In 2020, COVID-19 upended everyday life and forced businesses to react quickly to public health mandates. Every company grappled with the challenges of staying informed about an ever-changing virus, promoting safety, and remaining operational. However, data collection projects involving human participants faced an extra layer of complexity, as social distancing made in-person interactions more difficult.
At Q Analysts, we had to respond rapidly with new processes and strategies to deliver quality data to our clients while adhering to public health best practices. We had to determine how to keep participants and employees safe and avoid the negative legal, financial, and safety impacts of a COVID-19 outbreak.
Our ground truth data services (GTDS) team rose to the challenge by implementing new safety practices that let Q Analysts maintain its position as a leader in driving data collection in the world of artificial intelligence (AI). Throughout the pandemic, we followed evolving regulations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) while delivering top-tier data collection services. Despite the inherent difficulties, the COVID-19 pandemic empowered us to redefine ourselves as a company and design a new ground truth (GT) infrastructure built to deliver quality data at scale.
Getting Back to Businesses
As COVID-19 began to spread worldwide, the US and other countries responded with stay-at-home orders and business closures. From day one of the shutdown, we knew we needed a strategy to get back to business as quickly as possible. We established a Return to Office Task Force comprised of all critical operations stakeholders, including human resources, facilities, and legal. This group stayed apprised of CDC regulations and formulated plans aligned with the strictest recommendations to get us back to work quickly and safely.
The early days of COVID-19 brought many unknowns. However, we knew we needed to assess risks associated with our GTDS program and be 100% confident that we could keep participants and employees safe at all times. We started by reviewing state and federal regulations to understand if and how we should move forward with resuming GTDS operations. Our analysis led us to implement a robust set of protocols, including daily health checks for all employees, participants, and visitors, company-provided KN-95 masks, contact tracing, air quality control, and proactive management of any positive COVID-19 cases. Through our task force’s due diligence, we were able to relaunch GTDS projects and protect against COVID-19.
Rising to New Challenges
Our commitment to staying up to date with state and local safety protocols and CDC guidance—along with our stringent “Return to Office” procedures—allowed us to continue to deliver quality data collection results to clients throughout the pandemic. After resuming business, we were able to run projects at the same velocity as before the pandemic hit, a true testament to the adaptability and innovation of the GT team. Through this challenging pandemic experience, we learned that we can be nimble and respond to changing safety protocols while achieving results for our clients. We’ve grown stronger, wiser, and even more confident in our ability to deliver world-class GTDS projects.
Achieving Quality Data Collection through Adversity
Without question, the pandemic was an unsettling and emotional experience for people around the world. As a team, we at Q Analysts faced many unknowns together. We needed to be confident in our decisions and have the conviction to see them through. Our quick response and innovative thinking helped us stand up a GTDS approach that delivered results while keeping everyone safe who walked through our doors. We saw our participant database and engagement level grow due to our commitment to safe data collection practices. After one year of running projects in a COVID-19 environment, we engaged more than 3,000 participants and delivered 100% on every project—without a single positive COVID-19 case in our facility. Learn more about our Ground Truth Data Services here.
