Your company is at the start of a major transformation: a post-merger integration or new ERP implementation, perhaps. The goal to be achieved is clear. What isn’t so clear is how your thousands of employees will react to and engage in the transformation effort, which will require them to change not just how they work and what their jobs entail, but also how they behave in response to a changing work environment.
The challenge is that different groups of employees carry out very different kinds of jobs. And even within groups, employees respond to change in a range of ways, with some welcoming the process and some strenuously resisting.
To succeed in their transformation goals, companies must build strategies tailored to the various needs of the workforce. Just as companies segment customers to get them to use a product, they should personalize their change management efforts according to distinct employee personas. In our research, we’ve found that companies that make holistic, people-centered change management an integral part of a transformation outperform their peers by 15% in total shareholder return.
Companies that make people-centered change management an integral part of a transformation outperform their peers.
To that end, we have designed what we call the Persona Engine. This AI-driven tool can quickly capture organizational data and insights, categorize that input into specific segments of employees, and develop tailored interventions designed to promote change at the most targeted, personalized level.
In this article, we describe how to develop and use a persona-based approach to change management and how organizations can reap its considerable benefits.
Building Personas
The barrier for many organizations when embarking on a change management program is what we call “change distance”: executives systematically underestimate what employees actually need in order to navigate major organizational or operational changes and what makes them hesitant to accept those changes. Our research shows that company leaders are often more likely than employees to believe that change will succeed, an unrealistic level of optimism given change management programs’ poor record of success.
This perception gap produces a one-size-fits-all trap when change efforts are designed at the top levels of organizations. Change strategies are often designed for the entire organization, an approach that misses the reality that different stakeholder groups experience and respond to change in unique and disparate ways. Generic communications, untailored training, and a lack of hypercare (periods of intensive, targeted support intended to help people sustain change following the implementation of a change management program) make a good outcome even more unlikely.
Change strategies are often designed for the entire organization, missing the reality that different stakeholder groups experience and respond to change in unique and disparate ways.
The solution lies in personalizing workers’ needs by categorizing members of the workforce into personas according to their different roles, motivations, and levels of resistance. Done well, these personas can help reconcile qualitative sentiment, behavioral indicators, role context, and industry dynamics into segments that are operationally and behaviorally distinct, not just demographically different.
Creating personas strengthens enterprise change strategies in two ways. First, it allows companies to develop targeted interventions along a tailored change journey that prioritizes communications, training, and hypercare based on the highest areas of need. Second, it enables organizations to identify resistance, fears, and unmet needs before they derail the momentum of the change program.
The Persona Engine
Company leaders realize, of course, that change would be relatively straightforward if they could understand the concerns of individual employees and manage them on a one-on-one basis. But no large company has the resources and time to do so.
This is where the Persona Engine comes in. Driven by AI, it brings nuance, speed, and scale to the process of creating the most individualized personas possible. It ingests both internal workforce signals and external industry intelligence, then layers behavioral science, real-world examples, and intervention tactics on top, accelerating the process of persona development from months to days.
The benefits can be considerable. In hopes of increasing its developers’ productivity, for example, a large technology organization rolled out a major GenAI implementation, but the results proved limited. After deploying persona-based enablement to embed AI into its developers’ daily work, however, the company saw a 31% improvement in productivity and shipped 27% more features that year.
Personalizing Change
The Persona Engine generates a set of distinct employee segments, each mapped to the granular needs, motivations, and resistance patterns that require targeted change interventions. It then produces a heat map showing the actions with the greatest influence across each persona group. This allows it to produce tailored, personalized plans that show where and how to intervene along the impact change journey. (See Exhibit 1.)
For example, a large company planning a major digital and AI transformation is likely to have to adopt entirely new technology platforms while introducing greater automation and a range of AI capabilities. The effort will cut across multiple functions, including end users, power users and champions, middle managers, IT and system administrators, and data and analytics teams.
To facilitate the transformation, the Persona Engine aggregates information such as technology roadmaps, prioritized use cases, and company data to identify critical organizational functions. These insights then show where the organization will require the most significant change management support and illuminate potential barriers to adoption before they become obstacles. In parallel, the Persona Engine generates tailored journeys and targeted interventions for each persona group, building the change readiness and capability needed to achieve the organization’s AI transformation ambitions.
The Persona Engine helps build the change readiness and capability needed to achieve the organization’s AI transformation ambitions.
The Persona Engine in Action
The recent merger of Allegiant Travel and Sun Country Airlines involved the complex integration of two leisure-focused airlines with a combined 22 million customers traveling annually between 175 cities along 650 routes in a total of 195 aircraft.
To augment an already robust integration process, Allegiant used the Persona Engine to identify ten bespoke personas distinct to the industry that reflect the airlines’ 9,300-strong workforce. The tool then identified and framed more than 100 interventions tailored for each persona across three dimensions—communications, training, and active engagement—and connected them to the broader integration roadmap. (See Exhibit 2.)
- Communications. Intensity and frequency of messaging needed to keep everyone informed, aligned, and engaged.
- Training. Suggested types of structured learning, skill building, and hands-on tool training for each persona to operate in the new environment.
- Active Engagement. Sustained, hands-on involvement required from leaders, managers, and the change management team.
Each intervention was rated according to its effect on the persona group. A closer look at the role of Priya, a people manager, shows how the process works. The Persona Engine gathered a range of data on how her role might be affected by the integration, including her concerns and motivations. It then generated a complete intervention plan, beginning with actions to take prior to the close and carrying through the full integration journey. (See Exhibit 3.) The detailed personas allowed individualized insights to be generated for each persona group, helping to ensure a smooth day one.
A Call to Action
In large-scale transformations, leaders often default to enterprise-wide change strategies, applying a one-size-fits-all approach that treats the organization as a monolith. But understanding who your people are, what they need, and where resistance may emerge is the true key to lasting transformation success. With AI-accelerated persona development, personalized change at enterprise scale is achievable for every organization.
We now have the tools to deliver best-in-class support systematically, at speed, and with a level of personalization that simply wasn’t possible before. As you look ahead to the next transformation, the question is no longer whether this approach is achievable but whether you’re willing to embrace it. Companies that do will move faster, bring their people along more effectively, and build lasting, sustained change.
