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How we helped a research agency to understand employees perceptions to working conditions in the hospitality industry
The hospitality industry relies heavily on large numbers of employees to fill an abundance of roles. However, it is also one of the most difficult industries to recruit into given the seasonality and often precarious nature of the work.
The Challenge
Our client was tasked by a multinational hotel and restaurant chain with understanding the attitudes and perceptions of employees within the industry to working conditions.
The client had a few different chains of restaurants and hotels catered to different consumers, but staffing them accordingly was proving a challenge.
By understanding employees experiences right across the hospitality industry, they hoped they would be able to establish a work environment that would meet the needs of staff and make working at their hotels and restaurants an attractive proposition for employees and potential employees.
The Goals
Our clients goals were to:
Understand the needs, experiences and challenges of various staff within the hospitality sector
Gain an insight into which companies in the hospitality industry were appealing to professionals in the sector
Evaluate the brand associations of hospitality workers to the chains of hotels and restaurants in their ownership.
30 Respondents
11 Tasks
3 Weeks
Tasking Strategy: Sequential Tasking
The Solution
To truly understand the needs of hospitality sector employees, our client knew that they would need to gather insights from a range of employees. However, they knew that asking managers and waiters the same questions would not give a true reflection of their experiences. By utilizing Indeemos ability to segment target groups, our client was able to understand managers, chefs, waiters and support staff respective experiences in their employment. It also allowed them to gauge how perceptions varied amongst staff, based upon the length of time they had spent working in the industry.
They then further segmented these targets into hotel, pub and dining staff. In doing so, they created 11 target groups to truly reflect the individual needs and experiences of hospitality staff.
With 30 respondents split amongst the 11 groups, they got an in-the-moment insight into their experiences of all types of employees.
Respondents within B2B settings can be notoriously difficult to engage, particularly employees in service industries. The fast pace of the workplace can make it hard to gain truly authentic insights into their experiences. By using Indeemo’s sequential tasking methodology, the 30 respondents on this project were only given one task at a time to complete, meaning that respondents were not overwhelmed with tasks from the outset and could complete them at their own pace. It also had the added benefit of probing brand associations one by one, without revealing all of the companies brands from the outset of the project .
Over the course of the project, respondents uploaded over 500 videos, photos and text notes giving an honest, visual snapshot of hospitality employees lives within the industry.
If you’re looking to learn more about how Indeemo can help your hotel, restaurant or pub chain understand your employees experiences, please get in touch.
Contact us
Week-in-the-life, video diary studies are a rich, contextual, agile way to get a deeper understanding of participants everyday lives, needs and behaviours.
Projects can range from a few days to as long as a year but are typically 1 to 2 weeks in duration.
Predominantly, Video Diary Studies are being used by our clients to vitalise previous research and bring consumer personas to life in a way that resonates across their organisations.
