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About us

Behavioural and Communications

Providing policy makers with understanding on why citizens make non-rational decisions– and developing interventions that will drive change in support of better social outcomes.

 

Many of the most critical public policy challenges require systemic and sustainable behaviour change. Whether developing new approaches to dogged population-level challenges like domestic violence, tobacco cessation, crime reduction, preventative health and road safety, or better understanding behaviours critical to impacting climate change and sustainability – we have decades of international advisory experience to bring forward the right approach and evidence to support impactful policy delivery. 

 

Governments and policy makers have a number of routes available to them to ultimately drive population level behaviour change to allow for effective policy implementation. They can tax; they can regulate; and they can legislate. Most commonly, they will hope to drive understanding and change through communications and ‘softer’ behavioural interventions; or employ these alongside other instruments.  

 

Ultimately, effective, population-level policy delivery requires a deep understanding of what influences the way citizens behave. Our Behavioural and Communications consultants are able to comprehensively  explore individual, social and contextual dynamics to deliver insight into how to sustainably achieve change and close the intention action gap.​ 

We leverage behavioural science and innovative methods to create, test and optimise interventions before implementation.  And then once in field, we robustly evaluate what's worked and advise clients on how to improve future interventions. 

 

To speak to one of our Behavioural and Communications experts, please contact us.

Our approach 

Our experts draw on our own global best practice tools and frameworks to design bespoke solutions to policy challenges.  From problem definition, to behavioural insight development and intervention design, to pre-testing to reduce risk and evaluating outcomes post implementation to inform future work – our proprietary DEEPER process designs for, and delivers, impact. 

 

Our specialist approach to public sector communications development and evaluation moves beyond simply assessing reactions to campaigns. Our work focuses on a deep understanding of a campaign’s attention, motivation, and action, to achieve intended behavioural outcomes - and draws on our global experience and learning from similar challenges. 

 

Verian proprietary tools include: 

 

Behaviour Change Wheel

Our framework to explore and understand both conscious and non-conscious influences to inform intervention design​. This tool has been used to create insights across many areas of public policy - including the ‘wicked’ and enduring social problems of gender based violence and sexual consent - where our work has formed the basis of ground breaking, confronting and highly effective landmark campaigns.

Commitment Model 

This tool allows for population-level analysis to inform strategies for sustained  behaviour change and close the intention-action gap. Most importantly, it supports the targeting of specific groups in the population with the highest propensity to change behaviour, supporting more effective ROI. 

Behaviour Change Lab

Our ground breaking approach to online RCT experiments to determine relative effectiveness across a set of possible interventions in a simulated environment.

Communications Evaluation Framework

Our global best practice approach to comprehensively assess and optimise communications activity designed to achieve public policy outcomes.

Latest insights

Changing social norms to prevent gender-based violence in Australia 

Behavioural and Communications

Addressing the threat of potentially harmful online video content

Behavioural and Communications

The Leaders' Report             

Behavioural and Communications

How understanding mindsets changed minds at New Zealand Fire and Emergency 

Behavioural & Communications

Our latest thinking

Subscribe to receive regular updates on our latest thinking and research across the public policy agenda.

Our expert teams around the world regularly produce research and insights relating to public policy issues.

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Join us

If you are interested in joining us at Verian, please visit our Careers page.