Alight Worklife Content Style Guide
The Opportunity
When I joined Alight as the first content designer, I noticed a critical gap: while the company had marketing guidelines, there was no single source of truth for product content. Across benefits administration, health, wealth, and wellbeing domains, terminology and tone varied widely.
Rather than seeing inconsistency as a roadblock, I saw it as a strategic opportunity to elevate and scale Alight’s product content and support the rollout of the new Alight Worklife Design System.
Impact
Since implementation, the updated guidance has:
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Strengthened user trust and comprehension.
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Contributed to a 30% increase in annual traffic.
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Doubled brand consistency and content scalability across product lines.
My Role
As the Content Design Lead, I initiated and led the creation of Alight’s first comprehensive product content style guide.
Understanding the Landscape
I started by auditing existing documentation and product copy. My research confirmed that while AP Style guided marketing, product content relied on ad hoc rules and anecdotal knowledge. Users were encountering inconsistent terminology and conflicting tones across different product areas—hurting trust and clarity.
This research laid the foundation for a unified strategy: a style guide purposely built for product content, not marketing.
Early considerations and beginning of documentation
Crafting the Guide
To design guidance that would last, I anchored the style guide in three principles:
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Consistency at scale: Standardize voice, tone, and terminology across all domains.
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User empathy: Replace jargon-heavy content with confident, educational, and conversational language.
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Alignment with vision: Support the revamped Alight Worklife product experience and new design system.
I created the first draft leveraging UX and Content Design best practices, then collaborated with Product Design Directors and VPs from multiple domains to ensure it fit an enterprise-level product. This cross-functional feedback strengthened the guide and drove early buy-in.
Socializing & Implementing
Rolling out new guidance to a 40+ year-old company required more than documentation—it needed advocacy. I held weekly office hours with the broader product team during the first month after release to answer questions and demonstrate the guide’s value.
By framing the guide as a tool to improve user trust, consistency, and scalability (not as a top-down mandate) it was adopted with minimal resistance.
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