In August 2106 we conducted a member survey in NSW and VIC, the first large scale member survey focussed on membership views and opinions that we have conducted in many years.

Thank you to all those people who participated and helped us to get a better understanding of the impact of the services we offer, how you perceive the website, as well as our newsletter, education and training and other elements of what we do and offer to members.


Whilst we know that providing comprehensive analysis of the results would probably send most of you off to sleep, we did want to highlight a few key findings we believe you will find interesting.

The most important thing to know is that we segregated the survey so that we would get comparable results for Associate Members and Full Members.

We did this to try and get a better understanding of what is relevant to each group and what the key motivators and drivers for each are.

Objectives

We had a number of objectives with this survey, not least of which was simply trying to get an overall sense of what members think of the Network, what is valuable and not, and what we could do to improve.

But also important was for us to try and ascertain what it is that hinders Associate Members from becoming Full Members and what it would take to try and encourage more to see the investment of just $100 per year worthwhile in terms of what they receive in exchange – especially as it would typically be tax deductible if being paid by individuals themselves.

We believe we did get a lot of really valuable feedback from all the responses, but almost as important was the comments people added at the end of the survey.

We will be working hard in coming weeks to look at what changes we can easily make in the short term and then what more substantive projects we need to initiate to make more significant changes.

Results

In regards to the main headline question around what the most important aspects of membership of EAN are, the differences between the two groups were noticeable but not earth shattering.

Full Member Results

Associate Member Results

The most interesting point of the Full Member results was that very little separated the first 4 categories in terms of percentage response, but interestingly Alignment to Industry and Profession ranked first with 23% whereas for Associate Members that only received 14% of the vote.

For Associate Members the percentages were markedly different and Growing My Support Network was first with 34%, considerably more than the third and fourth ranked responses for example. With the Full Members this ranked second with 22% but was obviously still important.

Not surprisingly, the results were markedly different when it comes to the features of the website used by the different groups, obviously a factor in what people can access, but, for us, it was obviously great to see that the features that are for Full Members are actually used and appreciated.

Full Member Results

Associate Member Results

Not really a huge surprise for us was how high the Chat Room ranked with Full Members. Anyone who has used that regularly will know it can be a very busy area. Also of no huge surprise was that the Templates and Guides area featured prominently in responses and we also received a lot of comments and suggestions in respect of this area.

Perhaps the most surprising result however within the Full Member results was how the Blogs rated, especially relative to the Associate Members. However, on reflection, one of the things we didn’t ascertain with the survey was the total usage as opposed to relative usage of different areas, essentially just getting a popularity ranking. So what we have no way of knowing is, for example, whether, despite the low ranking for the Blogs, that doesn’t mean they aren’t being read substantially, it could just mean that relative to other areas, that area isn’t accessed as much. This is something we will have to bear in mind for future surveys.

For both groups the Newsletter appears to be a popular feature and this was definitely borne out in the results from respondents in terms of how often they read it. For Full Members, 53% stated they read every edition, 21% read it regularly and 20% sometimes. For Associate Members, 40% said they read every edition, 25% regularly and 15% sometimes.

Networking events obviously ranked much higher for Full Members than Associate Members but within the Full Member category the important thing we noted was that only 25% of Full Members said they only Hardly Ever or Never attend Networking events.

With Associate Members, it was interesting to see that 45% of respondents said they attend Networking events either Regularly or Sometimes, to us a great result. Somewhat disappointingly though, 49% said they Hardly ever or Never attend Networking events which, given the objectives of the Network, is somewhat disappointing.

Other aspects of the survey discussed the Education and Training and Conferences elements of what we do and we are using that feedback to help us continue to refine those products and services. Likewise the extensive comments we received at the end of the survey. We have been ploughing through these looking for the key elements to work on, but these include suggestions for the website layout, the Chat Room, the Newsletter content and much more besides.

As mentioned earlier, we are really extremely grateful to all of those Members and Associate Members who took time to fill in the survey. As they would know, we were running a Maui Jim competition for those responding and the winners for that will be chosen soon and notified just as soon as we can, and the winners will be announced in the next edition of the Newsletter.

Finally, we received some absolutely amazing quotes from respondents, many of which are already on the website, but for those who may not have seen them, we want to include them below.