CH-1107 Recruitment of User Research Participants

Tender description

How often research will happen We anticipate a range between 5 and 10 rounds per year. Research location Research is likely to be conducted remotely and throughout UK, and in variety of settings including labs/users' businesses/third party venues, or Companies House offices. The agency will be responsible for provision of a venue when the brief requires one. Description of your participants We require participants that represent our users. Our users are typically UK and international company directors, persons of significant control, company secretaries, accountants, administrators, solicitors, insolvency practitioners, company formation agents and sole traders. As well as users who search the company register, researchers, academics and journalists. We must also include users who are harder to reach, such as people with certain accessibility needs, low digital skills, digitally excluded or low awareness of Companies House services. Users may also reside in the UK and overseas. Further we are interested in novice and prospective users, people from a diverse user base, ethnic minority groups, non-native English speakers and low awareness of Companies House. The successful supplier will ensure we have access to a sufficiently large and diverse pool of willing research participants for the development and continual improvement of our digital services and our behavioural insight research activity. Repeatedly using a pool of the same users would not meet our requirements. There will be multiple research projects that will require a wide range of personas for research and testing. Each online service we develop will usually have several research projects. Usually, we will need a wide range of users with diverse characteristics, motivations and demographics per project. Each project will decide the mix of users and personas. For example, the Filing your company accounts service will require more testing with accountants than directors as they are the primary persona. Our research seeks to understand our users' needs, expectations and behaviors. Methods include but are not limited to unmoderated and moderated in-depth interviews, online testing of end-to-end services (including digital and non-digital), contextual visits, email questionnaires and telephone interviews. Assisted digital and accessibility requirements Accountants & Directors with Access needs: - Conditions affecting dexterity/mobility e.g. arthritis, MS. - Low vision or registered as blind. - Neurodiverse participants, e.g. dyslexia, ADHD, dyscalculia. - Hearing loss or people who identify as Deaf. - Use assistive tools for their devices or modify set-up for internet access e.g. screen readers, screen magnifiers. Companies House Users with Assisted digital needs: - Low confidence with online activity or using computers - Use computers infrequently - No device to access the internet - Need help to complete an online application - Willing to try/learn new things on a computer - Need help from friends/family to carry out online tasks. Oversees Companies House Users: - High wealth individuals who own property in the UK - Company directors or person of significant control - Specifically, Pakistan, India & Philippines (these countries have higher volumes of company offices) but not exhaustive. Are you prepared to show your budget details?: Yes Indicative maximum: 60000 Provide further information: We have estimated the value of the call-off agreement to be £20,000 per annum. (Total Contract Value for 3-year term including extension £60,000) This will be a call-off arrangement to cover all projects within the Contract Term. Please note that the Buyer does not guarantee the level of spend. They are estimations, and dependent on the requirements of each project. The contract value will initially be capped at £99,000 (for the 3-year term including extension) subject to further internal approvals. The supplier will be prohibited from providing work beyond this cost level unless formally instructed to do so in writing by the Buyer. Write the term or acronym: CH, The Buyer, The Authority Write the term or acronym: PSC Write the term or acronym: ACSP Summary of work Summary of Work Companies House User Research Team has a limited panel of Users whom we use to recruit participants for User Research. Companies House requires a supplier to support us in recruiting User Research Participants who we determine as “hard to reach” as well as managing incentives for participants we recruit ourselves. Recruit a diverse range of participants from UK and overseas businesses, sole traders, limited liability companies and partnerships. Users of Companies House services for either searching or filing or both, to participate in user research sessions with Companies House. Remote user research and on occasion in person. Examples of “hard to reach” include those with accessibility needs or assisted digital needs. We also have an increased need to identify, recruit and research with Overseas users. Recruitment Incentives We expect the supplier to determine and issue incentives as required to aid with recruiting suitable users. Issuing a range of incentives to individuals we specify in the UK and overseas. Offering different types of incentives from gift vouchers to bank transfer. Estimated average 10-20 payments a month at £20-£30 per person. Where the research will take place North East England Where the research will take place North West England Where the research will take place Yorkshire and the Humber Where the research will take place East Midlands Where the research will take place West Midlands Where the research will take place East of England Where the research will take place London Where the research will take place South East England Where the research will take place South West England Where the research will take place Scotland Where the research will take place Wales Where the research will take place Northern Ireland Who is the organisation using the products or services Companies House Companies House is an executive agency of the Department for Business and Trade (DBT). We hold the UK’s Register of Companies and the Register of Overseas Entities. Number of research rounds This is a Call-Off Contract. There will not be a set number of rounds. Number of participants per round We will require 6 participants per round (excluding no-shows). The supplier will be expected to manage spares, “no-shows” and cancellations. Research dates No set dates. This will be a call off agreement for 2 years (with an option to extend for a further 1 year). Questions and Clarifications 1. Also confirm if the extension would be given or not? (We are not requesting for the extension but just want to know if it would be done, so we plan our response accordingly.) We are unable to extend the Stage 1 Deadline due to the limitations of Contract Award Service. Last Updated: 20 November 2025, 13:10 2. Please confirm the limit. If its 750 words or characters? This would help us frame our answers properly. Apologies, it is a 750 word limit Any reference to character limit is an error. Last Updated: 20 November 2025, 12:50 3. Are international participants sourced via your panel to be paid in GBP values or local currency? We expect supplier to deal with local currency payments, the conversion and dealing with any tax or compliance forms. CH expect pay up to the equivalent of £30 either via bank transfer, PayPal, Pe-paid Debit card or gift voucher. Last Updated: 13 November 2025, 13:24 4. Will international be freefind or incentive only fulfilment? If international customers can be recruited without an incentive then fine. However, in our experience incentives have been needed to recruit oversees individuals. Last Updated: 13 November 2025, 13:24 5. Will participants be required from one market at a time or multiple markets? Each round of testing will likely focus on one segment, from which we will provide a recruitment brief. There may be occasions where we have multiple projects running and may require a supplier to run more than one campaign. Last Updated: 13 November 2025, 13:23 6. For international recruitment: How many participants do you expect will be needed per round overseas? Between 5-10 (we’d hope to speak to 6, so others would be to allow for dropouts) Last Updated: 13 November 2025, 13:22 7. The requirements are to recruit UK and overseas businesses. Can any more information be provided about the overseas businesses. In particular: What proportion of work will be UK vs International? We estimate approximately 10%-20% of the total work in this requirement will be Overseas Business recruitment. There are 140k companies that have directors on the register from overseas that did not have biometric passports – we determine these to be “hard to reach”. Last Updated: 13 November 2025, 13:21