By | 4 min
Fraternal greetings from NUS and thank you to Unions 21 for arranging this conference and asking us to take part in this research.
NUS worked with Unions 21 to provide volunteers for a mystery shopper research project to find out what the first contact with a trade union feels like to young people.
It’s an experience hundreds of workers new to the jobs market experience every week, but until now this type of independent assessment of the quality of the service being offered to non-union members making enquiries about union membership, has not been done.
NUS recruited students to role play as retail workers, managers, trainee pilots and even fledgling professional footballers, and to email, phone and write to unions asking them 3 simple questions:
What services come with membership?
What support would I get in the workplace?
How do I join?
The last of the results came in yesterday and Dan Whittle will be analysing them over the next few weeks and confidentially giving feedback to the unions that were contacted.
The aim of the study was not to name and shame any individual union but to provide lessons the whole movement can learn about how unions can communicate best with people entering the work force.
A total of 36 contacts were made by members of a panel of 15 students. So the sample was small and my first recommendation is that these results should provide the basis for further study.
The first point to note was that 7, or 1 in 5 of these contacts were unsuccessful, either the union did not reply to the email or letter or did not answer the phone.
However, in answer to the main question: ‘how would you rate the quality of the service in answering your questions thoroughly and appropriately’, the average response from those mystery shoppers who got a response from the union was a 6.
This exercise was not conducted in any way to name and shame unions, but special praise goes to the unions Connect and the RCN who were the 2 unions to achieve 10 out of 10 on contacts from mystery shoppers. Many other unions received 8s and 9s and it was the unusual bad experience that took the average down to 6.
Letters
The time taken to respond to letters ranged from ‘next day’ to ‘no answer’ with 2- 5 days being the norm.
Unions had a tendency to send a leaflet, rather than to answer the questions directly – but those who did take the time to write with example of previous successes in the workplace, detailing the range of support available, were rewarded by the mystery shoppers.
On the phone a full range of quality of responses were recorded by the mystery shoppers. Some unions were blunt or abrupt, many spoke too fast, or said they would ring the mystery shopper back and did not. One even said the shopper would have to join to find out what benefits of membership are. Very few of the mystery shoppers reported that there were no clear points for improvement. However, some unions did offer a friendly and welcoming response.
Mystery shoppers had their best experience through using email to contact unions, showing that unions are engaging well with this form of communication. Some unions replied with in minutes to the emails sent. Unions were best at describing the range of services they provided by email, but there was a tendancy to simply give a link or refer the mystery shopper to the union website. One comment receive was: “I appreciate that websites are a focal point to sign post to. However in an era of declining youth membership in trade unions a simple copy+paste of the benefits would have engaged me far more that this response.”
Mystery shoppers preferred a friendly rather than formal response by email, but one which answered their questions.
The initial conclusions from this study are that more work needs to be done by unions to ensure that the good work they are doing internally is being communicated to those interested in joining. This is a challenge for the future of unions that I think can be reached through further research and training of front line staff.
ENDS
Richard Budden is the trade union liaison officer of the NUS.
