Welcome to the BEHAVES Academy

BEHAVES has been developed to be relevant to the world of work, but job agnostic – so, regardless of whether you are in sales and marketing, finance, IT, HR, manufacturing or research and development, BEHAVES will still be beneficial to you.

After long discussions about the need for a categorisation system that makes the wide range of behavioural insights easier to apply, we looked at some existing ways of doing this and felt there was something missing from what was available.

Using the gaps we’d noticed in the existing approaches to guide us, we developed our own system that would focus on how practitioners should apply an insight to drive change. So, we focused less on the ‘what’ – i.e., what an insight is – and more on the ‘how’ – i.e., how an insight would be used.

We gathered the most ubiquitous behavioural insights that we knew of – about 80 or so – and assigned a label to each one according to how it influences our behaviour.

So, for example, we labelled Anchoring as ‘Informational’ because it pertains to how the presentation of information can nudge our decisions, and labelled Autonomy as ‘Feelings’ because it relates to how an internal feeling drives behaviour.

We then sorted all the insights according to their labels, which yielded seven broad categories, and gave them simple one-word names.

To be sure that we had a robust way of categorising insights, we cross checked with all the other models and frameworks that we were aware of. We found that our system was compatible with all of them – and, since then, we have not found an insight that doesn’t fit into one of our categories. 

It’s important not to overwhelm people when they are learning something new.

We therefore restricted the insights to just two per category, because we felt that one per category wasn’t enough variety to get a sense of the category itself, and that three was information overload; in face-to-face workshops we had trialled 21 insights and found that it was too many.

To select which insights to teach first, each one had to satisfy the following three criteria:   

1. Frequency: The insight had to appear regularly in popular behavioural science models and in the behavioural science literature. 
2. Relevance: The insight had to have relevance and resonance with the audiences we were teaching in our workshops.  
3. Utility /usefulness: The insight had to be considered practical and useful to the kinds of problems we addressed in our client work.

The specific 14 insights were selected based on feedback from our workshops. 

Having worked in applied behavioural science for a long time, we knew how important it is to have a framework for applying knowledge and guiding problem solving. In our experience, the existing models were either too simple or too complicated. We wanted to create something more user-friendly, that guided practitioners from start to finish through a step-by-step process.

We started to generate some ideas on our whiteboard. All behavioural science projects begin with the identification of the specific behaviour that needs to change, so we wrote down “B”. Then we wrote down “E” because we believe that behaviour change should be accompanied by positive emotions. Our collective experience led us next to “H” for hurdles, because in any behaviour change process there will be barriers that need to be overcome. 

Once we had B-E-H on the board, the rest of the process clicked into place.*

Actually, it was just BEHAVE at first, until we added the S. Feedback from client workshops had shown that the six-step framework was robust and practical, but that it lacked the consideration of the wider effects of behaviour change in organisations, so we improved it by adding the ‘systems’ step.  

*In truth, we were amazed that behavioural scientists hadn’t used this acronym before, and couldn’t believe our luck when the order of steps needed to be taken in the design of a behavioural strategy spelled out BEHAVES. It’s like the universe meant it to be so.

“All models are wrong, but some are useful,” so said British statistician George Box. Our primary goal in designing BEHAVES was to create something useful.

In our opinion, all the well-known behavioural science models and frameworks offer something useful, but none are perfect. This goes for BEHAVES as well. But we have tried to create something that is – we believe – more comprehensive and wider ranging than other existing models. We also think it’s easier to use.

The BEHAVES model is unique in that it combines both a strategic process and an organisational system for behavioural insights – as far as we are aware, no other framework does that; we have explained above how our process and the insights categories are different from other available systems.

BEHAVES is also unique in that it has been designed specifically for applying behavioural science in organisations and organisational change. 

Yes. Both the e-learning modules and our handbook contain advice on how to use behavioural science ethically and point to the GAABS-approved FORGOOD model for more detailed information. We are members of GAABS, which is the Global Association for Applied Behavioural Scientists, the independent body which represents the field and its practitioners.

Each module is different, and the seat time is displayed at the start of each one. We estimate the rough time seat time for BEHAVES in total is between 90 minutes to two hours, depending on the speed of the learner.

Of course! We’d love to work with you to create something bespoke, although this would be at an additional charge. Please contact us with your details and we’ll set up a call to hear more about what you are looking for.

Yes, we deliver a follow-up F2F or live Zoom workshop for those who have completed the foundational e-learning. 

The benefit of the e-learning course is that it can be rolled out to large groups and each learner can work their it at their own pace. Once your team has completed the online modules, we can use the F2F or live session to jump straight into more in-depth problem-solving session in which we apply the tools to a problem together.  

Contact us to find out more.

No, but we would recommend leaving no more than a week between the modules so that the learning stays fresh. However, since it’s all self-directed, you have as long or as little as you like to complete the course.

This is slightly different for every organisation, depending on whether you want BEHAVES to be linked to your LMS or not. We can either place it on your LMS using SCORM files if you prefer, or issue you with licence codes to use our platform. Contact us for more information.

We currently charge £150 per user per year, but are open to price reductions for large groups. Contact us to discuss.

Yes, learners who complete the course will be issued a certificate marking their achievement.