How to build personas to support your stakeholder engagement and change management efforts.
Introduction
Stakeholder engagement is a critical activity within change management and is also an important activity within business more generally. Stakeholder engagement involves understanding the needs, motivations, and preferences of individuals or groups, and working collaboratively with these individuals or groups to achieve a desired outcome. To effectively engage stakeholders, you must have a deep understanding of who they are and what makes them tick. This is where personas come into play. Personas are fictional representations of your key stakeholders, and they will help you understand who your stakeholders are, what they care about, and how they like to be engaged.
How are personas used in change management?
By having a deep understanding of how the representative groups within your audience like to be engaged and what they care about, you can tailor your change management and engagement strategies. For example, at Levant Consulting, we develop a set of change plans – one for every persona we have identified. This typically means that we have between 4 and 7 plans and these plans are tailored to meet the specific needs of that persona. Whilst this may seem like a lot more work, it cuts down work later in the change management process as you get more effective engagement from your audience.
Simply dividing an audience into rudimentary stakeholder groups such as 'Executives', 'People Managers', and 'Employees' isn't enough. To be truly stakeholder-centric you need a far deeper understanding of your audience. In this article, we will explore a four-step process for building valuable personas to support your stakeholder engagement efforts.
Step 1: Gather, organise, and analyse available data
Data is the cornerstone of effective persona development. To create meaningful personas, you need to gather and analyse data from various sources. The goal is to gather as much information as possible about your stakeholders to paint an accurate picture of who they are.
Gather relevant data.
Start by identifying the types of data that are relevant to your stakeholder engagement efforts. Consider the following sources:
Demographic data: This data includes age, gender, location, tenure, role, education, and other basic demographic information. It provides a foundation for understanding your stakeholders' backgrounds. When we commence work with a client, we ask for a cleansed (no names of individuals, or personal details) employee list. This is typically available from an HR system.
Behavioural data: Provides insight into how stakeholders interact with a service, team, or organisation. This data can reveal preferences, habits, and patterns in their engagement.
Psychographic data: This data dives deeper into stakeholders' beliefs, values, and motivations. What are your stakeholder’s goals, challenges, and interests?
Feedback and surveys: This data is invaluable for understanding your stakeholder’s opinions and pain points. Collect direct feedback from stakeholders through surveys, interviews, and feedback forms. Employee engagement surveys are a good source for this data. Many organisations undertake these on a regular basis.
Online analytics: Provides insight into which pages your stakeholders visit, how long they stay, and what content they engage with. Examine intranet, website, and social media analytics to gain insights into how stakeholders engage with online tools.
Organise and analyse the data.
Once you've collected relevant data, organise it in a way that makes it easily accessible for analysis. You might use a data visualisation tool, a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, or simply Microsoft Excel. Look for patterns and trends within the data that can help you identify common characteristics and behaviours among different stakeholder groups.
Step 2: Categorise stakeholders and create segments
Not all stakeholders are the same. They have varying needs, expectations, and preferences. To create personas that are truly valuable, you must divide your audience into distinct groups based on their shared characteristics. This process is known as segmentation. By segmenting your stakeholders, you can build personas that are more targeted and relevant.
Categorise stakeholders.
To begin the segmentation process, consider the following criteria for categorising your stakeholders:
Demographics: Categorise your stakeholders based on age, tenure, gender, location, role, industry, or any other relevant demographic information.
Behavioural patterns: Categorise stakeholders based on how they interact with your team, service, or organisation. Are there groups that exhibit similar behaviours, such as frequent service requests, frequent provision of feedback, frequent intranet page visits, or are active social media users.
Needs and goals: Categorise stakeholders based on common goals, needs, or challenges.
Engagement levels: Categorise stakeholders based on their level of engagement with your service, team, or organisation. This can range from passive observers to active advocates.
Create stakeholder segments.
Once you've categorised your stakeholders, create distinct groups that represent these segments. Give each group a name or label, and document the defining characteristics of each segment. For example, you might have segments like “General User”, “Customer interacting”, or “Field-based”. Or you may give them human names like “Super User Sally”, “Ambitious Ami”, and “Tenured Travis” to better bring them to life. These labels will serve as the foundation for your personas.
Step 3: Build your personas
With your stakeholder segments in place, it's time to develop personas that bring these segments to life.
Persona elements
When building personas, consider including the following elements:
Name and image: Give each persona a name and use an image or illustration to create a visual representation.
Demographics: Include age, tenure, gender, location, role or occupation, and any other relevant demographic information.
Background: Provide a brief background story that highlights the persona's experiences and how they relate to your project, team, or organisation.
Goals: Describe the persona's primary goals and what they hope to achieve by engaging with your service team or organisation.
Challenges: Identify the obstacles and challenges that the persona may face in their engagement journey.
Motivations: Explore the factors that motivate the persona to support or engage with your service, team, or organisation. This may include personal values, career aspirations, or a desire for social impact. We recommend bringing a representative group together and undertaking empathy mapping.
Preferred channels: Identify the communication channels and platforms that the persona prefers for engagement, whether it's email, social media, or in-person events.
To illustrate, let's create a sample persona:
Sample Persona: "Candidate Cami "
Name: Cami.
Demographics: 22 years old, female.
Background: Recent university graduate, has a Bachelor of Business, specialising in Marketing.
Goals: To be offered a graduate role in a large organisation where there is a lot of opportunity to move laterally and horizontally.
Challenges: High demand for this graduate as they have very good university results, come with good references, and interview very well.
Motivations: Seeks organisations that offer future opportunities to work overseas, are socially and environmentally responsible, and invest in their people.
Preferred channels: Active on Instagram, attends graduate recruitment events, reads graduate employer blogs, and pays attention to the results of the Australian graduate employment awards.
This persona represents a segment of graduate job candidates who will be hard to get the attention of due to the high competition for great quality graduates. By creating personas like Cami, you can better tailor your engagement strategies to address her specific needs and motivations.
Step 4: Test and refine your personas
Building personas is not a one-time task, rather it's an ongoing process. After creating your personas, it's essential to test and refine them to ensure their accuracy and relevance. This involves gathering feedback from your stakeholders and adjusting your personas as needed.
Test your personas.
To test your personas, seek feedback from your stakeholders. You can use surveys, interviews, or focus groups to validate whether the personas resonate with your audience. Ask stakeholders if the personas accurately reflect their needs, motivations, and challenges.
Refine your personas.
Based on the feedback you receive, refine your personas as necessary. This may involve adjusting the persona elements, adding new personas to cover additional segments, or merging personas if you discover overlapping characteristics.
Keep personas current.
Stakeholder preferences and behaviours can change over time. To maintain the relevance of your personas, periodically revisit and update them. Stay attuned to shifts in your audience's expectations and adapt your engagement strategies accordingly.
Conclusion
Building personas is a foundational step in enhancing your stakeholder engagement efforts. By using data to inform your persona development, segmenting your audience, crafting detailed personas, and continuously testing and refining them, you can create a powerful framework for tailoring your engagement strategies. The result is a more personalised, effective, and empathetic approach to engaging with your stakeholders. As you invest in understanding your stakeholders and addressing their unique needs, you'll foster stronger relationships, drive greater support, and ultimately achieve your organisational goals with greater success.
If you would like help creating personas or with a broader change management requirement, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Clare Morris, Director
Cover image by Freepik