JRA Newsletter December 2007

Christmas Best Wishes to ALL our clients!

With the end of the year upon us, we’d like - first of all - to thank all our clients for trusting us with your business during 2007. We never take this for granted, and value you all highly. The pace of life continues to quicken, and no doubt the year has been a busy one for you and your colleagues. With that in mind, the team at JRA wish you and your families a happy, safe, and especially restful Christmas, and a prosperous New Year!

Team JRA expands – additions, relocations, and temporary departures

2007 saw a number of significant changes to our team. Dr Neal Knight-Turvey left our shores and established JRA (Aust) Pty in Brisbane as GM and Research Director. This is an exciting expansion which has already started to generate new business in this tough market. Amy Silvester-Brooks, Rob Veitch and Sarah-Jane Clarke (all psych graduates) bolstered our survey administration and analysis team, Anna Firmin took over the accounting function, while Catherine Donohue provides outstanding reception, general and survey administration support. This month we also said a temporary ‘goodbye’ to Amy Shipley who, less than 1 week after leaving, gave birth to a gorgeous 6lb 14oz girl – Holly.

Other highlights of the year included:

• More than 400 surveys in over 300 different organisations completed during the year, with responses collected from some 80,000 respondents.
• The 2007 ‘Best Places to Work in New Zealand’ survey saw 207 organisations and over 22,500 employees take part. The Awards Evening, celebrating the Finalists and Winners of the 2007 Survey will be held in Auckland on 28 February 2008. Attendance is open to anyone wishing to celebrate the successes of these great workplaces, so come along to what is guaranteed to be a fantastic black tie affair.
• Publication of our ‘Employee Engagement – Driving Organisation Performance’ publication. Drawing on research carried out over 8 years, this publication put the business case for the introduction of employee-engagement strategies. As we demonstrated, the potential bottom-line payback of these initiatives is of such magnitude that NOT taking action could almost be described as negligence…
• Terrific growth in our State Sector involvement, with new clients including Department of Internal Affairs, NZ Customs, Ministry of Economic Development, Te Puni Kokiri Ministry of Maori Development, Ministry of Transport, Land Transport New Zealand, and Transit New Zealand added to our existing and valued list of public sector clients.
• Some outstanding developments to our online survey technology were launched during the year. Top of the list was the introduction of our online Key Driver Analysis – a ‘world-first’, this real-time, high-level statistical report enables organisations to identify items that have the greatest impact on employee engagement, and their priority rating. This new functionality and its ability to pinpoint critical areas for action is generating unprecedented interest. 360 Reflect was also relaunched with many new and powerful features including instant ‘group’ reports, the ability to set target performance goals, and trending. And 2008 will see even more exciting new developments released, including our online Engagement Profiling and an ‘Anatomy of a Great Workplace’ template.
• December saw the publication of our inaugural Kiwihost/JRA Perceptions of Customer Service in New Zealand survey. This report highlights some key points for all businesses wanting to delight their customers and inspire loyalty, and we hope you find the results of the research useful and thought-provoking. Interested in finding out what YOUR customers think of YOUR products and services? Check out www.jra.co.nz/focust.
• Outstanding customer feedback – and just to prove we ‘practice what we preach’, we continued our regular quarterly customer feedback surveys to make sure we are meeting your needs and expectations. Our latest survey included 130 organisations – ‘Overall satisfied with products and services’ scored 97% level of agreement, ‘would use JRA again’ scored 98%, while ‘would recommend JRA to others’ scored 94%. Naturally we are thrilled to receive such positive feedback, something we place high value on as we constantly strive to ‘lift the bar’.

Christmas opening hours

We will be closed during the Christmas period from COB Friday 21 December, reopening on Monday 7 January.

Once again, thank you so much for your business, and a Merry Christmas to you all. We look forward to working with you again in the New Year!

Best wishes,
The Team from JRA