BEHAVES-in-action
Global Pharmaceutical company:
Building confident compliance comms with behavioural science
Part 1
BEHAVES-in-action
Global Pharmaceutical company:
Building confident compliance comms with behavioural science
Part 1
Client: Compliance team, pharmaceuticals | Work: Increase response rates to compliance messages
Approach: BEHAVES eLearning + flipped classroom sessions + workshop
The behaviour
Our client’s Digital Asset Compliance (DAC) team works hard to keep colleagues across a vast global organisation on the right side of compliance. They send hundreds of messages. They follow up. They chase.
The question they brought to us was this: how do we get more people to respond – faster, and more confidently?
So, the measurable behaviour they chose to focus their workshop on was:
Increase response rates to compliance messages.
The approach
The client signed their entire Digital Asset Compliance team up for the BEHAVES Academy programme – starting with the self-guided, six-module e-learning course covering the fundamentals of behavioural science and how to apply them.
Once the team had completed the e-learning, we brought them together for a live online action-planning workshop—a global team, logging in from all over the world.
What happened in the workshop? The team worked through the BEHAVES framework together, moving from identifying the barriers stopping their audience from responding, to generating a bank of practical, science-backed ideas they could actually implement.
The result? A room (well, a Zoom) full of compliance professionals surprising themselves with the quality, and actionability, of their ideas.
“I loved working through the BEHAVES training (and it’s not often you can say that about training!). I learned so much about behavioural science, the insights and – crucially – how to start applying them."
Digital Compliance Services Manager
The approach
The client signed their entire Digital Asset Compliance team up for the BEHAVES Academy programme – starting with the self-guided, six-module e-learning course covering the fundamentals of behavioural science and how to apply them.
Once the team had completed the e-learning, we brought them together for a live online action-planning workshop—a global team, logging in from all over the world.
What happened in the workshop? The team worked through the BEHAVES framework together, moving from identifying the barriers stopping their audience from responding, to generating a bank of practical, science-backed ideas they could actually implement.
The result? A room (well, a Zoom) full of compliance professionals surprising themselves with the quality, and actionability, of their ideas.
“I loved working through the BEHAVES training (and it’s not often you can say that about training!). I learned so much about behavioural science, the insights and – crucially – how to start applying them."
Digital Compliance Services Manager
Bringing a global team together
One of the things that made this project special was the team itself. The DAC team is spread across the world – different time zones, different contexts, different day-to-day pressures.
The online workshop format meant they could come together in a shared space, learn from each other’s perspectives, and arrive at ideas that reflected the full range of their audience’s experience.
For many teams, bringing together a global group for a strategic session would mean expensive travel and complex logistics. BEHAVES made it simple, accessible, and crucially, effective.
"I found the online workshop with colleagues from all around the world really interesting – hearing all their thoughts and ideas while also getting guidance from Alice and Shelley really made for a productive couple of sessions.”
Digital Compliance Services Manager
Mexico
US
Portugal
UK
Poland
Bringing a global team together
One of the things that made this project special was the team itself. The DAC team is spread across the world – different time zones, different contexts, different day-to-day pressures.
The online workshop format meant they could come together in a shared space, learn from each other’s perspectives, and arrive at ideas that reflected the full range of their audience’s experience.
For many teams, bringing together a global group for a strategic session would mean expensive travel and complex logistics. BEHAVES made it simple, accessible, and crucially, effective.
"I found the online workshop with colleagues from all around the world really interesting – hearing all their thoughts and ideas while also getting guidance from Alice and Shelley really made for a productive couple of sessions.”
Digital Compliance Services Manager
Mexico
US
Portugal
UK
Poland
Ideas into action
What impressed us most about the AstraZeneca team was how quickly they moved from insight to implementation. Within days of the workshop, ideas were already being put into practice:
A new FAQs resource to reduce friction and answer the questions asset owners kept asking
This was then fed into their AI-powered assistant, to give users instant, always-available compliance guidance
A look at the way compliance was viewed in the organisation and ideas around increasing general awareness and communication efforts
A refreshed approach to message tone and structure, grounded in the insights the team uncovered together (more on this in part 2!)
These weren’t ideas sitting in a slide deck. They were implemented. And they were based on the way humans behave, rather than how we think they should behave.
Ideas into action
What impressed us most about the team was how quickly they moved from insight to implementation. Within days of the workshop, ideas were already being put into practice:
-
A new FAQs resource to reduce friction and answer the questions asset owners kept asking
-
This was then fed into their AI-powered assistant, to give users instant, always-available compliance guidance
-
A look at the way compliance was viewed in the organisation and ideas around increasing general awareness and communication efforts
-
A refreshed approach to message tone and structure, grounded in the insights the team uncovered together (more on this in part 2!)
These weren’t ideas sitting in a slide deck. They were implemented. And they were based on the way humans behave, rather than how we think they should behave.
The outcome
The BEHAVES training gave the compliance team more than a set of techniques. It gave them a shared language.
The seven-step BEHAVES framework – and the behavioural insights toolkit that sits within it – meant they could approach their communications challenges in a structured, evidence-based way, using what they had learnt about why compliance is sometimes ignored. Concepts like ‘social proof’, ‘framing’ and ‘anchoring’ became part of how the team talked about their work.
The result? Compliance professionals building messages not around what they want to say, but around what their audience needs to hear, and in the way they want to hear it.
And that makes all the difference.
Click here to read part 2 of this case study and how behavioural science helped the compliance team improve their messaging on a specific project.