Field Officers (FOs) are at the forefront of One Acre Fund in terms of delivering our service and training to farmers. They are the ones who interact with farmers day-to-day, act as a bridge between One Acre Fund and the field, and are the face of One Acre Fund at the front line. Field Officers are responsible to enroll farmers, provide agricultural training and on-farm support, and collect repayment from our customers throughout the year, while helping farmers plan to repay their loans slowly so that no farmer defaults. Each One Acre Fund Field Officer has approximately 56 clients, and each client joins in a group of 4-12 farmers. If one farmer in the group does not repay their loan, the entire group is banned from joining One Acre Fund the following season. When many farmers are banned due to non-repayment, it prevents them from benefiting from the One Acre Fund program, it hurts One Acre Fund’s financial sustainability, and it prevents us from serving more farmers in Nigeria. Each group of 6 FOs is managed by a Field Manager. There are some Field Officers in Nigeria who are strong performers in repayment. Each year, they help all of their clients to meet their monthly repayment goals and 100% of their clients repay before the deadline. Other FOs are not as successful: they have some farmers that default on their loan and do not repay on time, which causes their entire group to be banned. There are some sites that have many FOs who struggle with repayment, and other sites where all of the FOs in the entire district finish at 100% repayment. It is not clear what the problem is: Why do some FOs and some sites complete repayment on time, while others do not keep their clients on the healthy repayment path? In this exercise, you are tasked with better understanding how to improve the performance of low performing FOs. Exercise: 1. Imagine you’re in charge of this team of Field Officers and Field Managers, how do you understand the challenges and improve their execution? a. Draft an action plan and detail how you would approach this. Use the org chart in the appendix to help you understand the organizational structure and job titles. b. Write up one set of research questions. For example, if you decide to do a focus group, list questions you would ask to this group. There is no minimum or maximum number of questions required, as long as you are comprehensive enough to give insights into this FO repayment problem and to allow you to make actionable recommendations at the end. 2. At the end, write a recommended actions section. Presume you have conducted the research and analyzed the results: a. Create a list of actionable recommendations to help our weak FOs improve repayment. b. What KPIs would you measure to understand improvements?