Behavioral Science for HR and People Teams
The Problem You Are Facing
You are asked to drive culture change, improve engagement, embed new values, and build leadership capability. But the tools at your disposal are primarily communication (internal campaigns, values launches, leadership messaging) and training (workshops, e-learning, development programs). When these do not produce visible behavior change, the organization questions whether culture change is even possible.
The problem is not the goal. Culture change is both possible and measurable. The problem is that culture is being treated as a direct lever when it is actually an outcome. Culture is the accumulated result of what behaviors are rewarded, tolerated, and punished in an organization. Change the behaviors, and the culture follows. But you cannot change behaviors with posters and workshops alone.
Why Culture Programs Produce Awareness Without Action
Values workshops create awareness and, often, genuine agreement. People leave the room believing in the new values. But the environment they return to has not changed. The meeting cadence, the decision-making process, the informal power dynamics, the social norms about what is acceptable, the time pressures, the old habits: all of these are still operating exactly as before.
This is the Agreement-Action gap at organizational scale. COM-B diagnosis reveals why. If the target behavior is 'managers give regular constructive feedback,' the typical culture program addresses Capability (training on how to give feedback) and reflective Motivation (explaining why feedback matters). It does not address physical Opportunity (no protected time for feedback conversations), social Opportunity (peer managers are not doing it either), or automatic Motivation (the habit of avoiding difficult conversations is strong under time pressure).
The result: high awareness, strong intent, unchanged behavior. Not because people are resistant, but because the intervention addressed the wrong barriers.
What a Behavioral Approach Looks Like for People Strategy
The SHIFT framework gives HR teams a way to translate culture objectives into behavioral designs. For each culture goal, specify the target behaviors that would make that culture real. For 'a culture of innovation,' the behavior might be 'team members propose and test one process improvement per quarter without requiring senior approval.' For 'a culture of accountability,' the behavior might be 'project owners surface risks in the weekly stand-up rather than escalating after the deadline.'
Each target behavior gets a COM-B diagnosis. The diagnosis determines the intervention, and the intervention is selected from the 33 strategy cards. The culture change becomes a series of specific, measurable behavioral designs rather than a broad aspiration supported by communication.
For leadership development, the same principle applies. The knowing-doing gap in leadership programs closes when you design the post-program environment, not just the program itself. Implementation intentions, peer coalitions, environmental redesign, and graduated difficulty translate leadership knowledge into leadership behavior.
Culture change = behavior change at scale. If you want a feedback culture, the question is not 'how do we communicate the importance of feedback?' The question is 'what specific barriers prevent managers from giving feedback, and which intervention addresses each barrier?'
