The Myth of the Persona — Stereotype or Something Else?

Lately, when I speak to managers and leaders about employee experience in the federal government workspace, I can usually count on hearing two commonly held myths:

“We can’t possibly account for every employee’s individual experience”

“Employee personas — models that represent different groups of employees — are stereotypes and we don’t stereotype in government.”

Myth #1 — It’s Impossible to Consider Every Employee’s Experience

In our first iteration of this series on employee experience (EX), we linked EX to three critical characteristics:

1. Systematic change
2. Moments that Matter
3. A clear North Star

Then, we deeply explored the key elements of Moments that Matter to federal employees and busted myth #1. We determined that EX moments are scalable and have organization-wide influence and impact. Also, Moments that Matter are emotion-generating, frequent, business-aligned, and aligned to critical talent.

However, the entire experience-design process begins not with a journey, a moment, or an experience, but with a North Star — a business case. It’s in solving for the agency’s business case that government organizations must differentiate between employee moments, according to requisite and tangible business needs. To distinguish how different employees are impacted and also contribute to distinct business needs, we make use of employee personas.

Myth #2 — Personas Are Stereotypes

Despite some prevailing opinions in government, “persona” is actually not a dirty word — though it is a way to define and archetype, not stereotype, how various employees impact and support organizational goals, values and needs.

We use archetypes as categorical models that typify universal behaviors, versus overly simplistic and undesirable stereotypical characterizations. In this MasterClass article, archetypes are described as helping to “provide a framework that can be understood across the spectrum of humanity.”

Archetypes tend to provide a complex blueprint for future analysis, while stereotypes risk constraining understanding by oversimplification. So, what are some ways that we can differentiate between employee characteristics that provide a categorical model, without overly simplifying and damaging government employees’ unique attributes?

Defining Characteristics

There are several ways to distinguish between and combine elements and characteristics of personas according to business needs. Some variations of traits can include but may not be limited to:

• Tenure (how long an employee has been in the organization, agency, or sector)
• Function or skill (including, but not limited to job series, duties, responsibilities, or knowledge, skills, and abilities)
• Job status (e.g., full-time, part-time, remote)
• Employment level (entry, individual contributor, manager, executive, etc.)

These unique ways of characterizing different attributes can be leveraged individually, or in combination, to build useful personas that can be employed to help understand critical pain points or Moments that Matter in the employee’s experience journey.

Validate, Test, Iterate

Understanding these characteristics and their contributions to business objectives, is imperative to gaining insight into the federal workforce; therefore, leaders’ understanding must be informed by prior experiences and conversations, but also validated by survey feedback, interviews and focus group data.

Finally, the types and combinations of traits used for personas will vary depending on the organization, workforce, mission, and objectives. And as changes to the organization and the government workforce continue to progress at an ever-increasing pace, it will be necessary to continue to iterate and test the effectiveness of the personas against business needs. This is not a once-and-done approach, but one that continues to evolve, through experimentation, with the business needs of the organization, agency, government and workforce.

A life-long learner and mentor, Gerome Q. Banks is a Doctor of Education, Federal talent management strategist, senior government analyst, author, Master Career Coaching Professional, and researcher with nearly 20 years of professional public sector experience, strategic HR experience, and affinity for leader development and federal talent.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash