Liesl Semper is the Human Resources Manager at GeoPoll. In this edition of GeoPoll Staff Interviews, Liesl speaks to Frankline Kibuacha on her role, background and the trends in the Human Resources space. 

FK: Can you briefly describe your role at GeoPoll and your main responsibilities, Liesl?

Liesl: I’m the HR manager. I’m responsible for policy writing and implementation; for recruitment and onboarding; professional development – finding and making learning opportunities available and performance management.

Tell me about your background before you came to GeoPoll – what space did you work in?

Before GeoPoll I worked at a mid-sized nonprofit as the HR & Benefits manager. Prior to that, I spent several years as the primary caregiver to an ailing parent. Before that, I worked in consulting and at the World Bank in DC.

How long have you been at GeoPoll and what drew you to join the team?

I’ve been here just over a year. What drew me? I like start-up HR which is to say creating an HR presence in an organization that has either never had one or hasn’t had one in a while. There’s a freedom there to create HR that is very attractive to me.

How is GeoPoll and the research industry different from the other industries you have worked in?

Obviously, every industry is different. In my last job, I was working with attorneys fighting for voting rights and campaign finance reform in the United States; here, I’m working with project managers and researchers.

The two industries are miles apart and yet there are similarities the greatest of which is that PEOPLE run these businesses, and PEOPLE have the same basic needs wherever they are: to be valued and respected. My job, as I see it, is to honor those things and to honor those in ways that ensure the overall financial and cultural health of the organization.

What changes have you seen in GeoPoll since you joined?

Well, I’d like to believe that we’re doing a lot better in the area of “clear and concise feedback” since that has been a focus we have been having since I started in this role.  Beyond that, I think we’re more focused on our company goals (ROCKs) and accountabilities and that’s having an impact on our success.

As the HR Manager, what excites you most about your work at GeoPoll?

Effecting change that impacts overall organizational growth. Some of the things I’m trying to do require tough behavior and mindset change. And while most of what we do in HR isn’t immediately apparent, one year in I think we can look back and see where we’ve been and how far we’ve already come.

What are you excited about in terms of where GeoPoll will go in the future?

I love what we’re talking about currently – our BHAG – Big Hairy Audacious Goal. It’s a funny acronym for a serious thing. If we want to achieve audacious things, and we do, HR has to be ready to act in support. We can’t wait until the audacious has been accomplished to act, we have to act to give power to those goals. So for example, we’re doing a lot of professional development work, identifying and purchasing courses for employees, because individual growth is vital to the overall organization’s growth. We’re working with a couple of managers on identifying skills gaps (and then finding the learning to fill those gaps) because again, individual learning and growth drive organization growth.

I foresee a strong match towards a skilled team that’s achieving the audacious – together!

I believe there has been huge changes in HR/People over the last few years. Where have you observed the biggest change and what is the future of human resource and personnel management?

The pandemic has shifted HR professionals’ focus entirely. We’ve got two big things in front of us in my honest opinion: retention and wellness.

2021 was the year of the Great Resignation. A lot of folks just couldn’t keep doing what they’d been doing before and a lot of organizations weren’t nimble enough to pivot to remote work. We were well positioned on the remote work front but we had to figure out (and we are still figuring out) how to build, retain, and in some cases, restore, connections with folk we no longer saw. So that’s thing one. The thing two is wellness. Now that we’re coming out of lockdown and able to return to a changed world, we too are changed.

How does the organization help people manage their stress levels which in many cases have skyrocketed because we have been too close to both work and home for 2 years?

Do you have a favorite project or experience at GeoPoll you’d like to share?

Successfully creating the GeoPoll Bulletin Board was a bit of a surprise. It is our on social network where we share what’s happening, lessons we have learned and passing news. I didn’t come in with that plan, it sort of unfolded organically over time. I love how engaged the team is.

What’s a fact about yourself that people may not know right away?

That I wanted to be a professional singer and that I still have hopes of writing a best-selling novel. ?

I suppose you sing outside of work…

Oh yes, Liesl does some singing, and writing.

Look forward to seeing your hits and reading your book! So, what does it take to succeed in HR?

That really depends on who you want to be as an HR professional (and to be honest, I think this is the case with ALL professions). I know who I want to be and I hope that the work I do speaks for itself and is a reflection of what I believe about the practice of HR and its role in organizations.

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Interview with King Beach

Tell me about your background before you came to GeoPoll and what space you worked in 

I started in survey research and social science research as an undergrad at Michigan State. My degree was in the natural science with an emphasis on research and scientific methods – I also worked with the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research to learn about survey research, designing surveys, managing call centers, and improving performance. I engaged on a lot of social norms surveys and health surveys, and I worked up from a interviewer to manager through undergrad, and then continued to work with that group before joining GeoPoll.

What drew you to GeoPoll and made you join the team? How long have you been at GeoPoll?  

It sounded exciting – I found the position through AAPOR and it sounded like a good opportunity to get involved with new research methods. GeoPoll was also offering the opportunity to do multi-faceted components of the research, seeing the research lifecycle from questionnaire design to analysis. There are not a lot of organizations who let you do all of that. It was startup mentality and there was an interest in doing exploratory research that hasn’t been done before by testing and seeing what does and doesn’t work in market research.

Thinking about my roles within the company, oh boy! I came on as a research assistant and was mostly focused on survey operations and day to day project management. That evolved to managing teams related to the influx of SMS work that we had at the time, and growing survey operations from a team of 1-2 to a team of 15. Recently my work has transitioned over to CATI as clients are more interested in our ability to collect data through CATI. I now work on a wide variety of things surrounding our operations, from design of our mobile applications to client communications.

Can you briefly describe your current role at GeoPoll and main responsibilities?  

The Solutions Team oversees our call center and in-person work in over 60 countries. We onboard, train, and provide standardized quality control with the local teams we work with for our CATI and CAPI surveys. This means meeting the teams, doing trainings, and making sure different groups can meet our standards for quality and oversight.

Within 2020 the big change has been transitioning from face-to-face to virtual training. In 2019 we had a large network of team members who could travel to countries to do work and face-to-face training, we had about 6 people (on the Solutions Team) on the road at any one time. We’ve reinvented that to do that virtually all over video meeting while still implementing the standards we had while in person. It has led to some challenges in communication but for the most part we’ve been successful in migrating to virtual oversight.

What is the biggest challenge in overseeing so many call centers in different regions?

We’ve learned along the way that we need to have local partners in market who are on the ground to help co-design surveys, assist with trainings, provide feedback on questionnaires, and more. Gathering local context and constructive feedback through virtual meetings is crucial and we’ve bridged that gap by finding the right people in the right positions. Another thing is scaling given how much growth we’ve had in the past year – we’ve increased our CATI work 5-6x in the past year.

For call centers, oversight is challenging as we’ve seen when teams have gone remote in countries where working remote is not very common, there have been teething issues with staff who are not used to working at home. We are working in countries where people don’t work remotely so there has been a lot of growth that our teams have taken on to maintain their staff of interviewers remotely – in Burkina Faso our call center manager was going house to house on a scooter to check on interviewers to make sure they had everything they needed!

You mentioned the growth we’ve seen in CATI over the past year, largely due to restrictions around in-person research. Can you speak to that and if you think clients will stay with CATI now that they’ve tried it out?

It’s interesting as GeoPoll has been on the front of this for so long and you see these big shifts with how data is collected over time. On the consumer research side, I think the industry will stick with CATI work if they are still getting data they expect with the quality they expect at a cheaper price point. The advantage with CATI is that you can still do both quantitative and qualitative research and provide the same level of oversight as with CAPI. On the international development side, I do think more work will remain with CATI but very targeted projects may move back to CAPI.

What I’ve heard from our colleagues is that the CATI work and the quality of data we have provided is an eye opener for the industry which has led to more work with many clients. When they run the first couple projects with us they might be testing between modes, and they are pleased with the quality we provide so continue on.

What are you excited about in terms of where GeoPoll will go in the future?  

What I’m most excited about is that we’ve found a way to be on the forefront of new research. We are able to offer clients a variety of ways to work with us and provide different forms of data. We’ve also found a way to adapt and expand what we do here at an unprecedented pace in terms of growth. A year ago we may have ran CATI in 20 markets and now we’re in 60. Being able to continue to expand to meet client’s needs is always interesting, whether that’s through new markets, approaches, or project design.

What’s a fact about yourself that people may not know right away?

I think you know most of these but I love art, cars, hiking and the outdoors. Street art is a fun one, and in most of the new offices we’ve opened I’ve done a mural for the office. I think I’ve done art in Africa in 5-6 different countries in our offices and even working with local art communities. It builds comradery with the rest of the team when I go out and share some personal art.

The post King Beach on Remotely Managing 60+ Call Centers appeared first on GeoPoll.

Lucy Wanyee Interview

Frankline: What were you doing before joining GeoPoll, and what drew you to join the team? 

Lucy Wanyee: My educational background is in mathematical and statistical risk management. Before joining GeoPoll, I worked for an NGO and my main tasks revolved around desk and field research to help finalize the organization’s end products. Before joining the NGO, I was in the banking industry. For people who know me, I am very good with money management. ????

I had previously worked at a research company where we sent teams to the field with paper questionnaires. You know how research is conducted traditionally. Then I heard about GeoPoll and how the company was remotely conducting research. I was interested in being part of a company that could collect the data needed in a shorter time at the comfort of one’s desk!

How long have you been at GeoPoll? How has the company grown since you joined? 

I do not think about this a lot, but in just the blink of an eye, six years have gone by! GeoPoll is an ever-evolving company, and with the dynamism, so many new things happen as we cater to the different needs of diverse types of clients.

Overall, there have been significant, incremental changes and innovations that the company has made in data collection methodologies that assure quality, especially in hard-to-reach areas. I am happy to be part of the team at GeoPoll that designs and implements these changes – we seem to find solutions for any challenge! Also, I was among the first few employees in Kenya, and I have seen the team grow tremendously over time.

Can you briefly describe your role at GeoPoll and your primary responsibilities?  

As an Operations Manager, I oversee the daily operations of the in-house GeoPoll Audience Measurement (GAM) product and some of the other On-Demand projects (custom research projects for clients). My main tasks involve ensuring the client objectives are met by overseeing that proper quality checks of surveys are done before they are run.

Due to COVID-19 and the ensuing market changes, I have also been playing a hybrid role that involves project implementation of CATI and CAPI projects in various markets. This role involves training the local teams that implement the projects in the different markets and coordinating with internal and external teams to ensure that things are flowing seamlessly for the end goal to be met.

As Operations Manager, what excites you most about your work at GeoPoll?  

Every single day has a lesson attached to it. From the various projects we run to the systems we use. The most exciting thing for me is to see the actual representation of “no one cloth fits all.” People all over the world are interested in different things. One client’s needs are incredibly different from the other, and just watching that unfold in implementation wows me every single time.

It is an adventure for me, the number of gears that move together to achieve diverse needs, and I get elated every time we deliver the client’s data.

What do the various sections you manage do? 

I work directly with different teams that do different things. We ensure that surveys are quality checked before moving into the field, release surveys into the field, and monitor their performance. We also play a big part in monitoring the costs we spend on running surveys and helping test the performance of any new markets we launch in.

Most recently, we have also played a big part in local team training and project implementation for various multi-national projects.

What are you excited about in terms of where GeoPoll will go in the future?  

Apart from the enthusiasm of seeing data collection modes and technologies evolve, I am excited about the type of clients and projects coming our way that keep the job exciting. Sometimes I think a particular feature we release is perfect until I see it develop and morph into a very different capability that I would not have imagined at the start. I am eager to see what the next years bring.

Another thing is how the team is growing. As needs keep evolving, the company keeps growing, and I get to work with many different types of professionals. I am keen on seeing how the team will grow in various roles within the company.

What is a fact about yourself that people may not know right away? 

Not many people know that I am very shy. But I have learned that you do not have to be bold to play the part, just jump into the deep end from time to time.

No way! What do you like to do outside of work? 

You may have seen me mobilize people in the company to give for community causes. I enjoy visiting and spending time with the less fortunate in society and giving back to the community. Other times, I am either cooking or traveling.

The post Lucy Wanyee on adapting research to evolving needs appeared first on GeoPoll.

The events of 2020 were unlike any the globe has experienced before, with COVID-19 dominating lives around the world for most of the year. Individual’s routines have dramatically changed, and both global economies and individual finances have suffered due to the fallout from COVID-19. In the midst of all of this, in-person data collection methodologies were no longer feasible at a time when accurate, timely data was needed more than ever. This led to a surge in the need for remote research methodologies, both for studies that directly examined the impact of COVID-19 and for longer-term projects which were suddenly unable to conduct research through traditional methodologies. In countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, mobile-based methodologies such as Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing became the best way to gather insights from hard-to-reach populations.

GeoPoll has been building our mobile-based research platform for almost ten years, and as COVID-19 accelerated the need for remote solutions, our team rose to the challenge. We opened new call centers, expanded our global reach, and conducted over 4.4 million surveys on important topics including food security, the economic impacts of COVID-19, changes in consumer behavior, and more. Throughout this, we also made enhancements to several of our existing products, launched a brand new GeoPoll Application, added functionality to our CATI application, and created dashboards to better monitor data quality throughout the project lifecycle.

In addition to the studies we ran on COVID-19, we conducted studies on Kenya’s media landscape throughout the year, influencer marketing in Nigeria and Kenya, and the humanitarian crisis in Tigray, Ethiopia. We spoke to GeoPoll team members including Nicolette Lok, VP of Operations, Benard Okasi, Director of Research, and Wycliffe Litabalia, Survey Operations Manager, on what it takes to succeed in their line of work. And we continued to build our library of research content, writing articles on data weighting, sampling frames, and quantitative vs qualitative research.

As always, you can find all of GeoPoll’s studies on the GeoPoll blog, and our coronavirus-specific research in our COVID-19 resource portal. If you would like to learn more about GeoPoll’s capabilities conducting remote research in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, please contact us.

The post GeoPoll’s 2020 In Review appeared first on GeoPoll.

Benard Okasi Interview

Benard Okasi is GeoPoll’s Director of Research, and oversees GeoPoll’s research team and data outputs. Below is an abbreviated version of a conversation he had with Roxana Elliott, VP Marketing, about his background in research and how the industry is shifting to mobile methods.

Roxana Elliott: Thanks for joining me! Can you start by telling me a bit about your background and where you worked before GeoPoll?

Benard Okasi: Prior to GeoPoll I was at Synovate, a research company that operates in multiple countries – I started there in 2011 and it was later acquired by Ipsos in 2012. At Ipsos I worked in different positions, moving from a research assistant up to a senior research executive. My role was mainly business development, project management and providing insights to clients through reports with actionable insights. Towards the end of 2014, my main focus was on Coca Cola account, and I was placed at Coke as an implant for a year where my main role was to support the client on the projects that were executed by Ipsos for Coke in the then CEWA business unit team.

RE: Why did you first come to GeoPoll and how long have you been here?

BO: While working at Ipsos, the CEO of GeoPoll gave a presentation to research firms in Nairobi about mobile research and where the future of data collection is heading, which is self-completion surveys through mobile, and GeoPoll is here to help bridge the gap. I was curious about the new way GeoPoll was doing data collection through mobile and not having researchers need to go out and collect data in person. I have now been at GeoPoll for 5 years, I first started as a research executive working on data and client support, then managing our partnership relationships with other research agencies, and now leading the research team.

RE: Can you tell me more about the research team and what your responsibilities are?

BO:The research team now is made up of 15 staff, within which we have a data processing team, data analysts, and media analysts. The data processing team does data cleaning, processing and data quality checks. Our data analysts deal with complex analysis of data – for example if clients need significance testing. The media data team looks at audience measurement data and generates actionable insights for our clients. Most of our team members have a research background and have studied statistics hence able to look into data from a statistical point of view and provide complex analysis when required.

RE: What excites you about working for GeoPoll?

BO: What excites me is the team energy and synergy to support clients – when you look at the speed at which we complete projects, with the combined efforts of different departments, we can deliver projects within 2-3 days or a week. We are also able to sit in a central office and collect data in over 50 countries, which shows what the future is in remote data collection. I love the combined effort of the team, and if there are issues in a project we sit down as a team and come up with solutions and the way forward without delays.

RE: How does what we offer at GeoPoll compare to traditional methods in your experience?

BO: If clients go for traditional research, you can only use past data or say old data to inform on their decisions, and what we’ve found at GeoPoll is that most clients want real time information. With mobile research, we can get a set questions from client today and be able to give clients results tomorrow. GeoPoll plays a key role in delivering quality, timely and cost-effective results to clients.

RE: Have you seen a resistance of people moving to mobile research?

There are tracker projects that have been running using traditional research for a long time targeting general population and because mobile data collection only targets a mobile owned population, some clients are resistant to changing the methodology. But markets are changing quickly as mobile penetration has grown over the years – in Kenya I think mobile penetration is over 90%, so that tells you that the people we are targeting through mobile and the information they give us won’t be different from what we would get through traditional (face to face) research. I think that mobile data collection is the future, and the future is here.

RE: Are there any new products you are working on within the research team?

As we continue to drive real-time data delivery to clients, we have made improvements in our systems, including the creation of dashboards which enable us to have more automated systems so we can deliver to clients even quickly. Clients can go directly to a dashboard and pull data and do extra analysis as soon as it’s collected. This innovation around our deliverables will help clients make decisions right away. For some of our larger clients, our team has been able to work on projects in over 30 countries at once, and we’ve created automated processes to deliver quality data regularly for them which has led us to improve our processes over time.

RE: What do you like outside of work?

I love meeting with friends and driving around, and spend most of my time with my family.

RE: Finally, what do you think it takes to be successful in a researcher?

You need to be open-minded and flexible to succeed, and must put the client first in everything you do. Teamwork plays a key role towards the success of any organization or any team so if teams work together you can achieve anything.

The post Benard Okasi on GeoPoll’s Research Processes appeared first on GeoPoll.

Nicolette Lok Interview

Roxana Elliott: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today! Let’s get right into it – can you tell me a bit about your background before you came to GeoPoll?

Nicolette Lok: Of course, prior to joining GeoPoll I came from the telecom industry, and spent my whole telecom career in IT– first with Celtel in the Netherlands, then with Zain Group in Bahrain which sold its Africa operations to Airtel. In 2010 I moved to Nairobi with Airtel and was with them until I joined GeoPoll. At Celtel I started in IT support and then moved to program management, eventually leading the program management office for IT and becoming the IT Delivery Controller and Business Analyst to the CIO. My role included working with vendors such as IBM amongst others, on transformation programs, other IT strategic programs, and operational issues for 17 countries across Africa. Some of the projects I worked on were the post-paid billing system and airtime distribution platforms.

Roxana Elliott: How did you come to join GeoPoll after working in the telecom sector?

Nicolette Lok: I knew of GeoPoll and Mobile Accord (GeoPoll’s parent company) because GeoPoll had been working with Airtel integrating into their messaging and prepaid systems. I didn’t know much about market research but was very interested in GeoPoll’s goals around social impact and development, and was doing my MBA at the time and was interested in going to work for a startup.

Working in telecommunications in Africa, I had seen that one of the biggest drivers of actual change in terms of improving standards of living was the telecommunication companies and what they were doing by enabling communications and providing mobile money services and other tools that people didn’t have before. Knowing that GeoPoll was trying to use data to help people around the world was a big reason I joined.

RE: When you first came to GeoPoll what were you working on, and how has your role evolved?

NL: I came to GeoPoll in 2015 to help with GeoPoll’s integrations with the SMS messaging and prepaid billing systems for the mobile network operators we worked with. I helped reduce our turnaround time for adding new countries to our system, and soon Nick (Becker, GeoPoll’s current CEO and CTO at the time) approached me about taking on our TechOps and growing that team. Eventually I took over our survey operations as the teams all worked closely together, and worked to put processes and policies into place to drive further efficiencies within and between the teams. Now we have brought all of GeoPoll’s operational aspects under one umbrella, so I manage all of our survey and technology operations, including our product and QA teams.

RE: You definitely keep busy! Is there anything that has surprised you about working here?

NL: The eagerness and willingness everyone at GeoPoll has to make something work – coming from a large, bureaucratic company, there was a lot of red tape to getting things done. At GeoPoll I can give anything to our teams, both on the technology and operations side, and they will make it work. There’s very much a ‘where there’s a will there’s a way’ attitude, and it’s wonderful working with a team like that.

RE: Are there any favorite projects you’ve worked on at GeoPoll?

NL: Recently we did a complete redevelopment of our end user application. I knew we were capable of doing it but being able to start with a clean slate and collaborate with teams from product to tech and marketing on the overhaul was a great experience. It was a long journey but the learnings we got out of it were so valuable and we have improved the experience for our end users as a result.

RE: Where do you think the mobile technology industry is going, particularly in emerging regions?

NL: If you look in emerging regions, the lack of infrastructure means that mobile is even more important than in Europe and the Americas – people don’t have access to laptops as much, so your lifeline is your mobile phone. That reliance on mobile is true no matter where you are if you compare now to 10 years ago, but in Africa and Asia the mobile phone has opened up so many opportunities to connect with people and get access to services. Telecommunications companies have had to add so many value-added services to compete with each other, so now people have access to mobile money services, internet bundles, mobile farming services, and more – and all of this is happening in countries where access has typically been so difficult because of the lack of infrastructure. Who knows what mobile phones will look like in the future, but everything is moving to mobile in terms of personal development, access, and business services.

RE: Ok last questions: What are some things about yourself not everyone might know and what do you do outside of work?

NL: People always think I’m American but I’m actually half-Dutch and half-Chilean. I’m based in the Netherlands now but have always moved around a lot and didn’t really have one ‘home’ – I was born in Germany, and lived in Chile, Zimbabwe, Switzerland, Bahrain, and most recently Kenya. I love being outdoors, travelling and meeting new people, and going on hikes and walks with my dog Pablo.

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