Good working relationships are the basis of our business. That is why we are proud to sign The Aura Working Well Together Charter. The charter details a set of working that, if followed, should lead to better work and stronger research partnerships.
What is the charter?
The Working Well initiative has been created by Aura, a membership organisation for client-side research and insights professionals who want to raise their expertise and impact within their organisation. The Market Research Society’s (MRS) report into mental health in the research industry highlighted that in 2022 83% of people working in the sector had experienced poor mental health.
Following this report, Aura worked with their members to develop a set of behaviours that could tackle some of the issues raised. These behaviours have been used to create a Working Well Together Charter to help both Clients and Researchers work together effectively and reduce the impact on people’s mental health from stress and other factors.
What is in the charter?
There are six guiding principles of Aura’s Working Well Together charter:
- We’ll respect your time
- We’ll commit to open and honest conversations at all times
- We’ll leave you to do your best work by managing our side of things well
- We’ll treat you as an extended part of our team
- We’ll respect your right to disconnect
- We’ll commit to proper feedback
Each of the principles is unpacked in the full charter to showcase the behaviours that each party agree to before starting their working relationship. You can download the full charter and also the research that led to the development of the charter on Aura’s website.
How will it help our clients and us work better together?
I first heard about the Aura charter at the MRS Client Conference in December 2024 in a session called Fostering greater collaboration between clients and agencies.
This panel discussion had both client and agency side stakeholders discussing the pain points felt on both sides of a client and research agency relationship, which I have to say resonated with me quite deeply. But they then discussed the impact of having the charter in place and how much it had improved not just new working relationships but also reframed longer-term partnerships.
We generally have great working relationships with our clients, but I am a firm believer in setting expectations upfront and having frameworks and principles in place both for when things go wrong or to stop them going wrong in the first place. Therefore, this is a great addition to our UX principles and Company values.
This charter provides both parties with a clear understanding of what is expected in terms of behaviour and relationships, not just quality and outputs. And in my experience, the best projects we have worked on have been as much about the working relationship as the challenge we are set or the solution that is delivered.
This charter will help clients to get the best from us, from proposal through to delivery, by ensuring that we spend our time doing the things that matter most – such as researching and thinking – by giving clear guidance on what information is required when, and what our expectations of each other are. It will help everyone maintain realistic expectations and get the outcomes they need in a reasonable timeframe for everyone.
We will be sharing the charter with all new contacts looking for research work as well as with our current clients and we will be inviting people to sign up to it as well as agree to it with us. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to work with people who don’t agree to the charter. We just want our prospects and clients to understand how to get the best from us and the potential risk involved of not agreeing to these pragmatic behaviours.
We are also looking at how this charter can be extended to our design clients as well.
Why not sign-up to and get better outcomes with your clients and your research team?
From our perspective having a clear set of guidelines and behaviours to drive a respectful and successful working relationship is a no brainer. Whether you are client looking to commission research or are delivering research for a client, the charter should encourage positive behaviour and result in better outcomes for all the stakeholders.
You can sign up to the Aura Working Well Together Charter for free on their website. And if you’d like to see the panel discussion from the MRS it is available to buy as an online webinar.
Hopefully, as more organisations agree to follow these simple behaviours, we will start to see an improvement in mental health across the sector as well as delivering better insights.
