Design Thinking rethinks the workspace
How to design employee experience?
New trends and progressive digitalization have an impact on how we perceive ourselves as employees and the companies we work for. Without unnecessary obstacles, we want to perform our daily duties, achieve goals and feel support within the team. Increasingly, leaders, managers and HR departments face many challenges related to the processes and culture of their respective companies. They want to ensure the dynamic development of the organization, but it’s not easy.
Deloitte in the Global Human Capital Trends report shows the internal transformations companies around the world must face currently. The report underlines the series of drivers that force changes in the processes of organizations, like the professional expectations of employees, generational differences in teams, competition, and new technologies.
These factors raise many questions about how to improve the workplace experience of employees.
From Nestle to Autodesk to Adobe, many brands search for answers for these changes. What connects these brands and how they approach problem-solving?
These companies know that the solutions they provide must be tailored to the needs of their customers. By creating products that respond to users’ needs, they encounter problems, define them and then develop a valuable solution — and so they think about changes within the organization in the same way. When a process becomes an obstacle for employees, the leaders may decide to redesign it and reach for Design Thinking. This workshop method helps companies spot a problem and develop their own solution that will meet the needs of their employees.
“Design thinking provides a means to focus on the employee’s personal experience and to create processes centered upon the worker. The result: new solutions and tools that directly contribute to employee satisfaction, productivity, and enjoyment.”
Global Human Capital Trends
What is Design Thinking?
Over 40 years ago Design Thinking revolutionized the design of products, services, processes, and also strategies. Design Thinking is a set of principles that help designers go all the way from idea to testable prototype, with the people’s needs at the center of every decision. Human-centered design means understanding what people need, how they think, feel, and behave. Simply described, design thinking means focusing on the person and the experience. The basic rule is that we can start looking for improvements only when we know what the trouble really is.
“Design thinking is a process for creative problem-solving.”
Coe Leta Stafford, Managing Director IDEO U
Most often, this workshop is used by designers, but organizations that recognize its value also train managers and employees of departments unrelated to design. Employees follow phases of the Design Thinking workshop, starting with understanding what the person who is affected by the problem feels, how he or she is doing, and what he or she sees and says. In this way, they analyze the situation and needs. When the requirements are known, they define the problem; the goal then is to discover the real difficulties. Once the problem is identified, they go in search of solutions. At this stage, it is essential for them to generate as many ideas as possible; even a crazy plan may turn out to be the best. Then comes prototyping and testing, that is, implementing a pre-designed idea, collecting opinions about it and making changes. The test must take place with the people involved participating under the real conditions of the problem. During this phase, it is crucial to achieve the set outcome of the solution. If the project passes the test, you can assume that it is ready to be implemented.
Adobe and Design Thinking in practice:
In 2012, Adobe decided to change the way of measuring the performance of its employees. For a long time, they used an annual review that included an assessment of an employee’s performance and position in the employee ranking scheme. The reactions of the youngest employees to the grades they received showed that the process required change.
“It’s time for a change. More than half of office workers and two-thirds of managers wish that their companies would get rid of or change its structured performance review process — for Millennials that was even higher.”
Donna Morris, Chief Human Resources Officer & Executive Vice President, Employee Experience
A team headed by Donna Morris (Executive Vice President, Customer and Employee Experience) led an analysis of the existing process. They did research on 1500 respondents, and it showed that this form of assessment is highly stressful for employees. It revealed that 61% of Millennials surveyed admitted that they would give up their current job for an employer without a rating system, even if they did not receive a higher salary or position. In the same group, nearly 22% of the respondents answered that after reading the opinion they cried, 37% of the respondents started looking for another job and 20% resigned. Full Study: Performance Reviews Get a Failing Grade.
The research also included managers. In their opinion, the existing performance review took too much time. The managers spent an average of 17 hours preparing and completing each employee’s assessment. The research showed that 62% of managers had a negative view of the process, saying that it was outdated and that it negatively affected employee performance.
The needs gathered in the empathy phase allowed Donna Morris to define the problem clearly, and then develop a method know as “Check-in.” This new evaluation process is focused on maintaining an ongoing dialogue between employees and managers as it centers around three elements of discussion: expectations, feedback, and growth and development.
The “Check-in” was tested for 18 months. During that time, the employees got acquainted with the new formula, and their managers learned a new approach of arranging individual paths for their teams. A year after implementation, Adobe recorded an increase in productivity in the form of 80,000 hours of manager time and 40,000 hours of employee work hours. In 2017, the company recorded an increase in savings of up to 100,000 hours of manager work hours per year. Managers learned how to determine the best ways to attract, retain, and inspire their teams. Frequent meetings with superiors motivate employees to take on new challenges. A well-established solution is still used at Adobe, and they have created “Check-in” templates to support employees, and managers in preparation for conversations with their people. Here you can find the Adobe tool kit.
“Breaking free of ratings for Adobe and, most importantly, for our employees.”
Donna Morris, Chief Human Resources Officer & Executive Vice President, Employee Experience
How can you use Design Thinking in your organization?
One of the essential processes in a company is Onboarding. However, let’s suppose that this doesn’t work well at your company. Simply, improve this process with Design Thinking. Firstly, think about the purpose of Onboarding: What do employees feel about it? What does your company want to achieve? How does it work at your company? What are the opinions outside the organization? And what should new employees learn?
Start with choosing the right team that will work on improving this process. Five people in a team will be enough. Make sure that the people assigned to this project complement each other. Employees from various departments will provide different perspectives on a problem, and this collaboration gives way to many ideas in brainstorming sessions. Find a person who participated in a Design Thinking workshop and make them the leader of this project. You can hire an external consultant, or find such a person among your employees, e.g., a UX designer. Involve the HR department as they will be responsible for promoting the idea of Design Thinking within the organization. The Global Human Capital Trends report also strongly emphasizes the benefits of sharing experiences from workshops with coworkers. Knowledge of Design Thinking among employees results in the dynamic growth of productivity in the organization.
“Successful design thinking integrates an understanding of human behavior. What motivates people? How do they see themselves? What do they value? How do they express those values in typical office behavior? In seeking to answer these questions, HR teams do not have to start from scratch — often, they can look inside the organization for ideas and inspiration.”
Global Human Capital Trends
Before starting the workshop, you need to take care of organizational issues. Choosing the right date and place will be crucial. Friday is a good day. Participants should feel comfortable and not be distracted by daily duties because the workshop requires an entire day. Although, it can take more than one day, so if there is an extra time required, schedule the days one after another; avoid splitting the workshop. Book a conference room and prepare Post-it notes and markers. The team will go through all the phases of the Design Thinking workshop. Do not forget to watch the time during every step of the workshop.
Workshop
Empathize with employees
The team should go to Onboarding to become acquainted with how this process looks. Members of the group can arrange and conduct a short study that will get the opinions of the Onboarding participants about this process. Remember that the questions should not suggest an answer. People who have participated in Onboarding might not feel comfortable enough to talk about this process, and so, after only a few days, they may not yet be a good group of respondents. They will be a better choice to test the new process. Ask for needs research employees with several months’ experience, who should now feel at ease, to present their opinions.
Define a problem
Ask employees in your company what they think about Onboarding as their opinions are crucial when starting to work on a better solution. The project team must find all the pros and cons of the process, which the respondents talked about. Finding common features in the statements of the surveyed group will help the team define the main problems and choose which ones should be solved first. The group should focus on a few key needs; trying to change everything at once is not a good idea. With the team choose the essential problems you have discovered; voting is a useful method to do so. Write each issue on a separate piece of paper, stick it on the board/wall, and each participant gets three votes, which put, in his or her opinion, the most critical problems in order of importance.
Ideate possibilities
After selecting the key problems, the time for generating ideas has come. At this stage, solutions will probably appear for both the main issues and those that fell away during the vote. First, it is worth setting a goal that you want to achieve after redesigning the process. The goal is individual; it can be motivated by the values that the organization professes. The point is that the achievement of the goal equals the satisfaction of the Onboarding participants. While brainstorming, each participant in the project group gets a card, and writes out their individual suggestions for the solutions to the main problems of Onboarding. Let each person present their concepts. It is important to discuss them and group them; it will help the participants understand each other. The group should also consider how the implementation will look; which ideas will be the most time-consuming and which are the most valuable. Then vote again. The team will find suggestions for each of the previously selected problems. The most important thing is to get closer to the goal. In further joint re-designing, it is worthwhile for the workshop participants to put together a change-making scenario, which will make it easier to stick to the assumptions.
Prototype and test with employees
To pre-test a new vision of Onboarding, the team should present the project to the surveyed employees. Their opinion is very much needed. It may be a good idea for the participants to run a pilot Onboarding workshop. It is worth inviting people who have recently gone through the old process. The team will gather opinions on the implemented project, for it is possible that some improvements will be needed. The last stage is replacing the old method with a new one and the further gathering of participant opinions, preferably using an anonymous survey.
“Done well, design thinking promotes a virtuous cycle, generating higher levels of employee satisfaction, greater engagement, and higher productivity for the company.”
To prepare yourself better for the workshop check the Ideo design kit.
Summarizing
Employees want to take on challenges and feel they have an impact on the development of the organization. Knowledge of the Design Thinking workshop will help leaders recognize the situation of their employees and make changes that will allow the teams to work better. Design Thinking is a tool that can be used by leaders, managers or the HR department to provide employees a better experience in their daily work.
