Applying behavioural science
2 February 2022
Understanding human behaviour in designing solutions to real-world challenges.
Many of the complex challenges and issues that governments are facing today are behavioural challenges, and therefore require behavioural solutions.
At the heart of these real-world problems are employees, customers and citizens who make decisions and choices every day – in order to influence these behaviours, organisations need to understand what drives them.
It is for this reason that many governments around the world are turning to behavioural science to tackle these challenges.
The behavioural science approach uses evidence on how we actually make decisions and choices and considers the real context in which they are made, which is often overlooked.
It can be applied at the tactical level, such as increasing citizen compliance on policy and legislation, to being applied at the strategic level, such as redesigning policy to increase household sustainable practices.
Wherever people make decisions, behavioural science can be applied.
Our work in creating behaviourally informed solutions have tackled meaningful issues, such as youth crime, performance disclosure, policy compliance, digital government, and making public services easier for people to use.
We have also helped organisations become more efficient and customer focused.
We draw on the latest cutting-edge research and practical insights in behavioural science from around the world, which ensures we provide fresh approaches to our client’s real-world challenges.
Important to all our government clients, we use practical frameworks to interpret and shape behaviours in ethical and responsible ways.
We offer three main services:
1. Advisory
Provide strategic advice to governments and not-for-profits on addressing complex challenges, focusing throughout on human behaviour and decision-making. We also help organisations embrace behavioural science into their operations.
- Define the challenge and systems in behavioural terms
- Prioritise focus areas that benefit most from behavioural science
- Actionable recommendations to integrate behavioural science into operations and service delivery
2. Project work
We rely on the latest behavioural science research and actionable frameworks to create tailored behaviour-change interventions and solutions.
- Field research and analysis
- User journey maps
- Behavioural diagnosis and mapping
- Choice architecture analysis and design
- Identify cognitive drivers and barriers
- Intervention and solutions designI
3. Impact evaluation
We take a data-driven approach to evaluating what works – rapidly. Testing findings give governments the evidence they need to invest, scale-up and adapt.
- Design and run trials
- Trial protocols
- Observation and analysis of effects
- Scale-up, execution and adapt
Let us deliver for you
At Phillips Group, we apply behavioural science thinking to address social challenges, improve public policy and government service delivery; focusing throughout on delivering positive results for employees, customers and citizens.