Case Study: Global People Persona Program · ServiceNow Global People · 2025
The Product Organization was making decisions based on assumptions of their users. Leadership asked for personas; I delivered a governed research program product teams could use to make prioritization and readiness decisions.
THE SITUATION
ServiceNow's Global People (human resources) organization was investing heavily in product-led employee experience, but building for employees they didn't deeply understand. Existing sentiment data wasn't focused on the specific personas products were targeting, leaving teams making prioritization and design decisions on assumption. Leadership asked for personas without a clear definition of what they were or how they'd be used to inform product decisions.
One sentence. Business-level problem. What would go wrong if this wasn't solved?
MY APPROACH
Wire it into the work. Rather than build a persona library and hope product teams would consult it, I embedded persona requirements directly into Global People's governance templates: the Stakeholder Impact Assessment, Product Initiation Summary, and Operational Readiness Checklist. Then I built a self-service discovery guide so COEs without a dedicated researcher could still do the work, and ran a multi-team roadshow to transfer the capability across the org.
INSIGHTS AND FACTORS
- Product teams were naming "employees" as their audience without knowing who those employees actually were, what motivated them, or what stood in their way, making resource allocation and design decisions guesswork.
- The org had sentiment data (surveys, exit data, engagement scores) but none of it was organized around the specific personas driving product roadmaps or presented in a manner that was actionable.
- A persona program would only work if it became a required part of the governance process. Adoption had to be designed in from the start.
2–3 bullets. What did you understand that wasn't obvious?
My Specific Contribution
I was the business owner and architect. I designed the research methodology from scratch, built the governance integration model, authored the self-service enablement materials, ran the Business Product Manager roadshow, and led the workstreams covering research practices, socialization, documentation, and cohort recruitment.
The Outcomes
| Before |
What I Built |
Persona profiles
static deliverable |
Full research program
living, quarterly cadence |
No methodology
starting from zero |
4-step sprint model
repeatable across all personas |
No adoption plan
hope teams would use it |
Governance-embedded
required in product initiation |
5
Personas scoped and in active research — HRBPs, Managers, Sellers, New Hires, Early-in-Career — each with dedicated cohorts
3 decks
Distinct enablement materials authored: executive overview, BPM governance integration, and COE self-service guide
Daily
A key stakeholder who was the Sr Director in charge of AI products, said "Your HRBP persona is always open in their browser and I refer to it daily.