How NATS Strengthened Internal Communications with Behaviour-Based Personas
Katie Austin
Minutes
20th June 2025
Employee Experience Human Centred Empathy
Reconnecting with the human side of Internal Communications
In today’s fast-paced, operational environments, it’s easy for Internal Communications teams to get caught in reactive mode — constantly responding to the next big challenge. But true impact comes from stepping back, reconnecting with your people, and designing communications around real human needs.
That’s exactly what NATS, the UK’s leading air navigation service provider, set out to do.
We recently partnered with their Internal Communications team on an exciting programme to create behaviour-based employee personas — helping them bring employees’ voices to life, and laying the foundations for a more strategic, people-first approach to communications and employee experience (EX).
And it all started with a simple, powerful realisation:
“We weren’t fixing something broken — we were building on a strong foundation to stretch towards our objective of becoming a Top 25 UK employer.”— Helen Sierwald, NATS
A Strategic Reset: From Reactive to Proactive
After a couple of years of navigating the after-effects of Covid on the business and its employees, the NATS Internal Comms team recognised the need for a strategic reset.
As they refreshed their five-year IC strategy, they saw an opportunity to
Strengthen their communications foundations
Deepen their understanding of employees' real experiences and needs
Better connect Internal Communications with broader employee Experience efforts
Rather than relying on instinct alone, they wanted real, evidence-based insights — challenging old assumptions and designing for today’s NATS employees, not yesterday’s patterns.
Bringing Employees’ Voices to Life
Working together, we ran 16 employee workshops and 6 in-depth interviews, gathering rich insights across all roles, levels and demographics.
The focus wasn’t just on processes or programmes — it was about meaningful experiences: the moments that mattered, what ‘great’ looked like, what barriers employees faced, and how they wanted to feel connected at work.
As Helen put it: “The process was genuinely positive. People appreciated the opportunity to reflect and share what really matters to them.”
These conversations fed into the development of behaviour-based personas — rich, fictional characters grounded in real data, bringing employee motivations, needs, frustrations and communication preferences to life.
Building Skills for Lasting Change
But this project wasn’t just about research outputs. It was about building capability.
We worked with the Internal Comms team to introduce practical EX Design tools like journey mapping, empathy mapping, ideation and prototyping — giving them hands-on experience in using the personas to solve a live challenge: redesigning Internal Comms channels.
Stepping into employees’ shoes opened new perspectives and new energy across the team.
“It stretched us in a good way — it reminded us that to truly put colleagues at the centre, we have to use different perspectives, not just default to what’s easy or familiar.”— Lynsey Davidson, NATS
The Ripple Effect: Early Outcomes
It’s still early days — but the impact is already being felt.
Personas are now embedded into Internal Communications planning.
Conversations about employee needs are deeper, more empathetic and more strategic.
Other teams, like HR for example, are already expressing interest in adopting similar approaches.
The team are taking a gradual approach — spreading tools, mindsets and practices organically across the organisation.
Perhaps most importantly, the work has helped future-proof the Internal Comms function for a changing world:“This project future-proofed our team. It’s given us skills that will keep us strategic, relevant, and valuable in a world where the human touch matters more than ever.”— Lynsey Davidson, NATS
Why Behaviour-Based Personas Matter
In a time of automation, AI, and information overload, the ability to think empathetically — to design communications and experiences with real people in mind — is more crucial than ever.
Behaviour-based personas are one of the most powerful tools organisations can use to:
Build empathy
Challenge assumptions
Design human-centred communications and experiences
Make better, more impactful decisions
At NATS, this approach is already helping Internal Communications become a strategic driver of Employee Experience — and setting the tone for a more connected, more human future.
If you’d like to find out more about how we help organisations develop and embed behaviour-based personas, get in touch — we’d love to chat.
