Behavioural Science Doesn't Replace the Work. It Makes the Work Possible.
One of the most common things I hear from People and Culture professionals is: "We've done the training. We updated the policy. Why isn't anything changing?"
It's a fair and frustrated question. And the answer sits in a gap that behavioural science is particularly well-placed to illuminate.
Training and policy — done well — address knowledge. They build awareness. They communicate expectations. But they represent, at best, two of the nine possible behaviour change intervention types available to us. If we're relying on education and persuasion alone, we're leaving most of the toolkit on the table.
The COM-B model offers a diagnostic frame: for any behaviour to occur, people need Capability (the knowledge, skills and confidence), Opportunity (the environmental conditions, social norms and systems that make behaviour possible), and Motivation (both the reflective intention and the automatic, habitual pull toward action). All three. Not one, not two.
This has significant implications for how we design prevention interventions.
Capability gaps
People may know they should intervene when they witness something concerning, but they don't have the skill to do it — the words, the timing, the confidence. Education helps here. Skills practice helps more.
Opportunity gaps
Even when people have the skill and the intention, the environment doesn't support action. There's no clear reporting pathway. The culture signals that speaking up is risky. The physical layout of the office means incidents happen away from witnesses. Redesigning the environment and the systems matters as much as building individual capability.
Motivation gaps
People may know what's right and have the opportunity to act, but their automatic responses — shaped by years of social conditioning, habit, and identity — pull in a different direction. Social norms work is powerful here. When people see their peers acting respectfully, intervening, speaking up — and when that's visible and valued — it shifts motivation.
This is why Speak Up, Stand With is designed the way it is
The Speak Up, Stand With campaign isn't just a poster. It's grounded in social norms theory — research shows people consistently underestimate how many colleagues would intervene. The campaign makes intervention visible, normalised, and achievable. It addresses capability through skills workshops. Opportunity through embedded, ready-to-use tools. And motivation through social proof and collective action framing.
It's also why Prevention+ doesn't just offer training. It offers the full infrastructure: policy templates, evaluation frameworks, coaching access, case consultation, community of practice. Because sustainable culture change requires addressing all three components of COM-B — not just the easiest one.
A word on what behavioural science can't do
Behavioural science is a powerful lens, but it's not a neutral one. It can be — and has been — misused to individualise systemic problems, to optimise compliance rather than culture, to make organisations feel like they're preventing harm without doing the deeper structural work.
The COM-B model applied in isolation — without a socio-ecological frame that names power, without intersectional analysis, without centering the voices of those most affected — will achieve limited results.
Behavioural science, at its best, sits alongside lived experience, community knowledge, structural analysis, and collaborative practice. Not above them. Alongside them.
That's the integration I'm always working toward — informed by the research I've done with UCL Centre for Behaviour Change and grounded in the work of organisations like ANROWS, Our Watch, and the Respect@Work Council.
