Capturing our members’ perceptions
Features
Vol 26 No 1 2018
5 July 2018
How we undertook the most significant membership survey in our history
In 2016, the WANO Corporate Communications team embarked on an unprecedented survey of our membership.
Carried out by a team of external consultants – so that the interviewees would feel comfortable expressing their most candid and unfiltered views – our goal was to find out what WANO’s members thought we were doing well and what they thought we could do better.
In-depth and wide-reaching, this was a fact-finding mission, designed to explore how our members feel about us – their perception of the products and services we offer, their understanding of the purpose of WANO and their attitudes towards the effectiveness of the organisation.
The integrity of this survey relied on the ability of the interviewees to feel comfortable expressing their most forthright views.
Confidentiality is key to our organisation, so, before each interview, each participant was assured that their responses would remain anonymous.
The questions
The questions were structured to elicit detailed and in-depth answers. After all, this was a qualitative rather than a quantitative survey. We didn’t want to restrict their answers or guide them down a subjective path - we were interested in hearing the voice of our members, and in truly understanding how they felt about us.
It was agreed prior to beginning this project that yes or no answers would not give us the insight we needed.
Objectives
So why did we do it? Well, this project was crucial for us to understand exactly what our members’ requirements are. In such a large, global organisation, staffed by so many experts in their field, it is easy to always think ‘we know best’. We wanted to understand what our members thought the future direction of WANO should be, so that we knew what our priorities should be and what we need to focus on. That’s why we will be implementing changes according not just to what we think should happen, but what our valued members think should happen. When it comes to nuclear safety, we are all peers and we need to keep listening to each other. WANO was built on a foundation of cooperation, sharing and cross-border collaboration. It’s a proud history we mean to maintain.
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The interviewees
Over 50 interviews were conducted with individuals representing all of the Regional Centres. Some were conducted as focus groups, others as one-on-one interviews.
The interviewees were selected to be representative of all types of membership and all levels of seniority. They were broadly defined into four categories:
· Senior members – CEOs and CNOs
· Secondees – people employed by our member organisations on secondment to WANO
· Service users - WANO Interface Officers and other people working in our member plants and utilities
· Member Communicators – Professional communicators in our member organisations
This gave us a broad cross-section of views to draw from. And without fail, each one of our interviewees gave us useful feedback. The feedback was collated, reviewed and analysed, before being incorporated into our ongoing vision for WANO, which itself is intrinsically linked with our strategic plan, Compass 2018-2022.