’ve been recognised in the Best Data Collection: Face to Face category again, in addition to two further nods for Best Data Collection: Telephone and Best Training & Development.
The MRS Operations Awards are particularly special to the team at Acumen as these are the only awards in our industry which specifically recognise the contributions made by fieldwork and recruitment teams, in addition to other suppliers in the market research chain; all of whom are integral to the success of any research project.
The winners for this year’s MRS Operations Awards will be announced at a special ceremony on Thursday 26th September at the new location of The Curtain in Shoreditch. Members of Acumen’s fieldwork team will be there to celebrate all of our fellow contributors and cheer on the team from Aspect who have also been named as finalists in the Best Viewing Facility category.
It promises to be a fantastic night!
It’s been quite the year at Acumen with continually increased demand for our services and, more recently, some industry award nominations for our work. So we’re now delighted to tell you that we’re expanding across a number of departments with new faces joining our teams.
Matt Barker first came to the company in 2018 as part of his University placement and, after gaining experience within a variety of different roles he returned to University to complete his degree – achieving 1st Class Honours. After he graduated Matt was successful in securing a permanent role within our Quantitative department and we couldn’t be happier. He’s brought a wealth of experience from both his placement and his time in higher education and is already making an impact within his new role.
Tom Garnett is the newest addition to Acumen’s Qualitative market research agency department; joining the team on a full time basis after making an impression during a 12 week placement with the company that he secured after finishing his degree . He’s shown a real aptitude for fieldwork within his new role and has brought a fresh perspective to the team from the time he had on his placement. The team love working with him and he’s been a welcome addition to the company.
Supporting the fieldwork teams are Jasmine Gaskell and Sarah Rogers. Sarah has joined Acumen’s finance team as an Accounts Assistant and is helping Acumen with the important elements of finance and business management. Jasmine joined the company to assist with the admin and office management while Beth is on maternity leave. She’s already made an impact on the business with a real can-do attitude and an impressive retinue of terrible jokes which she happily shares with anyone who’s willing to listen.
For more information on any of our team members, just head over to the Team page where we’ve got short bios and possibly the best team pictures you’ve ever seen!
Acumen Fieldwork, along with the other parts of the Fuller Research Group, love to give our team the opportunity to continuously develop, both in their roles and personally, so we thought what better way to do this than over a delicious lunch!
At the beginning of the year we introduced our series of Lunch and Learn sessions, aptly named Food For Thought. The object of these sessions is to share knowledge between teams , help people develop new skills, and work on their personal growth. It also gives those leading the sessions a chance to work on their public speaking skills in a relaxed, friendly environment.
Here are the sessions we’ve enjoyed so far:
Becki & Maria discussed Time Management in their Food For Thought session – a great insight into the way we prioritise our workload, sharing top tips and reflecting on how best we could utilise our time, both in and out of work.
Cassie, Senior Quant Fieldwork manager gave us an insight into her busy department which to outsiders can sometimes just seem a hive of data tables, packs and interviewers! Attendees came away with a deeper understanding of the challenges of running a Quant project, things to be cautious of, and tips for ensuring success on every project.
Katie Bancroft from Talent Inspire lead an Introduction to Mental Health session. She helped us to understand more about mental health related issues, become more aware of the affect that our lifestyle can have on our own mental health and gave us some tools to use should we ever struggle with our wellbeing ????♀️
Two of our Qual Fieldwork Managers, Leanne and Abi, took us through all the twists and turns of a day in the life of a Quallie! Members of other departments found their session really useful and said that it helped them to better understand how fieldwork managers navigate their way between clients and recruiters – achieving the ultimate end goal of successful research sessions
As a company all of our departments work closely together, but it’s always good to get some insider knowledge from the different areas of the business and share our knowledge. Upcoming Lunch and Learn sessions include a deeper look at Recruitment, Burnout and the niche that is Healthcare Research. Stay tuned for more of our Food For Thought write ups. ????
Have you seen the latest addition to the Acumen team?
Acumen have always been known as one of the busiest fieldwork teams in the market industry, working on projects across all methodologies, industries and regions, so it only seemed fitting to embrace our reputation and adopt one of the Bees from the We Love MCR campaign that transformed the city with a walking art trail of individually designed Bee sculptures.
For those of you who might not be familiar with the significance of the Bee, it has a long and rich history within the culture of the city. It is one of the best-known symbols of city, having first been used as a motif during the Industrial Revolution to show Manchester’s spirit of enterprise and its place as a hive of industry.
Since then it’s been an intrinsic part of Manchester’s identity but gained wider prominence following the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, when it became synonymous with the city’s sense of solidarity and defiance in the wake of terrorism.
In 2018 Manchester came together to create Bee in the City – a mass public art event which saw community groups and artists designing their own bees that formed a stunning walking art trail throughout the city.
The bees from the trail were later auctioned off for the We Love MCR charity, raising over £1.1 million for good causes, community groups and young people throughout the Manchester area.
Following the auction of the Bees from the walking art trail we were delighted to hear that we’d been successful in getting one of the smaller, plain, bee sculptures, which had been made as part of a limited collection.
We used the canvas of the sculpture to emulate the ethos of the bee – representing the spirit of enterprise, industry and cooperation – with artwork inspired by Acumen and the other businesses that complement Acumen.
It now sits in the reception of our building, proudly greeting all who come through our doors at Canal Street in Manchester and we’re delighted that we can share this; our small tribute, to the city we call our home.
It’s that time again – the MRS Conference is back and Acumen are pleased to announce that we’re continuing our long-term partnership with the conference as the official Champagne Bar sponsor.
IMPACT brings together the latest innovations from the market research industry with papers and presentations from industry leaders along with case studies on cutting edge research projects. In addition to this there are a number of unmissable keynote speeches at this year’s conference from Bruce Daisley, VP EMEA at Twitter; Reverand Richard Coles, cleric and former Communard; RT Hon Nicky Morgan MP and a Keynote interview with Victoria Coren Mitchell.
Throughout the conference Acumen will be speaking to delegates from across the research industry in the designated networking area and will be providing a Champagne reception on Wednesday 13th of March from 4pm. Representing the Acumen team will be Julie Fuller, founder of Acumen; Becki Pickering, Fieldwork Director; along with Gemma Shevlin and Sam Garlick from our qualitative team.
We also have a very special surprise which will be revealed at the conference. Be sure to come and say hello and get yourself a glass of fizz to see what we’ve got in store.
If you’d like to know more about our services or how we can help on any research brief – qualitative, quantitative or for healthcare specific research – then feel free to drop an email to becki.pickering@acumenfieldwork.com
In just a few weeks some of the team from Acumen heading out to Sierra Leone to join the Teams4U, a charitable organisation that runs various initiatives around the world.
The team, led by Acumen founder Julie Fuller, will be working with Teams4U on their Develop with Dignity programme which seeks work with young girls and boys to assist them with simple interventions that will enable them to stay in school and continue with their education. Joining Julie will be Lizzie Coultas, Head of Healthcare, and Jade Bailey who’s one of the Senior Project Coordinators in Research Opinions – Acumen’s in-house recruitment team.
Part of the work that they will be doing in Sierra Leone will be providing girls with access to basic sanitary products which will enable them to continue with their education. Currently it’s estimated that on average girls lose up to 3 days per month due to menstruation due to a lack of access and the affordability of sanitary products.
The programme will also be working with boys to help support them by staying in school in a country which often sees children leaving education to find employment as a means of better supporting their families.
If you would like to contribute to the important work that Teams4U are doing in Sierra Leone then you can donate via our Just Giving page at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/julie-fullersierraleone2019
Or if you would like to donate to support Lizzie and Jade and their fundraising head over to https://www.gofundme.com/fuller-research-sierra-leone-trip/
Alternatively if you have items that you would like to donate, such as basic school supplies or other smaller items, please contact hannah.o.donoghue@fullerresearchgroup.com
Acumen have been shortlisted in the Best Innovation category at the 2018 MRS Awards.
The prestigious award will be judged in front of a “Dragon’s Den” style panel before the awards are announced at the MRS Awards Ceremony on Monday 3rd of December.
Acumen have been shortlisted for the groundbreaking work they did on the joint BBC & BT project for a new prototype technology that they have been developing in partnership. The research that Acumen conducted was instrumental in assisting the development teams in the new features and services of their prototype, before taking it to the next phase of development and trials.
Speaking of the work with Acumen, Doug Williams, Project Director at BT Sport, said:
“Acumen played a critical role in allowing us to assess the features and interaction design in our prototype service and worked with us to ensure their market researchers could support our evaluators in what was, at the time of the test, a very technical set up. Following the trials that Acumen conducted, Jamie Hindhaugh, the COO of BT Sport is now publicly promoting our prototype as ‘the next big initiative’ that will help in BT’s quest to allow their viewers to get to the heart of sport.”
Winners will be announced on the 3rd of December – everyone at Acumen will be keeping everything crossed until then!
For the third year running Acumen have successfully completed their audit for the ISO20252 accreditation in market research with zero discrepancies.
After a two-day process where external auditors came into the company and scrutinised the processes of our qualitative market research team, plus quantitative and healthcare teams they found us to be fully compliant with the quality control measures implemented as part of the standard.
Leading Acumen in this is Wendy Durn who, as our Head of Compliance, has overseen the creation and implementation of the ISO20252 standard within the business, in addition to the new requirements of GDPR.
Acumen received particular praise for the work we have done with regards to GDPR in addition to noting the steady growth of the business and the continually high levels of satisfaction amongst Acumen’s clients.
To achieve the ISO20252 standard in market research is an achievement that everyone at Acumen is rightfully proud of – but to do it without having any discrepancies for the third year in a row is a remarkable achievement and one which we will all be celebrating.
If you’d like to know more about how our quality standards can add value to your research contact costings@acumenfieldwork.com
