From roles to reality: Why personas are the most misunderstood lever in the digital workplace

Over time, working with large multinational enterprises, I have seen the same pattern repeat itself.

Everyone agrees that personas matter.

Very few organisations actually want to touch them.

Instead, persona work becomes politically sensitive, slow, and uncomfortable. So it is postponed, simplified, or quietly reframed into something safer. Standard laptop. Executive laptop. Traveller. Done.

I recently heard a global organisation say it out loud:

“Let’s just focus on computers and phones. The rest is a political mess, and IT does not want to be responsible for accessories.”

That decision effectively postponed meaningful persona work until 2027.

From the outside, that may look pragmatic. In reality, it is deeply counterproductive.

Where personas quietly fail

Most organisations do not fail at personas because they lack frameworks. They fail because they reduce personas to device categories.

A persona becomes a laptop model.

A catalogue becomes a compromise.

Lifecycle decisions become uniform by default.

This happens for three reasons I see again and again:

• personas are treated as an IT-only exercise or quietly pushed towards HR

• cross-company collaboration is avoided because ownership is unclear

• there is a fear of responsibility once inconsistencies are exposed

The irony is that this avoidance creates exactly what enterprises are trying to escape: complexity, hidden cost, poor experience, and weak governance.

The uncomfortable truth leaders rarely address

Proper persona modelling exposes internal inconsistency.

It highlights local overrides that contradict global standards.

It reveals hidden cost drivers buried in accessories, provisioning, refresh cycles, and support models.

It forces uncomfortable questions about who decides what, and why.

This is precisely why personas are often simplified. Not because they are unimportant, but because they are revealing.

Job titles do not describe how people work

Most enterprises still rely on labels like standard, high-end, executive, or traveller.

But when you look closer, behaviour does not follow hierarchy.

A senior executive might work like a highly mobile traveller, pairing a laptop with an iPhone Pro and an iPad, while another executive barely leaves a desk. Two people with the same title may belong to entirely different personas.

The same applies across functions. In marketing, some roles require light productivity tools, while others need graphics workstations. The job title tells you almost nothing about computing intensity, collaboration patterns, or tolerance for friction.

Personas are not about who someone is in the organisation.

They are about how work actually happens.

Why personas are a lifecycle decision, not a design exercise

When personas are missing, organisations default to uniform lifecycles. Three-year refresh. Same provisioning. Same support assumptions.

Persona-driven models unlock flexibility.

Some personas can sustain four-year lifecycles, especially when supported by DEX insights. Others benefit from performance-based refresh rather than time-based rules. Some personas do not need brand-new equipment at all, opening the door to reuse and refurbishment.

Personas influence everything:

• catalogue design and supplier rationalisation

• provisioning and ready-to-use experience

• lifecycle length and refresh timing

• reuse, refurbishment, and ITAD strategy

Without personas, cost accumulates quietly across hard spend, soft effort, and operational friction. With personas, those decisions become intentional and measurable.

The missing sustainability conversation

What continues to surprise me is how rarely personas feature in sustainability discussions.

We talk about CO2e targets, but not about behaviour.

We talk about device counts, but not about how equipment is actually used.

Persona modelling, combined with DEX measurement, enables hybrid and dynamic lifecycles with tangible sustainability outcomes. When a persona includes the full equipment set - devices, accessories, peripherals - organisations gain a far more accurate view of both cost and carbon per persona.

Sustainability becomes operational, not aspirational.

Where Gartner is absolutely right

Gartner has been consistent on this point for years: role-based provisioning does not reflect how work actually happens.

In How to Craft and Use Digital Employee Personas to Improve DEX, Gartner states:

“A persona-based approach ensures device provisioning and refresh cycles are closely aligned with real-world usage, enhancing the digital employee experience and preventing overbuying.”

That aligns closely with what I see in practice.

Gartner also makes a critical distinction that many organisations struggle to operationalise. While most enterprises already segment employees by work style, Gartner points out that leveraging Digital Employee Experience (DEX) data allows organisations to go further - factoring in usage patterns, technical proficiency, and real job demands to tailor technology investments to actual needs, not assumptions.

Where organisations stumble is not in understanding this logic, but in executing it across organisational boundaries. Personas require IT, HR, workplace, procurement, and change teams to collaborate around outcomes rather than ownership. That is precisely where many initiatives stall.

A powerful example of persona-driven, data-backed execution is highlighted in Optimize Device Life Cycle Management Using DEX Insights. Gartner references Accenture’s DEX-powered Green PC Refresh Strategy, where devices were refreshed based on performance rather than age. The result was a 39 percent reduction in refreshed devices, a USD 50 million reduction in capital expenditure, and a meaningful reduction in carbon footprint.

That outcome did not come from better hardware choices alone. It came from aligning personas, lifecycle decisions, and data.

Closing perspective

This recurring pattern is one of the reasons I chose to document our approach in the Egiss Playbook.

Not to introduce another framework, but to show how persona-driven thinking connects experience, cost, lifecycle, and sustainability into one operating model.

Personas only create value when they are used.

Personas are not an HR exercise.

They are a cross-company exercise that benefits every strategic practice around the workplace.

Yes, it is a big project.

But it is also one of the clearest opportunities for IT to move from order-taker to strategic leader.

From roles to reality is where mature digital workplaces are built.