We use research to make organisations, brands and society more inclusive
Versiti builds on 20 years’ experience of working with minority ethnic and faith communities, LGBTQ people, young and older people, disabled people and others whose voices are rarely heard in research.
We came together through our work with Versiti’s sister company Further, where we pioneered tools and methods to conduct in-depth online qualitative research with greater speed, reach and scale.
The power of our approach to reach and engage diverse and often hard-to-reach audiences – combined with a strong social purpose to create a fairer, more vibrant society – has led us to create Versiti, an inclusive transformation consultancy.
Our award-winning researchers, strategists and consultants thrive on tackling difficult brand and organisational growth challenges around inclusion and diversity. We get that there’s a lot at stake, and that it’s hard. So we work in close collaboration to understand the business and human context and sensitivities of each brief. We give our clients the confidence to go boldly where others have not, knowing they are in safe hands with a team that has delivered success time and again.
Get in touch. Let’s talk about your challenges and opportunities.
How we work
We are driven by a sense of purpose, looking for every opportunity to make a difference to society’s minority and under-represented groups including Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic and LGBT people, people living with disabilities, and faith groups.
Each brief is considered carefully. We have no template, standard process or hidden agenda to promote – we simply deploy the best research for each challenge or audience. We also think laterally, using the full breadth of our experience across sectors, briefs and equality strands to enrich our research designs, conclusions and recommendations.
We know that our findings are likely to disrupt and challenge the status quo – after all, that’s why we exist – so we probably work harder than anyone else to make them bulletproof. You can have full confidence in our evidence and insights.
In a field as complex as diversity and inclusion, we know that we don’t have all the answers. So we have an extensive network of diversity academics, practitioners, recruiters and researchers to draw on, as and when we think a brief calls for their input.
And finally, we know that powerful things happen when we do work which everyone feels proud and excited about.
Tools, techniques and methods
- Individual interviews
We do face-to-face or telephone interviews. We might also use paired interviews to get people to bounce off each other. There are times when in-depth interviews are. Typically, that’s when research participants are digitally excluded, not at ease expressing themselves in writing, have impairments that make online less appropriate or are senior professionals who need to be engaged hyper flexibly.
- Focus groups
We might use focus groups, for instance, when it is key to understand naturalistic language and interactions. People’s natural language, their facial expressions and body language, and the ways in which group dynamics unfold can all reveal a lot about implicit attitudes. For a seasoned qualitative researcher, being physically able to observe people can trigger great insight.
- Online research communities
We would normally recommend online research communities when:
- working with geographically dispersed ‘hard-to-reach’ groups
- confidentiality is paramount
- systematic analysis matters
- the topic is complex, sensitive and requires deep reflection
- there are strong benefits to sustained group interactions (e.g. peer support, attitude change, training, empowerment)
- collaboration and co-creation might benefit innovation
- Mobile ethnography
We use a mobile-first app whenever we are seeking to capture ‘in-the-moment’ experiences as they occur in everyday life. Typically, this would be used for:
- documenting workplace experiences
- auditing – from diverse customers’ perspectives – how inclusive advertising and communications are
- understanding consumer and shopper journeys
- documenting people’s interactions with products and services
- Audits and document reviews
Most organisations have equality, diversity and inclusion policies and programmes in place, and many actually have quite a bit of relevant data, but this is typically buried in some dark recess… We feel strongly that time is too short and budgets are too tight for anyone to waste resources reinventing the wheel. Which is why, when appropriate, we audit existing research and evidence to make sure that our work plugs a gap and genuinely adds value.
- Participant observation
Depending on the brief, this might also be called escorted visits, accompanied shopping or ethnography. In all cases, it involves a researcher being alongside research participants, observing their behaviours and asking them questions to understand their thoughts, attitudes and feelings, in context. This is very useful to explore how expectations and attitudes relate to experiences.