ICAI Members Survey
Author:
Ronan O'Brien
When I became Director of Communications at ICAI one of my initial tasks was to take a look at what was knocking around the office so to speak. One of the first things I found was a piece of market research about attitudes to the Institute undertaken in 1983. It was a welcome find and indicated that the organisation I had joined were deeply interested in the views of members and professional enough, as far back as 1983, to undertake some direct measurement of how members felt.
Around ten years ago ICAI began a process of further market research into the satisfaction of members with the services and support they receive from their Institute.
The intention at that time was to do a benchmark survey which Council and the ICAI executive could have repeated on a regular basis to measure whether member satisfaction was growing or in decline. The plan hit a hitch with the financial difficulties ICAI faced in the early 2000s. In those pre-Internet days market research was particularly expensive to do and was, fo quantitative surveys at least, dependant on members’ willingness not just to complete forms, but to send them back in the post. The first survey was done but plans to repeat the process were abandoned.
Since then ICAI has conducted some market research but most of it has focussed on specific proposals rather than being true to the original concept of regularly measuring members’ perception of the Institute’s performance. For example, some research was conducted during the discussions that took place about a possible merger with another professional body a number of years ago.
In addition, we regularly use surveys to determine attitudes on specific issues. In conjunction with our colleagues in the International Innovation Network we have participated in large surveys involving younger members, members in business and members in practice.
The purpose of all these surveys is to allow us elicit information from you to help plan the services we provide and to match the career needs that individual members face. Some of the new innovations you see from the Careers and Placement service have their origins in this kind of research.
Similarly, our teams that lobby Government have occasion to use surveys to help determine what precise position ICAI should take on issues. Before advocating an outcome it is sometimes important to know how exactly our members feel about it. In a different, but similar vein, our series of business sentiment surveys conducted with IIB has helped profile the central role played by Chartered Accountants in the nation’s business life. In Northern Ireland the Ulster Society of Chartered Accountants has embarked on a similar process with the Economic Research Institute of Northern Ireland.
However, the renewed focus on the brand initiated by the Strategic Review Group report has led to more market research being undertaken. We have assessed attitudes on the standing of the CA brand, for instance, in both the student and business communities. It is time now to return to the original intention of measuring Institute performance in the eyes of members. Doing so was one of the specific initiatives identified in the SRG report. Members are ICAI’s critical stakeholders. Your response to the services we provide and what we say and do on your behalf is a critical one. To that end ICAI will launch an online survey in April which will be emailed to all members and publicised through the usual communication vehicles like eNews. (As an institute ICAI enjoys a higher rate of membership email address retention than any of our competitor professional accounting bodies.)
I would like to invite all members to take the time to complete this survey. We understand that you are busy people so we will design it to take as little of your time as possible and obviously your responses will be confidential. However, if we are to use the findings to help plan the development of additional services we need as many of you to take part as possible.
ICAI is proud to be a membershipdriven organisation but to remain so successfully we really need to know what you think of what we’ve being doing and where we should be going next. Happy responding!