Read the AURA WWT Charter

THE AURA WORKING WELL TOGETHER CHARTER

We believe that the way clients and research agencies work together can make a real difference to people’s confidence and well-being. AURA members who sign up to the AURA Working Well Together Charter have committed to a set of standards they will live up to when you work with them. These behaviours are designed to mitigate some of the more stressful aspects of day-to-day working between people in our industry. Our work together is valuable and sometimes high pressured, by its nature, and we can’t promise to remove all of that; but the charter is a declaration of mutual respect and empathy, co-created with our members and some of their agency partners, aimed at eliminating unnecessary pressure - which will lead to better work and stronger research partnerships.

When we ask you for a proposal …

We’ll respect your time

● Any brief we send you will be approved by our stakeholders and ready for us to work on together

● It will include an indicative budget (or, if not, we promise to be available to discuss)

● We’ll be clear about what we want in the proposal

● We’ll be open about your chances of winning the business: eg e.g. how many agencies were invited to pitch

● We’ll give you a reasonable time to develop your proposals and be clear on the timetable for reviewing and commissioning the work

● We won’t ask for or expect a tight turnaround if we don’t need one

When we work with you …

We’ll commit to open and honest conversations at all times

● We’ll share our preferred ways of working and expectations before we start

● We’ll agree priorities up front on how to balance speed, quality and cost

● We’ll encourage you to tell us straight away if what we’re asking for is impossible or ill-advised, and we’ll be available for a conversation

● We’ll talk about timings and budget if the brief shifts significantly and/or a project is cancelled part way in

We’ll leave you to do your best work by managing our side of things well

● We’ll do our best to be your single point of contact at key sign off moments

● We’ll ensure stakeholder expectations are managed

● We’ll arrange access to stakeholders where it will help the output

● We’ll take responsibility for internal stakeholders delivering on their commitments to research deadlines

● We’ll help make it easy for you to get paid in a timely manner

We’ll treat you as an extended part of our team

● We’ll give you access to stakeholders and contextual information when appropriate

● We’ll be open to discussing the best presentation formats and channels and encourage face to face debriefs where we believe they will deliver greater impact

● We will never refer to you as just “our supplier”

● We’ll co-own all deliverables and make ourselves available to help you shape them

We’ll respect your right to disconnect

● We’ll talk about how we work and the hours we keep as part of the kick off

● Unless agreed in our ways of working, we won’t contact you or expect a reply outside reasonable office hours

● When we ask for things, we’ll always tell you when we need it and won’t ask for a tight turnaround if we don’t need one

We’ll commit to proper feedback

● We promise you’ll hear back if you send us a proposal and tell you when we’ll do that in the brief

● We’ll share constructive feedback if unsuccessful and be available for a conversation if you want one

● We’ll have a project wash up session at the end of every project to share joint learnings on what went well and less well

● We’ll share with your team any internal feedback we receive on the project

If you support the principles of the Charter, why not sign up to show that support. You can do that using this link