Research that helps you understand what’s really happening
You know something isn’t working. But understanding the cause is often harder than spotting the problem. Inquiry Practice uses qualitative research to understand employee and stakeholder experiences, investigate what’s driving organizational challenges, and help leaders make decisions grounded in evidence.
What are you trying to understand?
Why is our employee turnover increasing?
You know people are leaving. But employee surveys, exit data, and HR metrics aren’t giving you a clear picture of what’s driving the turnover or what employees are experiencing.
Why is the organizational culture employees experience different from the culture our leadership intended to create?
There’s a gap between the culture you’re trying to create and what it actually feels like to work there. You need to understand what’s causing that gap.
Why isn’t our organizational change gaining traction?
You’ve communicated the change, but employees aren’t responding as you expected. You need to understand how employees are experiencing this change, where they’re encountering barriers, and what may be getting in the way.
What’s behind the patterns in our employee surveys and metrics?
You have data. What you don’t have is the deeper understanding you need to explain the patterns you’re seeing. Qualitative research and employee interviews can uncover the experiences behind the numbers.
What do you need to understand before making an important decision?
Before making decisions about organizational culture, change, or workplace programs, you want to understand what’s actually happening instead of relying on assumptions.
How do you make sense of the different things employees and stakeholders are telling you?
What one employee or stakeholder tells you is important. But understanding what’s happening across an organization means looking for patterns across individual perspectives, so you can make confident, evidence-based decisions about what to do next.
Employee & Stakeholder Research
Sometimes the people closest to an organization know things that surveys, metrics, and leadership conversations don’t reveal. I use employee and stakeholder to systematically gather those perspectives, identify patterns across them, and understand what they mean.
Through employee interviews, stakeholder interviews, focus groups, and other qualitative research, I help organizations understand how people are experiencing their work. This includes investigating where they’re encountering challenges, what they need to do better work, and what leaders may be missing.
How Inquiry Practice can help
The question comes first. The research follows.
Inquiry Practice brings together three areas of research to help you understand what’s happening, why, and what to do about it.
Organizational Culture & Change Research
Leaders often have a clear vision for the culture they want to create or the change they want to make. But employees may experience the organization very differently. I use organizational culture and change research to uncover those differences so you can understand what’s driving them.
Through employee interviews, focus groups, and qualitative research, I investigate how employees experience organizational culture and respond to change. I identify gaps between the culture leaders intend and the culture employees experience, explore what helps or gets in the way of organizational change, and uncover the experiences and workplace dynamics shaping how people respond.
Program Evaluation & Organizational Research
Outcomes and performance measures can tell you whether a program is meeting its goals. But they don’t always tell you why something is working, why it isn’t, or what people experience along the way. I use program evaluation to answer those questions and understand what the results mean.
Through program evaluation, qualitative and mixed-methods research, interviews, focus groups, and analysis of existing data, I investigate how programs and initiatives work in practice. I identify what’s working well, where people encounter challenges, and what may explain unexpected results. Then I bring the evidence together to help you understand what you’ve learned and decide what to do next.