Constructing Equality Ltd. Newsletter survey feedback...

At Constructing Equality Ltd. we are always on the look-out to improve our business and services, as well as the news that we deliver in our monthly newsletter and weekly blogs.

Sponsored by CITB, the newsletter now has over 6,000 subscribers, and is the leading source of trusted information on diversity and equality in construction. It is a simple way to keep abreast of the latest news and articles, as well as current trends and best practice within the 
sector. In turn, its aim is to provide our readers with lots of links to useful sites and stories, and we also include job opportunities from around the sector.

We recently asked our readers and subscribers to participate in a short survey that would enable improve the newsletter and feature more of the stories and articles that are relevant to our readers.

To begin with we asked participants to give their opinion on what they thought of the newsletter content in general:

‘’The newsletter has greatly improved with the redesign, however it could be improved further by shortening the articles and giving readers a "read more" option - there is so much great content but it can look overwhelming at first glance.’’ – Anonymous. 

This is a very positive response; 96% of participants were happy with the general content of the newsletter. The 4% that selected ‘other’ simply expressed their opinion towards the presentation of the newsletter; an issue that is being dealt with currently with the design team and the host website.

Participants were then asked to be more specific in what they like to see in the newsletter, the following results were found: 

The most popular sources of information are news, case studies and best practice examples. As a result of this we have identified a need to increase the amount of best practice case studies that are featured in the newsletter each month. We are now taking a more proactive approach to ensure that at least two industry best practice articles are included in every newsletter.

As part of this process we try and cover a wide range of case studies from a vast array of different organisations within the sector. It is for this reason that we encourage organisations and individuals to send in case studies that they feel will be of benefit to the industry and the reader alike. 

One important issue that we are currently working towards a remedy for is the format of the newsletter. As some people may know, Constructing Equality Ltd. went through a re-branding later last year and as part of that re-branding we also changed the layout and design of the newsletter. Although we have had some technical difficulties the overall feedback of this has been very positive.

The additional comments around length of articles will be addressed in the next newsletter by shortening the length of articles and including a ‘read more’ option as suggested. It has also been agreed that articles will generally be around 250 – 300 words in length and must not exceed 400 words.

In addition to providing the industry with construction specific equality and diversity news, resources and opportunities, one of the reasons the newsletter is created every month is to provide people and organisations with beneficial sources of information that they may not know about previously; this can range from providing people with job opportunities to making organisations aware of funding prospects.

To better understand what resources people consider to be the most beneficial, we asked participants to select how they feel the newsletter benefits them:

As part of the newsletter we have a monthly quiz that allows readers to answer three short questions that are topical to the newsletter articles of that month. The quiz also offers participants a chance of winning a £20 high street voucher. Just like the newsletter itself we understand the need to continually improve the quiz, one way in which we intend do this is by improving the content quality.

                    

Those that answered ‘no’ provided responses that generally followed a pattern of wanting the quiz to count towards some form of continual professional development (CPD). This is something we are taking very seriously and currently we are in talks with various institutes to see how we can improve the quality and value of the quiz questions so that they prompt research and investigation by the reader but also provide a degree of CPD. We aim to have this firmly in place by September 2013. If you would like us to get in touch with your institute to include the quiz as CPD then please contact Kyle.

Overall we are very happy with the feedback and positive responses we received around the newsletter and would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every person that took the time to fill out the survey; all feedback received is taken very seriously and used to develop our services further.

If you disagree with the changes we are making or would like to add your own feedback the survey is still open via Survey Monkey. Alternatively you can email Kyle with any feedback you feel that will improve this resource.  

Construct away,

Kyle