Resource Type: Article

  • Developing Business Policies

    Developing Business Policies

    Increasingly clients (and their procurement departments) require their suppliers to have a suite of business policies in place in order to commission work.

    A business policy is a set of rules that standardises how the company operates and does things, and what action the company will take in specific circumstances. They also demonstrate how your company complies with the law. A good policy is;

    • Specific, simple and clear – easy to understand, consistent and unambiguous
    • Inclusive and applies equally to everyone and all areas of the business
    • Appropriate to that organisation
    • Stable with clear action points – no ambiguity re. what needs to be done should an incident arise

    For small businesses, writing and maintaining these policies can seem onerous and overly pedantic – but not only are many of the policies a good idea in principle, they may also be a ‘deal breaker’ for the commissioning client. It is often a good idea to have a policy in place, even if that policy does not directly apply to the small business – it allows clients to ‘tick the box’.

    It also means that you can move through the procurement process and complete the various questionnaires required. Often designed without small businesses in mind, these questionnaires may ‘block’ progress if you tick ‘no’ to a question. For example, the requirement to have a Modern Slavery Act Statement only applies to large organisations (turnover of £36m+) but this author has been ‘rejected’ by a government automated procurement system for not having one in place despite clearly having a much lower turnover. Equally we have been asked to produce an employment policy despite not having (nor intending to have) any employees, a health and safety statement despite working from home etc.

    Common required policies include;

    • Business continuity policy
    • Cyber/ information security and (often separately) data protection/ GDPR
    • Environmental/ sustainability policy
    • Customer service policy (inc. complaints and escalation procedure)
    • Corporate social responsibility & ethical policy
    • Equality and diversity policy
    • Health and safety policy
    • Quality policy

    The ACAS website has various templates for policies, the Federation of Small business as well as government business sites are also good starting places. There are also other sources of help and guidelines;

    Many ICG members are more than willing to share their own policies so if you do need something specific then ask on the egroup…

  • Less Talk, More Action: Practical Tips to Make Insight More Inclusive

    Less Talk, More Action: Practical Tips to Make Insight More Inclusive

    Here, ICG member Sarah Jenkins, Magenta, sets out some key considerations for researchers and clients when commissioning and conducting their research.

    Market research is innately a people-centred industry. Our job is to gather, analyse and report on the opinions and behaviours of the public and to provide strategic advice to businesses, governments, and non-profits to improve their services. This means that as insight professionals we have a responsibility to ensure that the breadth of the population is represented in our work, even if it involves changing our approach and asking uncomfortable questions.  

    In recent years, industry groups and networks like WIRe (Women in Research), CORe (Colour of Research) and MRSPride have formed to promote diversity and inclusion within the research sector. These groups run workshops, webinars and initiatives to inform, educate and debate ways to be more inclusive within research.

    After listening closely to the expertise of others in the industry, we thought it would be helpful to distil some of the key points we have learned to provide practical tips on how to improve diversity and inclusion in the work of research agencies and clients. This list is by no means exhaustive but will hopefully help to spark ideas about how our research can be more inclusive on a day-to-day basis.

    Read the full article here

  • Interviewing Vulnerable Customers – the Considerations

    Interviewing Vulnerable Customers – the Considerations

    A member recently asked for advice when interviewing vulnerable customers – mainly older customers dealing with healthcare issues. What issues should be taken into consideration? How should the interviews be planned and approached?

    The advice from the e-group is summarised as follows;

    1. METHOD. Let them choose (phone, zoom, f2f) as far as practically possible. If f2f isn’t possible, and their technological capabilities allow, ask them to self-video any issues reported in the interview. A great way of gaining more observational insight.

    2. TIME MANAGEMENT. Allow extra for the interviews. They may struggle with linear, sequential conversation. Allow for digressions and the emotion of the interview to take longer than normal.

    3. SCHEDULING. Be flexible. Treatment for their conditions may mean some days are better than others. Work around them. And drop-outs are likely so you may want to over-recruit.

    4. CHUNKING. Split the interview over two sessions to avoid overloading them. But avoid getting too involved and building a long-term relationship.

    5. CARERS. Involve their family/friends/carers in paired depths. They will have a different view on current/future needs. Plus, their presence will reassure the vulnerable customer.

    6. SIGNPOSTING. Consider what support they may need and be ready to point them towards external organisations if necessary 7. INCENTIVES. Consider alternatives like a hamper or flowers. If it’s cash, pay well 8. CLARITY. They may be wary of scams. Reassure them about the process, objectives, and issues being discussed from the outset. Make it clear this is legitimate research!

    9. LANGUAGE. Avoid the term “vulnerable”. It may not match their experience. Let them use their own words for what they’re dealing with.

    10. STIMULUS. Consider how it would work for those with sight/hearing loss, cognition or other conditions.

    11. SEGMENTING. Not all vulnerable people are the same and they can’t be pigeonholed into one easy box, often because they are dealing with several vulnerabilities at once.

  • Going Beyond System 1/2 – the Many Flavours and Layers of Decision-Making Psychology

    Going Beyond System 1/2 – the Many Flavours and Layers of Decision-Making Psychology

    ICG member Elina Halonen, Square Peg Insight, writes:

    Although well-known, System 1/2 theory is not the only perspective on decision making – there are several differing views in the behavioural science community, each with slightly different assumptions about human nature.

    Much of the discourse in the applied behavioural science world and, to some extent, the spark for the global behavioural insights “movement” rests on the concept of System 1 and System 2. However, we need to keep in mind it’s not the only view on how people make decisions.

    Nudging and bounded rationality

    The basic premise of the influential nudge approach is the concept of bounded rationality – that human beings are fallible, poorly informed as well as suffering from myopia, inertia and self-control issues. In other words, human decision making is full of somewhat predictable flaws and consequently the scientific field should focus on studying them (and the applied world on fixing them).

    Over the past 40 years, the heuristics and biases program (H&B) has uncovered a lot of systematic violations of reasoning and decision making which have led to a loose consensus that humans have innate cognitive limitations which lead us to instinctively rely on heuristics – and occasionally bias us to make predictable error, at least compared to the rational homo economicus benchmark.

    This insight was originally the core idea of nudging: that the policy makers could leverage people’s cognitive and motivational inadequacies as a way to steering them to better decisions for their own long-term welfare – ones that are aligned with their ultimate goals.

    However, it’s not the only view on how humans behave and decide – it has received plenty of criticism like everything in academia – something that is often missed in the conversations on the applied side of practitioners. In fact, the research on heuristics and biases was criticized early on in the 80s as the “psychology of first impressions” and that there is more to human decision making and problem solving than their first response in a given situation.

    Cognitive misers in social psychology

    Around the same time in the 80s, another research program emerged in social psychology focused on the dynamics of social influence and persuasion. It also viewed humans as cognitive misers but proposed that we can be persuaded to allocate more resources to engage with arguments.

    This gave rise to the early persuasion models: the heuristic-systematic model and the elaboration-likelihood model (ELM), both of which broadly propose that information is processed more systematically only if it is highly relevant or the listener is highly motivated.

    These are by no means the only dual-processing theories. Contrary to what many people think, Kahneman did not come up with System 1/2 and in Thinking Fast & Slow he credits it to Stanovich and West* – whenever you see people attributing S1/2 to Kahneman, you should be skeptical of their depth of knowledge (although it would be accurate to say he popularised the terms). Moreover, the debate over the exact nature of the dual processes is not settled – in the book In Two Minds you can find 15 chapters devoted to these debates.

    Anyway, back to the 80s!

    Lab vs real world decision-making

    Another research program that started in the late 80s is naturalistic decision-making (NDM) – the study of how people make decisions in complex, high-stakes, real-world settings such as firefighting, nursing or aviation. In contrast to the H&B program, the premise was that norms of rational choice are not the right benchmark for challenging, complex decision-making required from e.g. firefighters in situations where high uncertainty and time pressure mean it’s not realistic to even expect the kind of effort required for a comprehensive evaluation of options. There is an interesting joint article by Daniel Kahneman and a prominent NDM researcher Gary Klein if you want to read more – reference at the end!

    Design flaws or design features?

    A little bit later in the mid-90s, yet another research program started in Europe (note that all of the previous ones originated in the US). Instead of seeing human decision-making as fundamentally prone to errors, the so-called fast and frugal heuristics (F&F) school studied which simple heuristics people use to make decisions and how good those decisions ultimately were. In essence, they viewed heuristics as design features of the mind – things that mostly get us to the right answer as quickly as efficiently as possible, but occasionally lead us down the wrong path. They view the cognitive system in our minds an “adaptive toolbox” of simple strategies and the key to good decisions lies in our ability to choose the right tools to the environment we find ourselves in.

    There is, of course, much more to the history of decision-making psychology, but this short summary forms a background for future discussion on nudges and nudging – remember these schools of thought as we move forward!

    Part of Squared Away newsletter series on nudging.

    https://www.squarepeginsight.com/

    If you want to read other articles in this series:

    1. A peek under the bonnet – when and where are nudges effective?
    2. Are nudges always good and sludges always evil?
    3. Nudge, boost, budge and shove – what do they all mean?
    4. All that glitters is not gold – 8 ways behaviour change can fail
    5. If context is king, why has nudging ignored it so much?

    Want to read more?

    * In their book In Two Minds, Evans and Frankish attribute S1/2 terminology to this paper: Stanovich, K. E. (1999). Who is rational?: Studies of individual differences in reasoning. Psychology Press.

    You can find more details and references in:

    Hertwig, R., & Grüne-Yanoff, T. (2017). Nudging and boosting: Steering or empowering good decisions. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(6), 973-986.

  • Running Online Workshops Effectively – Some Practical Advice

    Running Online Workshops Effectively – Some Practical Advice

    Jill Elston has summarised the advice she was given by the ICG Hive when exploring how to run effective remote online workshops.

    A few weeks ago I asked the egroup for ideas/input into running online workshops and promised to share the results. I have been feeling very guilty as I haven’t yet got around to sharing the feedback, but now I am not trying to homeschool as well as do everything else, I’ve finally managed to summarise the feedback for everyone – copied below. And my thanks to everyone who responded.

    My own workshop happened about 10 days ago – unfortunately we weren’t able to do any pre-work (which was the main recommendation everyone had) as my client wouldn’t allocate time for people to do it, so we just had to rely on everything working on the day – which luckily it did.

    There were a few tools suggested, but the one we used was Google Jam Board – I have to say it worked really well, it was very easy to use (easier I think than something like Miro, although without so many functions) and is free!

    My other key takeaway is that breakout rooms work better if you can have a co-facilitator in each of the rooms so it’s clear what is happening when you don’t have visibility on everyone.

    I’ve summarised the feedback & advice from everyone who responded below.

    Before the session:

    • Send out a pack before the session with pre-tasks, ground rules and expectations, and to familiarise them with any online tools you’ll be using
    • Send out blank sheets for them to fill in during the session
    • Try to uncover issues / themes ahead of the session to reduce time needed in the workshop

    Introductions

    • Ask people to introduce themselves then pass onto to someone else on the screen (helps develop links between the participants rather than setting expectation facilitator will always be in control of who speaks)
    • Be strict with timing
    • Consider doing icebreakers where people need to move away from their computer (e.g. go and find an item, one suggestion was to go and get a ‘creativity mascot’ and introduce it to the other participants)

    Varying tasks:

    • Mix of tasks using tools (see below) and discussions to relieve boredom and introduce variety
    • Ensure breaks and communicate at the start when these will be
    • Rotate who the spokespeople are
    • Consider giving them the opportunity to share screen if materials have been prepared in advance
    • Plan for everything taking slightly longer than in a F2F situation

    Breakout rooms:

    • Can assign people beforehand; or let people choose according to topic if appropriate
    • Facilitators can move from room to room to dip in and out of discussions; if possible co-facilitators who can be placed in each room works better
    • Set up Zoom whiteboards for each breakout group

    Tools:

    • Try to send out information in advance so that people can familiarise themselves with the tools, but include a recap at the beginning for those who don’t do the familiarisation
    • Make use of the chat function in Zoom to get quick responses from everyone in the room (saves time and is quicker than going ‘round the room’)
    • Tools to use: Miro; Murall; Google Jam Board

    Further info:

    Potential training course from Paraffin / Insight Platforms:

  • Warming Up Participants in a Zoom Discussion

    Warming Up Participants in a Zoom Discussion

    When you start strong everything else flows better…

    ICG committee member Kath Rhodes of Qual Street has put together a very practical and helpful ‘top tips’ list for setting up a Zoom discussion to be as easy and flowing as possible.

    “At QS, we’ve realised that the warm-up/ way you start Zoom research is different from face to face…

    … here’s our warm-up approach and check-list

    1. thank everyone for coming and re-name them so that a) they are not revealing their surname and b) their name fits with who you think they are (not ipad2 :))
    2. explain about recording, gain their consent and remember to start recording
    3. then it’s worth getting participants tuned in to what we need from them
    4. “…don’t treat this like work – so if you are in a small group it’s better to keep your mike open – don’t mute”
    5. “…give us your full attention – please get rid of distractions like phones/ email and other people”
    6. “…try to place yourself in a good position: in good light, centred on the screen”
    7. “…don’t censure or hold back (to be polite), we want to know how YOU think, feel, behave…”

    Some other pointers:

    • it’s great to have a hostess to manage the arrivals process (you can give them co-host permissions) the team at Beam are great at doing this
    • less is more: fewer participants and shorter sessions (4-5 people and blocks of around 1 and a quarter hours… you can take breaks and come back)
    • have a back-up support moderator if you can
    • make the most of the benefits Zoom affords you: screen-sharing; the chat function for questions/ asides
    • be playful, get people to draw and hold their pics up on the screen, go into break-out rooms together, use their PCs…
    • invite clients to participate, encourage them to say hi at the beginning and the end and then ‘go dark’

    PS other software is available :)”

  • Comfort and Delusion in Perpetuating Racism

    Comfort and Delusion in Perpetuating Racism

    This session was kindly sponsored by Web Creator Suite and Teneo Translations

    THIS SESSION TOOK PLACE IN DECEMBER 2020. A SHORT SUMMARY OF IT IS HERE. 

    IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PURCHASE THE FULL RECORDING OF THE SESSION (£10), CONTACT LUCIE ON MANAGER@THEICG.CO.UK

    Chris Arning of Creative Semiotics Ltd  and Asif Noorani of Epiphany Productions, will take ICG members through a session to encourage better awareness and empathy when dealing with issues around racism in their work and lives. Chris and Asif are communication professionals who come with a unique background – effectively they are both inside and outside of mainstream white British culture which means that they won’t duck the issues but will come at it with a nuance and sensitivity that transcends the unhelpfully polarised nature of mainstream media discourse.

    More tangibly, the uniqueness of the session will the fact they will weave together and share their own experiences, and then ground these in a specialist knowledge of Semiotics and Behavioural Economics, finally opening up the discussion for participants’ own experiences and thoughts.

    The session will not just be educational but should lead to commercial benefits that include:

    • Better, less biased overall decision making by overcoming Comfort and Delusion
    • Encourage awareness across all aspects of business (clients, colleagues, respondents)
    • Higher value derived from more collaborative, diverse projects and organisations.
    • Ensure more inclusive communication that caters to and attracts more diversity
    • Can lead to the ICG publishing a diversity policy that shows its commitment to this.

    Our speakers will be setting out two hypotheses about how racist thinking becomes perpetuated in well-meaning people, each rooted in an area of expertise. The Comfort Hypothesis, rooted in behavioural economics and The Delusion Hypothesis rooted in semiotics.   What you’re getting in this session is the distillation of combined 40 years work in each of these areas. The speakers also bring their background and lived experience not only as British People of Colour, but as private school educated insight professionals, and self-employed consultants. Their methodology and approach will be challenging while constructive (not accusatory), conceptual but personal, and above all human, since no panaceas exist for this.

    This will be more than just a webinar to raise awareness, awareness is higher than it has ever been. Though there are no easy fixes though we will learn about immediate steps we can take to identify, acknowledge and overcome the empathy gap, address it and start to nudge behaviours.

    Above all our speakers look forward to sharing knowledge but also learning from your experiences in and around this still taboo societal issue.

    Chris Arning 

    Chris the son of a Caribbean born mother and Anglo-Irish-German father born in Manchester. Chris is Brit-ish and grew up in London politically black but was raised culturally white, which was confusing and which if he’d been born in another country might have led to the Presidency. In the UK he has had to settle for being a ‘poor man’s Richard Ayoade! Chris writes poetry, does stand-up comedy, runs Creative Semiotics, teaches Contextual Studies and is a member of #HipHopEd. He has conducted semiotic studies on cultural identity for the BBC including for 1Xtra. He recently reviewed #BlackOutTuesday responses for trends house Canvas 8 and has been writing and blogging on race and representation since the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

    Asif Noorani

    Asif Noorani is the son of immigrant Pakistani Muslim parents.  Growing up in Manchester, he managed to disappoint everyone by not becoming a doctor.  His lived experience of the  second-generation culture clash, fed an appetite to embrace the unknown, find patterns of meaning and share stories through film.  Asif heads up Epiphany Productions where as a behavioural economist and storyteller he has worked with organisations including NHS, BBC, Home Office, Arts Council, and the Digital Democracy Commission to explore and tackle diversity and inclusion challenges. The burning question in all his work right now is whether after the pandemic and George Floyd’s killing, we will make good on our good intentions?

  • Hiding Observers from a Zoom Group

    Hiding Observers from a Zoom Group

    Zoom’s policy is that everyone attending a Zoom meeting must be aware that there are other people on it (so you cannot set up ‘secret’ observers in advance) – and indeed this is also enshrined in the MRS Code of Conduct (respondents must be told in advance that there may be observers, and also at the beginning of the interview). However, Zoom does allow people to switch themselves off so that they do not impact the session. Here is how to do it…

    1. Ask observers to switch video off (& mute themselves).

    2. Ask them to change their names to just first name or initials (to stay anonymous).

    3. Respondents will, when they join, see black boxes with the names / initials of the observers. Ask them to click on the three little dots on any of these boxes which gives them the option to hide non-video participants (they only have to do it once).

    4. You do the same or change the settings that non-video participants don’t show (that’s only for you, so you need to do step 2). It’s a bit cumbersome but actually never found it to be a problem.

    Many thanks to Karin Heath for this explanation

  • How to Make Better Decisions

    How to Make Better Decisions

    ICG member Toby Collins provides an action plan to minimise biases in our everyday lives in order to make better decisions. Toby writes …

    A couple of weeks ago I posted a graphic (from the Visual Capitalist) showing 50 of the most common cognitive biases. Some biases were known concepts such as the bandwagon, stereotyping or placebo effects, while others were less well known but were instantly recognised by readers of the post.

    This resulted in requests to understand how to minimise these biases in everyday lives and make better decisions.

    To provide strategies to combat these biases, we first need to understand them. Put simply, cognitive biases can occur when learnt associations and shortcuts (system 1 thinking or heuristics) are applied to a situation allowing a choice or judgement to be made quickly and easily. This happens when an individual focuses on the most relevant aspects of a problem to develop a solution. Unfortunately, these shortcuts are a common source of bias.

    Deliberative reasoning (system 2) would likely yield a better outcome. It should be noted that bias can also occur in flawed system 2 thinking due to factors such as cognitive ability, information considered or laziness.

    So the simple answer to the question of how to reduce the impact of biases on your decision making is to stop and think about a decision more carefully and broadly.

    Below are a few suggested behaviours and techniques to do this more successfully: ensure that you are in a position to concentrate and allow your brain to evaluate; allow time to think; and avoid making important decisions when you are stressed, fatigued, multitasking or are being distracted.

    1) Become more aware of the biases. The Cognitive Bias Codex identifies around 180 in total, and they are grouped into 4 groups:

    • Memory: Biases that affect our recall of people events and information
    • Too much information: Biases that affect perceptions of people and event
    • Too little information: Biases for filling in the gaps
    • Need to act fast: Biases that affect how we make decisions

    Also, certain biases are prevalent in certain types of decision making (e.g. in investments), so if you can be particularly aware of them while making a choice in those areas.

    2) Become more self-aware and understand which ones you are most susceptible to. Review your current behaviour and previous decisions. What were the outcomes and what reasoning did you use? How could you have achieved a better outcome?

    3) Take an outside view, having somebody with a different viewpoint to challenge your objectives, your thinking and assumptions can be useful, and they may spot your biases.

    4) Challenge your thinking as a part of your consideration. What are the weaknesses in your thinking? Are your assumptions correct? Consider your objectives individually to generate more options to consider. When planning for the future, allow yourself to consider multiple scenarios, not just the most likely one.

    In summary, these biases are part of being human and we are all affected by them to varying degrees. To reduce their influence, and hopefully make better decisions, try to become more aware of the biases and which ones influence you most, get alternative perspectives and give yourself time and the mental tools to stop and think.

    Hopefully, this article has provided a concise overview and provided some simple practical tips to make better decisions, but as with everything nowadays, there are apps to help us.

    References

    https://www.visualcapitalist.com/50-cognitive-biases-in-the-modern-world/

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Cognitive_Bias_Codex_With_Definitions%2C_an_Extension_of_the_work_of_John_Manoogian_by_Brian_Morrissette.jpg

    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.free_coding.biascs

    https://positivepsychology.com/cognitive-biases/

  • The Scourge of Market Research Groupies and What We Can Do Filter Out Frauds

    The Scourge of Market Research Groupies and What We Can Do Filter Out Frauds

    Deanne Gold, Director, iPoint Research and ICG member

    I‘ve been recruiting participants for the market research industry for over 17 years and during that time, many things have drastically changed. But one thing that hasn’t is the problem with people taking part in too many research studies or simply lying in order to take part – the people we refer to within the industry as ‘groupies and fraudulent respondents’.

    So what are groupies and how do they differ from fraudulent respondents?

    Groupies are market research respondents who are often on multiple recruiters’ databases and take part in market research on a regular basis.

    A recent Google search about groupies reveals one company that defines a groupie as ‘a professional market research participant who creates multiple profiles with different details.’ However, I wouldn’t class this type of person as a groupie, but instead as a fraudulent respondent, and there is a definitely a difference.

    Whereas groupies use their own details but don’t declare the frequency of their involvement in research projects, fraudulent respondent will use various different names, email addresses and job descriptions to make themselves fit the criteria for a market research.

    So, for example, one week that person might be an IT Director and the next week, a Finance Controller. I know of one particular fraudulent respondent who uses over 30 different names with different mobile numbers, job titles and addresses, and participants have even been known to wear wigs and disguises to try to fool the recruiters and moderators!

    In line with our industry best practice, most recruitment companies specify that applicants should not have taken part in any other research within the previous six-month period, although this can vary depending on the topics of a research and at the discretion of the client. Even though they may not be declaring their previous involvements, groupies and fraudulent respondents will usually be taking part much more frequently than that and can, of course, earn significantly more by way of incentives as a result.

    What difference has technology made?

    The advent of online applications and digital data storage has created more of a problem trying not to recruit groupies or fraudulent respondents, because it is now far easier for applicants to register with lots of different recruiters and this could be further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, as lots of people look for additional sources of income whilst furloughed or even threatened with redundancy.

    We have been using technology to track these (and other metrics) for over 5 years, and even though they are never chosen, some people relentlessly continue to apply for studies. Some recruiters just do not have the ability to monitor this, and are inevitably caught by these unscrupulous operators. 

    What can we do about it?

    When you ask a respondent when they last did a market research, they will generally tell you that it was over 6 months ago, and we take their word for it.

    But, of course, the reality is that they are just playing the system, and whichever category they fall into, often they will have done one more recently.

    If clients suspect that the research participants we recruit are declining in quality, they will look elsewhere.  But if the industry as a whole is perceived to be lackadaisical in its recruitment procedures, the credibility of the conclusions that we and our clients reach could be diminished.

    So what is the solution? After much consideration, my conclusion is that there are potentially three things we can do to alleviate the problem.

    These are:

    1. Pay people via BACS
      Whilst this is not a solution in itself, it could make it more difficult for responders to beat the system;
    2. Make it clear that they could be rejected (and not paid) if found out
      Again, this is adding another layer of security; I’m sure a ‘serial offender’ may be more reluctant to travel to a focus group if there was the threat of them being rejected (and subsequently blacklisted) without receiving their incentive;
    3.  Biometric identification
      Whilst this is not yet viable, I believe it won’t be long before we are able to use iris scanning – as used in airports and hospitals – for (almost) foolproof identification.
      This still relies on some kind of central database in order to eradicate the groupies,
      but it would at least rid us of the fraudulent responders.

    By doing all this, we could significantly improve the quality of market research participants, and ensure that we maintain the trust of our clients and stakeholders.

    If there are solutions, why would we be so reluctant to implement them?

    In many cases, the answer is money, and it’s a cost our clients are usually unwilling to pay; it seems more trouble than it is worth to introduce such strict measures, and it will make life more difficult and push up costs for everyone.

    So in the end, we have to decide whether the groupies and fraudulent respondents can continue to erode our reputations, or whether we have to step up and take some positive steps to reinforce our credentials.

    I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I’d love to hear your views…