Members engaged, informed and enthused about ACCA. Member value measures around engagement / participation, satisfaction and recommendation increased across key markets exceeding targets set. Moreover, engagement in ACCA Council elections and the global AGM doubled.
Association of Chartered Certified Accountants
ACCA is the global body for professional accountants. Its aim is to offer business-relevant, first-choice qualifications to people of application, ability and ambition around the world who seek a rewarding career in accountancy, finance and management. It also helps businesses to grow by developing their finance capability and enhancing their brand reputation.Moreover, ACCA provides renowned finance and accountancy qualifications for any organisation in any sector. And with 92 offices and over 400 examination centers worldwide, it has the greatest capability to deliver qualifications and professional development of any accountancy body. It will work with you to deliver flexible, accessible, cost effective training at any level.
Members engaged, informed and enthused about ACCA. Member value measures around engagement / participation, satisfaction and recommendation increased across key markets exceeding targets set. Moreover, engagement in ACCA Council elections and the global AGM doubled.
Andrew Steele, Market Director, Partnerships & Recognition, with a team of colleagues at ACCA’s head office in London and also around the world in key markets such as the UK, Ireland, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and China.
Peter Jenkinson, The Company Secretary, was also a lead director for the project specifically around the AGM as this is within the remit of ACCA’s corporate governance.
Colleagues also included:
Sharon Etienne - Director, Corporate Assurance
Helen Thompson - Head of Corporate Communications
John Weston - Regional Head of Member Advocacy and Satisfaction
Angela Sam - Head of Marketing Planning
Helen Perkins - Head of Strategic Planning
Chris Wynne - Senior Project Manager, Web & Digital.
Tools & Systems
AGM and Council Elections 2016 – Online voting platform
Online voting platform - we worked with the organisation Electoral Reform Services (ERS) to conduct the AGM and we used their web based platform to enable our members globally to vote online. See figure 7 and 8 AGM and Council Elections 2016 – Online. We also took advantage of the improved functionality of their platform to enhance members’ online experience by featuring video content and supporting documentation.
Webinars - one of our major innovations this year was webinars. We held 15 webinars to encourage members to get involved before the voting window opened and another three Q&A sessions during the voting window to enable members to question our officers and ET members.
Intranet - our intranet carried information and guidance to brief our staff so that they could engage our members around the AGM.
Email - our primary notification tool was email. From teaser campaigns before voting actually opened, to reminders to vote throughout the voting period.
Introduction
Member engagement is part of the member value equation and we identified a number of things we could focus on to achieve our goals. These included greater involvement in research and advocacy, wider participation in governance milestone events and significant steps to improve the breadth of our engagement through the use of digital as well as face to face events. In 2014/2015 ACCA membership stood at 178,000 and by the end of 2016 / 2017 it had risen to 188,000.
Like many membership bodies, we suffer from low member engagement with our AGM – typically
below 3%. And it’s important to ACCA Council – our governing body - that our members’ voices are heard so that they have the strongest possible mandate to govern from our overall membership. We wanted to identify ways in which we could increase voter turnout in this important governance process. A key measure for member value is our satisfaction survey conducted across our membership. We use the insights from this survey to ensure we can implement the right plans on a market level to deliver greater member value.
This project highlighted three main points of learning for us:
It’s not just about getting votes – it’s an opportunity to engage with our members and get a meaningful dialogue going
Responsibility isn’t confined to the Governance team – we’ve achieved success by working across our whole organisation (corporate communications, web team, marketing, brand, national offices, members)
It’s an ongoing process – we’re keeping our ‘lessons learned’ team meetings and we’ll continuously review and improve the member experience around our AGM every year, from enhancing our online voting platform to holding more member engagement events.
It’s been hard work but immensely enjoyable to see such meaningful engagement with our members take place. After all, this is why ACCA exists – we’re a professional membership body that engages with its members.
Discovery
Member Engagement and Satisfaction:
We took a holistic view of engagement, involving the whole organization in encouraging greater member participation in our activities. Eg: member workshops greatly contributed to our ground breaking research ‘Professional Accountants – the future’ which in turn helped to shape the changes to our core qualification and CPD offering.
Further, we launched member advocacy as a way to harness the passion and enthusiasm ACCA members have for their designation and the ACCA brand by supporting key elements of our strategy.
Extending the breadth of engagement activities through the use of webinars, a revised member hub on the website and social media to not only continue to educate our members; but also to engage with them, to listen to their concerns and questions and increase their involvement played an important role.
Objectives
A major focus and strategic priority for ACCA in 2016 / 2017 was to deliver greater member value.
Headline ambitions:
To deliver greater member value and to see that reflected in the core measures by the year end
To improve overall member satisfaction
To improve member recommendation and advocacy and
To increase member participation in our AGM
As part of our plans, we targeted a key member engagement event in our calendar – the AGM. With traditionally low member participation of typically below 3%, we wanted to establish and identify ways that we could increase engagement in terms of member turnout in this important governance process.
Activities
The activities for this project were centered around ACCA’s strategic priority of enhancing member value. This priority helps ACCA focus on our strategic vision to be number one in developing professional accountants the world needs by 2020.
Engaging with our members is a key priority for ACCA, and everyone in the organisation plays a part in doing this to some extent.
The priority is led globally by Andrew Steele and involves colleagues from within both our HQ and market teams.
Activities included:
Member engagement leads across our key markets met monthly via conference call to share best practice and ideas and to support each other to better engage with members both in terms of breadth and depth of engagement. These ideas included wider use of webinars, focus groups, forums, telephone and other ways to reach out to our membership.
Respondents for the ‘Professional accountants - the future’ and ‘Generation Next’ reports
In 2016 we also involved members more in our research activities including the ground breaking ‘Professional accountants - the future’ and ‘Generation Next’ reports which involved members around the world in the research.
We also launched a new global ‘member advocacy’ initiative to engage members actively in our strategy through a variety of activities including schools engagement and profile building.
For the 2016 AGM, we ensured membership comms for the AGM were streamlined and relevant to what members want to hear from their membership body - such as who is ACCA’s Council, what do they do and how can members become more involved in the work of ACCA, and indeed vote in the AGM. This work ensured members understood the governance of ACCA.
Annual General Meeting session on the website
Profiling ACCA Council members on our website and in AB magazine.
Setting up a specific section of the website about the AGM.
Regular member comms with newsletters and sections in AB magazine to keep members informed about the AGM and voting
Webinars around the world hosted by Council for ACCA members. These webinars were about ACCA’s strategy, the role of Council and also the logistics of the AGM itself and what ACCA was doing to engage with members in market across the globe. Webinars were held in the spring and again in the summer and attracted over 2,000 members.
Member advocate endorsement – the development of the concept of member advocates in markets active members to engage and enthuse those more passive members
Materials produced
AB magazine - list of Council members
The effort
The wider Member Value priority began in the spring of 2016 while the AGM project began shortly after the AGM lessons learned exercise carried out following the AGM in Autumn 2015.
The AGM lessons learned exercise fed into the creation of both the AGM engagement project and the wider Member Value priority . Those involved in the lessons learned exercise are named above and the project was chaired by Vice President, Leo Lee FCCA. The broader Member Value priority is led by Andrew Steele and involved both those named above as well as member engagement colleagues in market.
The member value strategic priority continues into 2017/18, as does the AGM focus so that the latter is becoming business as usual for ACCA and a subset of the wider focus on member engagement and member value.
The AGM is now seen in the light of the broader priority and not simply as a governance exercise
that has to be carried. It is now seen as an important member value activity and key test of our engagement activities with members across the globe.
Marketing
We knew that our marketing and communication strategy had to broaden its reach in order to tackle a number of issues. For example, with regard to the AGM:
Low awareness of the governance and operational structure of ACCA
Indifference towards the AGM
Reach of our communication
Therefore, we devised a simple but joined up approach focusing on these key objectives:
Improving transparency on ACCA’s governance structure – We created a new area on the members’ section of our website, to introduce members to ACCA’s governance and the AGM process, in a clear and engaging manner. We built communication themes around the web content to ensure members can relate to them.
Indifference towards the AGM – We wanted to provoke the sense of belonging and community amongst members by changing the tone of voice in all our member communication to a warmer, conversational approach. We featured interviews with council members in our communications to instill that human connection to the stewards of ACCA. We included video of our officers explaining the importance of voting on our website and an animation on the voting platform
Reach of our communication – Because members have different communication preferences we executed a multichannel strategy including face- to-face roadshows in key markets led by Council members, 18 webinars to answer questions that members have, collaborated with our advocates to start conversations on social media channels about the AGM and other matters that are close to members’ hearts. See figure 6 Social media for Members -Website .
We also used our regular email and magazine circulation channels to keep members informed about the programme. We offered members the choice of engaging with us via emails, letters, social media, face- to-face or phone calls.
Challenges
By establishing member value as a strategic priority for 2016/17, we were able to harness the enthusiasm and collaboration of the entire organisation into achieving our goals.
The importance of having Council members and senior staff engaged in such initiatives as presenting member webinars or speaking at face to face member events cannot be underestimated. These tactics have helped to bring the campaign alive and to emphasise that ACCA has its members’ interests at heart.
One of the challenges was to increase the involvement of members in ACCA’s quarterly member satisfaction surveys. This was to ensure that the data we were acting on was valid and reliable. This involved major efforts on behalf of member engagement staff within markets on repeatedly emphasising the importance of completing the surveys so that ACCA knew what they both liked and disliked so that we could act on their feedback.
For the AGM project, the challenges were minimised by beginning with a lessons learned exercise following the 2015 AGM and then convening a cross departmental team to plan a detailed project that called on many parts of the whole organisation.
Having a project manager as part of the team, with regular weekly phone calls and meetings, ensured we were aligned, on time and on message.
We also worked very closely with Electoral Reform Services (ERS) to improve our engagement over the AGM - for instance agreeing some bespoke changes to the voting platform. Using ERS, the organisation looking after the external voting platform, enabled us to demonstrate our reach and impartiality to members and enabled a seamless running of the election and voting processes. ERS were brought into the project early and seen as part of the wider ACCA team.
Looking back, the project would have been much more challenging if member value was not a strategic priority but the fact it is weaved into our strategic documentation, and shared with all staff, makes sure that with member communications is an effective corporate strategic priority for the whole of the organisation.
Achievements
We’re first and foremost a membership body. Our priorities are around making members, supporting future members through their qualification and delivering member value to those who were already members. This work falls under our member value priority.
We’re delighted to have achieved all of these objectives. The results can be demonstrated as follows:
Improved member engagement through the AGM participation of 6.4%
Improved member satisfaction through our CSAT score increase of 5.4% to 76.4%
Improved member recommendation through our NPS score increase of 8.4 to +32.4.
The number of members taking part in the members satisfaction survey rose from 5,876 to 8,929 – an increase of 52% from 2015.
In addition, up to last year, we had seen a five year trend of declining member satisfaction, from 80% in 2011 to 71% by 2015. Our ambition was to turn around that decline, achieve a combined student and member satisfaction of 75%, a net promoter score of +30 and maintain our strong member retention at 98%.
As part of the governance of the AGM, we worked closely with the Electoral Reform Services (ERS), an organisation that has over 100 years’ experience in administering elections and ballots for all kinds of companies, membership organisations. This ensures an independent approach to the AGM and the voting of our members.
Targets & Statistics
Participation of our membership in the AGM process has risen to 6.4%
Over 12,000 members voted in the Council elections
Turnout doubled in the Special Business Resolutions vote:
2015: 5,307
2016: 10,506
Member value targets for the year:
Combined student and member satisfaction at 75%
Global Net Promoter Score (NPS) at +30
Results:
We hit 76.9% for combined student and member satisfaction – reversing a five year trend and beating our target by 1.9%.
Member satisfaction alone is 8.4 points above this time last year. Even the number of members taking part in the surveys has increased – up 52% from 2015.
NPS at +32.8
Survey Participation 2015 & 2016:
Financials
We’re a not-for-profit body which means that we usually work to tight budgets. Our spend for marketing and PR was minimal because the work was all handled in-house.
What would we do differently?
One of the main contributions to the success of the member value priority was the very fact of making the focus on member engagement a strategic priority for ACCA. By doing this, which came out of the 2015 AGM lessons learned project, was so important a factor that the priority and the lessons learned team have been retained for 2017/18.
The priority indicated the need for the whole of ACCA to get behind the priority and the collaboration of colleagues not directly involved was also crucial to our success.
Also, it is worth noting that member advocates have helped us to engage with other less-engaged members in the Market and this will become a cornerstone of our approach going forward.
Regarding the AGM, our approach worked well, and we see this as part of something on which to build.
Part of this project has been the establishment of a ‘lessons learned’ team that reviewed outcomes, successes and key learnings from the 2016 AGM. This is a cross organisational and functional team, which takes in Marketing, Governance, Corporate Comms, the ACCA Media team (publishing), Member Value and also Governance. This approach has been embedded into the annual corporate calendar and seen as business as usual.
This core AGM team still meets regularly to ensure it does not become a ‘comms silo’ in the organisation and so that it aligns with strategic and corporate activities.
It’s about building on success and making sure ACCA members understand what we stand for on their behalf. It is also about listening to their needs and their feedback.
Following the 2016 AGM another lessons learned exercise was carried out, and only minor changes have been suggested for this year such as some minor improvements to the online election platform and comms messaging. For 2017 / 18, the Member Value priority continues with the measure of participation/ engagement, satisfaction and recommendation set as key indicators of member satisfaction. It’s a measure that works well for ACCA.
Feedback & Testimonials
As part of the AGM process, we publish the results of AGM in our members’ magazine AB
Wider impact
We’ve raised the participation of our membership in our AGM process to 6.4%. And we doubled the AGM voting turnout on the Special Business Resolutions with 12,000 members voting for the Council elections –the highest ever number.
Our satisfaction and net promoter score results are based on four waves of the survey carried out during the year. Having completed the final wave of the survey in February we now have the end-of-year result, and we’re delighted to finish this year with a combined student and member satisfaction of 76.9%, which is 1.9% over the target set. Within this, we’ve increased member satisfaction by 5.4% to 76.4%.
Additionally, our net promoter score, an important indicator of the power of our member advocacy and recommendation, is now at +32.4, an 8.4 increase on last year.
We’ve seen some great results, with all six of our key markets – UK, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Ireland, Singapore and China – improving both their satisfaction levels and net promoter scores.
