About the Employee Persona Builder

Most internal communications are written for everyone, which means they actually work for no one. I built the ICology Employee Persona Builder because I kept seeing the same problem — communicators and HR teams crafting messages without a clear picture of who they were actually talking to.

Personas change that. They give you a real, human framework for thinking about your audience before you write a single word.

But here's the thing: one persona isn't enough. Most organizations have at least three distinct employee experiences happening simultaneously — the frontline worker who rarely sits at a desk, the hybrid knowledge worker drowning in Slack, and the tenured employee who's heard every change initiative before and is waiting to see if this one sticks. If you're writing one message for all three, you're probably reaching none of them well.

The Employee Persona Builder is free, takes just a few minutes, and gives you a detailed profile — including an image generation prompt — so your persona feels like a real person, not a spreadsheet row.

Give it a try. Then build two more.

Note: Here’s why they matter….

They forces you to confront your assumptions. When you have to articulate what three different employees care about, how they access information, and what frustrates them - you quickly realize how many communication decisions are based on guesswork.

They creates natural segmentation. With three personas, you start asking better questions: Does this message apply to all three? Should the format change? Does the call-to-action make sense for someone on a shift schedule?

They builds organizational empathy over time. Personas aren't a one-time exercise. Teams that maintain them start to develop a muscle for thinking about employees before defaulting to what's easiest for leadership to say.

Go build something.

I'm not a developer. I'm not even close. But I tried something new, got frustrated, figured it out, broke it, fixed it, and eventually had something I was proud of. That's the whole process.

There's something genuinely satisfying about creating a thing that didn't exist before - even if that thing is a meeting cost calculator that maybe a dozen people will ever use. The size of the win doesn't matter. The fact that you made something does.

So whatever you've been putting off because you don't know enough yet — start anyway. Make mistakes. Fail at stuff. Google things embarrassingly basic. Ask an AI for help and then ask it again when you don't understand the answer.

When it finally clicks, even just a little, it feels really good. Better than you'd expect. That's worth the frustration to get there.