HOW TO

Working with us - a partnership approach

BehaviourWorks Australia is called a research enterprise for a reason. From the start, our aim has been to break down the barriers that have previously prevented academic research from being translated into practice and to helping organisations make evidence-based program and investment decisions.

Advice you can trust

BehaviourWorks Australia is not a consultancy per se. Rather, we’re a university-based research unit, which helps organisations examine common and complex problems through a behavioural lens and develop evidence-based solutions.

We believe that having a practice grounded in academia gives us – and our partners – a distinct advantage. It means that our researchers are independent and trained to seek out and interpret data and provide qualified advice on the social, psychological, economic and environmental dimensions of social, environmental and organisational problems.

Collaborative model

Collaboration is in our DNA. It’s a mindset that reflects our commitment to working with our partners in a way that maximises opportunities for knowledge sharing, capability building and the translation of research evidence into policy and practice.

While grounded in academia, many of our researchers have worked in government and industry and are sensitive to the systems and processes of business.

Our partners tell us that we’re innovative, agile and fun organisation to work with – one that doesn’t just focus on theory but on problem-solving.

Partnership types

There are two ways of working with us.

1: Consortium partners are generally those organisations which have worked with us for some time and want to enter into a more formal arrangement to enable knowledge sharing and capability building.

2. Project partners are organisations that work with us on a project by project basis. In entering into these partnerships, we generally look for projects that have a social benefit and have the potential to result in a publication, conference presentation or report.

To all our partners we offer:

A tried and tested method for identifying behavioural problems, prioritising behaviours and developing intervention strategies to solve common and complex problems.

Access to specialists from a range of behavioural/social science backgrounds.

Skills in designing, conducting and evaluating behaviour change trials.

Access to a subject matter experts from Monash University and other knowledge centres around the world.

Education and training.

Research services

Our research services include:

Systems mapping to identify the individuals, groups and organisations involved in the problem and who may be part of the solution.

Stakeholder engagement to gain a deeper understanding of the problem and how it is experienced in the real world.

Evidence reviews including rapid evidence reviews and practice reviews to gain a better understanding of how others understand and experience the problem and ‘what’s worked’ (or not) to address it.

Analysis of datasets to help understand the nuances and scale of the problem and the factors that may be contributing to it.

Behavioural identification and prioritisation to give the partners a clear idea of the behaviours to target (‘who needs to do what differently?’).

Target audience research to build a more detailed understanding of the context, barriers and motivations behind the behaviours.

Intervention co-design – linking the evidence to a range of practical intervention options (which may involve education campaigns, hackathons/intensive ‘design-sprints’, communication pieces, incentives, regulatory measures, persuasive social norms and messengers, nudge approaches or capability building).

Field trials to test the effects and impacts of different intervention approaches before a broader roll-out takes place.

Monitoring and evaluation frameworks to determine what type of data should be collected (and how often) during a trial and adaptively manage interventions based on interim findings if necessary.

Knowledge sharing/translation through direct engagement with organisational staff and capability building (i.e. training).

All of the above services and approaches are informed by the latest developments and thinking from the field of behavioural science.

Getting started

Experience tells us that many organisations need help defining the problem to begin with, so we normally recommend that organisations bring us in early to help unpack the problem.

That said, the starting point of any project is to simply pick up the phone and talk to us.