People & Communities of Practice (PEOP-COMM)

Code: PEOP-COMM

User research may be carried out by dedicated researchers, designers, policy professionals and product teams. The PEOP-COMM pillar describes how to support people who do research, build communities of practice, grow skills and design career paths that sustain healthy research practice.

PEOP-COMM 1.0.0 Who does research & role clarity

PEOP-COMM 1.1.0 People who do research

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PEOP-COMM 1.1.1

Mapping People Who Do Research

Identify all roles that conduct or commission research across the organisation.

This includes specialist researchers, designers, analysts, service owners and policy professionals.

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PEOP-COMM 1.1.2

Role Clarity Requirement

Role descriptions must distinguish between specialist researchers, occasional researchers and research consumers.

This underpins recruitment, accountability and performance management.

PEOP-COMM 2.0.0 Communities of practice & collaboration

PEOP-COMM 2.1.0 Community structures & collaboration

P

PEOP-COMM 2.1.1

Community of Practice Principle

Healthy research practice is sustained by communities, not isolated individuals.

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PEOP-COMM 2.1.2

Establish & Maintain a Community of Practice

Communities should meet regularly, have a clear purpose, share patterns and support onboarding of new practitioners.

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PEOP-COMM 2.1.3

Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration

Involve adjacent disciplines—design, content, analytics, policy—to reduce silos and enrich insight interpretation.

PEOP-COMM 3.0.0 Capability, learning & professional development

PEOP-COMM 3.1.0 Capability & development frameworks

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PEOP-COMM 3.1.1

Capability Framework Requirement

Create a capability framework describing expected skills and behaviours at each research level.

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PEOP-COMM 3.1.2

Learning Pathways & Mentoring

Provide structured learning pathways, mentoring, pairing, advanced training and support for conferences.

PEOP-COMM 4.0.0 Career paths, leadership & resourcing

PEOP-COMM 4.1.0 Leadership & sustainable careers

P

PEOP-COMM 4.1.1

Sustainable Research Careers Principle

Organisations must provide clear career paths for research professionals with progression routes and recognition.

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PEOP-COMM 4.1.2

Resourcing & Workload Management Requirement

Research teams must be resourced to prevent overload, with transparent workload tracking and project limits.

Glossary & definitions

Community of practice
A professional group that shares knowledge, learns together and strengthens practice.
Capability framework
A structured description of required skills, behaviours and knowledge for different research levels.
Research leadership
Roles responsible for setting research direction, standards, culture and representation.
People who do research
Anyone who plans, conducts, analyses or communicates research, regardless of role title.

Templates & artefacts

Change history

Version Date Summary of changes Author / owner
0.1-draft 2025-12-11 Corrected numbering to X.0.0 / X.1.0 / X.1.1 pattern. Standardised all IDs, headings, and SKOS notations. ResearchOps Governance Team