Build People Policies With People
Co-design workplace changes with the employees they will affect
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 99%
Watt says BrewDog previously tried to solve culture problems in a leadership vacuum: a few senior people identified an issue and designed what they believed would help, without speaking adequately to employees. His revised method is to build changes with the people affected. Before launching the Blueprint, he says he ran focus groups and face-to-face workshops across countries, seniority levels, retail, and production. Participants were shown the proposal and asked how it would affect daily work and how it could improve. The mechanism is early exposure to frontline consequences, followed by visible revision before commitment. Consultation is not complete merely because sessions occurred; the proposal must change when credible repeated feedback reveals a better design.
Origin
Watt says BrewDog's earlier top-down culture fixes often missed the mark. He used broad employee focus groups and workshops to revise the company's Blueprint before launch.
Core principles
- 01Good intentions do not establish that a workplace intervention will help
- 02People closest to the work can expose consequences senior leaders cannot see
- 03Cross-sectional input reduces the risk of designing for one office or hierarchy level
- 04Feedback should change the proposal before launch
How to run it
- 1
Define the employee outcome
State the problem the proposed policy should solve for employees and the organisation. Separate the intended outcome from the leadership team's preferred solution.
Pro tip Use an observable employee experience rather than an abstract culture slogan.
- 2
Map affected groups
Identify the countries, functions, seniority levels, schedules, and working environments that will experience the change differently. Recruit a meaningful cross-section.
Pro tip Include frontline people and middle managers who will implement the policy.
Watch out Do not expose participants to retaliation for critical feedback.
- 3
Expose the draft
Show participants what leaders are considering before the decision is final. Explain constraints honestly and ask what the proposal would mean in daily work.
Pro tip Use concrete scenarios rather than asking whether people generally like the idea.
- 4
Revise from evidence
Group repeated benefits, harms, and implementation problems, then change the design where the evidence is persuasive. Record unresolved trade-offs.
Pro tip Distinguish a loud preference from a repeated operational consequence.
Watch out Consultation without willingness to change the proposal is performative.
- 5
Close and measure
Tell participants what changed, what did not, and why. After launch, measure whether the stated employee outcome improves and reopen the design if it does not.
Pro tip Use the same employee groups for an early post-launch check.
In the wild
Watt says he ran focus groups and workshops with US employees, junior and senior staff, middle managers, retail teams, and production teams before launching the Blueprint. He asked how the proposals would affect daily work and says the feedback produced many changes.
→ The final initiative was materially revised before launch rather than being created solely by senior leaders.
Common mistakes
Consulting after the decision
Employees cannot meaningfully co-design a proposal when every consequential choice is already fixed.
Hearing only headquarters
A policy can work for senior office staff while failing in production, retail, another country, or another shift pattern.
Is it for you?
Best for
Organisations changing benefits, incentives, culture practices, or other policies with broad employee impact.
Not ideal for
Individual confidential cases or urgent legal and safety actions that cannot wait for a broad consultation process.
From the transcript
“if we're trying to do something that's good for our people let's build it with our people”
“we made so many changes to how it works based on the feedback from our team”
From the episode
Brewdog Founder: The Untold Story Of One Britain’s Fastest Growing Companies: James Watt