A Government organisation engaged CEC to inform the design and development of a future state intranet and collaboration solutions. The organisation was also facing a restructure meaning staff numbers would significantly increase, and more diverse needs would need to be catered for. The organisation needed to understand the foundation of internal employee culture through three lenses: how people collaborate, how people use the intranet, and how people digest communications.

CEC was brought in to facilitate the development of personas; to understand how people’s behaviours impact these three lenses.  

Across four days, we interviewed 15 internal staff spanning across seniority and business units. We asked them questions such as what they used the Intranet for and how their day to day is dependant on the Intranet, what they think the role of communications is in the organisation, and asked about their habits around collaboration with others in the organisation.

Whilst conducting interviews, it quickly became apparent that people’s behaviours within the organisation did not differ enough to create distinct personas. Furthermore, there was no distinction of behaviours across seniority and business units. However, we were able to categorise people’s role when it came to work-related content, and found they were either a creator or a consumer of content.

We delivered insights into the needs of staff when consuming and creating content, which held more value than personas. In addition, we also uncovered barriers to greater communication and collaboration within the organisation, shining a light into the cultural norms and status quo currently held by employees. By handing over a set of actionable recommendations to aid our insights, were able to articulate user needs to inform the design and development of a future state intranet and collaboration solutions.