Public sector experience and capability

• Consumers can be passive about investigating price changes (month to month) and additional charges.
• Billing information varies significantly depending on telco and customer type.
• Certain segments of more vulnerable customers experience additional challenges when it comes to understanding their telco bill.

In 2022, Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei Trust partnered with Perceptive to enhance their understanding of stakeholder experiences and needs. Insights from this project were used to inform the Trust’s Mana Tāmaki strategy and improve the organisation’s effectiveness across three core areas:

• Enhancing the financial and economic returns for iwi members.
• Advancing the cultural, social and environmental goals of iwi.
• Exercising mana whenua, where the Trust is involved with consultation on local governance programmes, especially related to cultural, environmental and social outcomes.

The project engaged several stakeholder groups, including:

• Iwi leaders
• Local and central government
• Non-government Māori organisation
• Education institutions
• Private enterprises.

Recognising the diverse range of stakeholders involved, a dual approach was adopted, employing a blend of online interviews and computer-assisted telephone interviews. These interactions were conducted in both English and te reo Māori. Given the varied composition of stakeholders, a paramount consideration was the need to uphold a high degree of sensitivity throughout the process.

Perceptive, in close collaboration with Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei Trust, managed all aspects of the project from research design and data collection to analysis and the creation of a comprehensive insights report.

This research surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,000 New Zealanders each week on a variety of topics related to the crisis and their subsequent attitudes and behaviours. The results were made available via an interactive dashboard hosted on the Perceptive website as a free resource to the New Zealand business community.

Since then, organisations have continued to find value in the tracker’s insights with the New Zealand Treasury referencing its findings in two reports: Our wellbeing throughout the COVID-19 pandemic
and Te Tai Waiora: Wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand 2022.

When MBIE wanted to better understand perceptions of product safety across a range of consumer products, they commissioned Perceptive to run a two-part study with consumer and business audiences.

For consumers, MBIE wanted to understand how much consumers think about product safety during the purchase process, the usefulness of product safety labelling and other communications, and how to report a product safety issue as well as the barriers to doing so. For businesses across the product supply chain, MBIE wanted to understand the product safety steps put in place, the extent to which businesses investigate product safety up the supply chain, and how they deal with product safety complaints.

This project included focus groups, in-depth interviews, and surveys with a wide range of New Zealand consumers including vulnerable and hard-to-reach consumers (elderly consumers, Māori and Pasifika and people with disabilities). The study also included in-depth interviews with business decision-makers in relevant industries and industry bodies.

Our work provided MBIE with key insights around the credibility of safety messages and sources of information, barriers to making product safety complaints, and attitudes towards risk and responsibility. A comprehensive set of recommendations for both consumer and business audiences were provided to the MBIE team.

Members of our team have conducted multiple projects on behalf of the HQSC. These include:

Surgical Safety Culture Survey (SSCS)

In 2011, HQSC began rolling out a suite of evidence-based teamwork and communications-based interventions to DHBs and private surgical providers.

In 2015, our team members started evaluating the impact of these interventions with a baseline study, followed by subsequent evaluation and monitoring in 2017, 2019 and finally in 2023. The team worked closely with nominated Safe Surgery Champions across all 20 DHBs to ensure surveys reached as wide an audience as possible. The results of each survey were used to inform changes in interventions and ongoing communication messaging.

This research tracked changes in attitudes and behaviours including the extent of briefing and debriefing, internal culture and communication, surgical leadership, patient care, and teamwork.

Mental Health and Addiction / tāngata whaiora

Members of our team began working with mental health and addiction staff and consumers in 2018, with follow up research in 2019 and 2022. A major challenge of this project was that a single ‘staff’ survey needed to be relevant to, and able to be answered by, a wide range of roles across the sector including nurses, doctors, community and peer support workers and family support staff.

To create a consistent and inclusive set of questions covering a wide range of topics, the team conducted several face-to-face interviews and ran comprehensive cognitive testing on the survey questions and topics. With no direct access to staff contact details, our team members worked closely with key people, resulting in a final survey response of over 2,500 mental health and addiction staff.

A similar approach was also taken with the consumer (tāngata whaiora) survey, which included a significant focus on Māori experiences with mental health and addiction services.

In 2020, members of our team conducted research on behalf of Infrastructure Commission.

The Commission required a baseline study of the current state of infrastructure in New Zealand from the perspective of the owners of that infrastructure (i.e. local and central government, CCOs, and the health, transport, energy and waste sectors). This baseline would inform the development of a 30-year infrastructure strategy.

Buy-in to this approach was key. The survey largely consisted of open-ended questions and was long and complex. To this end, the team worked directly with key infrastructure teams across all of these organisations to optimise engagement and to ensure that the outputs were meaningful and actionable. The survey approach was also highly flexible, both in terms of timing and ensuring different team members could provide their input at different points.

This work highlighted key consistent challenges across different infrastructure owners as well as outlier challenges. Key themes included:

• The impact of climate change and natural hazards.
• The need for flexible sources of funding and financing.
• The need for building appropriate workforce skills.
• Required changes to the regulatory environment,
• The need to evolve business models and decision-making processes.

Everyone who took part was provided with a timely summary of the key findings and next steps.

In 2020, members of our team conducted research on behalf of Land Information New Zealand (LINZ).

In 2019, the LINZ Annual Report outlined a need for LINZ to be more strategic, innovative and customer facing in the delivery of its services to New Zealanders. To this end, LINZ commissioned an audience research study to inform decision-making around the organisation’s future positioning for its communications, channel selections, brand architecture, and visual identity. Of particular interest was to understand how LINZ could better educate their users, customers and stakeholders about their services and encourage them to engage with them more.

This project covered all four LINZ business areas—the Overseas Investment Office, Crown Property, Location Information, and Property Rights—and comprised of 164 in-depth interviews and two surveys with a combined sample size of over 3,000 respondents. Audience segments included the general public, iwi, private sector organisations, other government agencies, farmers, NGOs and the scientific community.

An unintended but highly useful outcome of this project was the LINZ team gaining an understanding of how the public views land information with regards to its social, economic, and spatial contributions, rather than simply as serving a legal and property ownership function.