More key skills for user researchers

In this step, we will continue to explore key government user researcher skills in more detail.

Research management, leadership and assurance

Management and leadership are terms that people often associate with seniority, but it is important to think about the different meanings of these words and how you can apply them at all levels of your career.

When you are first starting out as a user researcher, there is a lot to learn. Developing your skills in management, leadership and assurance does not necessarily mean that you have to lead a team and make strategic decisions straight away – it is about managing yourself and applying yourself to learn best practice.

Research must always be carefully planned and structured. This is to ensure that you are complying with ethical and safeguarding policies, but also to ensure that you do not waste time, money or resources by conducting research that does not lead you to useful insights for the team.

Junior user researchers must learn how to follow and implement user research plans and understand how to conduct research with a clearly defined scope and purpose. You should work with senior colleagues to understand why decisions are made. This can include asking questions such as:

• why different methods of research and analysis are used in different situations
• how many participants are needed and why
• how your research feeds into the work of the wider team

If you are planning your own research projects, you should always check with colleagues to ensure that you are following best practices.

Developing this skill is also about being able to receive and implement feedback and constructive criticism. We have already learned in this course about the importance of reflecting on research sessions – this can help you with difficult situations, but it is also about refining and improving your research approach and practice.

At a more senior level, you should be evaluating the quality of you and your team’s research against accepted professional standards. You should be able to mentor and coach junior colleagues to help them develop their own skills, which means understanding how to approach feedback sessions in a constructive and compassionate manner.

You should also advocate for good research practice at the organisational level, helping to shape policy and standards. This means being aware of the wider research community, including the private and academic sectors, to ensure high standards of quality, ethical and safe research within your organisation.

Stakeholder relationship management

In Week 2, we learned about “stakeholder disagreement” as a potential risk in research – managing your relationships with stakeholders is a way of managing this potential risk.

In simple terms, stakeholders are anyone who could have an interest in your research or its outcomes, including:

• your team members
• line management
• colleagues from different departments, such as policy or finance
• senior leadership or executives
• ethics committees
• external organisations

As we discussed in Week 2, all of these different people have different priorities and opinions, and trying to find a way to balance all of these potential conflicts is a skill that you must learn.

While new or junior researchers are not responsible for ‘managing’ stakeholders, it is important that you learn who your stakeholders are and what they find important, as well as understand the importance of relationship management. Though some discussions might be confidential, there should be transparency from your senior research colleagues about their discussions with stakeholders and getting involved in these discussions where appropriate will help you develop your understanding.

As you progress in your career and start to develop your own relationships and responsibilities with stakeholders, you must learn how to tailor communication to meet their needs and work collaboratively to build and reach consensus. For example, in government, senior leadership often have very busy schedules and little time to read substantial reports or long emails, so you need to learn how to write summaries of key points so that you can get the information to them as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Stakeholder relationship management is about advocating for your team while also trying to understand and accommodate your stakeholders’ needs and views. You may encounter a situation where you need to try and influence a stakeholder into changing their opinion on something, but you may also need to influence your team into accepting something a stakeholder has said if you believe that their opinion is correct.

Remember – when trying to influence people into changing opinions, you must have evidence from research to back you up!

There may also be times where you need to step up as a leader and hold yourself accountable to stakeholders for mistakes – or stand your ground when you know that you or your time are in the right.

Effective relationship management is about building long-term, strategic relationships based on mutual understanding, respect and trust. Being able to confidently make decisions, resolve problems, remove barriers, and influence people and policy are skills that take time to learn, but you will develop this as you grow in confidence and experience throughout your career.

User research methods

We have already discussed user research methods this week, so we will not do so again in detail here. However, as we discussed in the previous step in relation to inclusive research, it is important to understand what we mean by this as a skill.

User research uses a wide variety of methods at different times and for different reasons, so you need to understand how and why different methods will be most effective. Each method is also a ‘skill’ in itself, something you need to practice and learn to become good at.

For example, knowing what to ask or how to word a question in an interview or a survey is a skill, since if you ask something in the wrong way you will not get a useful answer. Chairing a focus group discussion or running a workshop takes skill, as you need to be able to lead a group, keep to an agenda, and ensure that the session is relevant and useful.

As you become more senior, you will also need to mentor and coach junior colleagues and train them in new methods. Senior user researchers should also advocate for high standards at the organisational level, encouraging organisations to adopt a wide range of methods and ensure all employees are trained and confident in applying them.

Senior user researchers can also lead communities of practice, which help organisations and the wider user research community continually assure, improve and innovate their user research.

User-centred practice and advocacy

If you take one thing away from this course, it should be that users are at the heart of everything we do. Point 1 of the GOV.UK Service Standard is ‘understand users and their needs.’

As we have learned throughout this course, advocating for users happens at all times and at all levels – it is fundamental to user research.

We describe user-centred practice and advocacy as a skill because it requires confidence and the ability to communicate effectively and influence people, which takes time and experience to learn. However, it is something that user researchers should be doing from the beginning of their career, being supported by your colleagues and organisation to do so.

At a senior level, this skill is again about influencing things at an organisational level.

Senior user researchers need to find ways to help an organisation adopt user-centred practices and appreciate the value of understanding users.

Discussions at senior levels or between organisations can sometimes be more concerned with business needs than user needs. Earlier this week, we discussed how teams working on specific services need to consider the wider user journey. This is also the same at the organisational level, as different policies, legislation or business requirements are significant factors in how this journey is shaped.

It is important that we advocate for our users and their evolving behaviours and needs to ensure that senior stakeholders are taking them into account.