Exposing the cracks in employee experience: building confidence in design thinking
A desire to improve employee experience.
Improving the experience of our people is a priority for the British Red Cross. In 2020, it was written into the ‘People Pillar’ of our new 10-year strategy. References to “creating a better employee experience” began appearing in strategic documents and was peppered through various reports and business cases.
Great! Right?
In theory, yes!
While there have been some improvements, our recent people survey results show that only 40% of employees see the positive results of the recent changes we’ve made at British Red Cross. And only 44% said they felt involved in, and part of, the changes being made that affect them.
The messaging around ‘improving employee experience’ can sometimes feel a bit like wallpapering over the cracks. With the wallpaper chosen by the ‘experts’. In a shade and pattern that doesn’t necessarily work for most employees.
Are we even solving the right problem?
The intent is there. Our leaders and subject matter experts genuinely want to get this right. Our people strategy outlines a real commitment to creating a safe and equitable environment where employees feel motivated by their work. It focuses on better understanding our peoples’ diverse skills, potential and ambition so they feel supported in their career progression. It outlines a true desire for our people to feel proud to be part of the Red Cross Movement and uphold the values from the start to end of their journey.
As an employee at the British Red Cross, those ambitions makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.
But let’s get back to that wallpaper… who on earth chose that colour?
The problem is that some of the initiatives to improve our peoples’ experience have fallen short of the mark. But why?
- Jumping to the ‘how’: When a pain-point is identified, it’s usually handed over to the ‘expert’ to find the solution. But our expert often jumps straight to solving the problem rather than digging deep to really understand the core reason “why” the pain exists in the first place. While there may be some collaboration with the end-users of the product or service, that’s usually when the solution has already been agreed, so meaningful engagement is not always possible.
- An ‘everything is urgent’ culture: The ‘solution’ is then pushed out to the organisation to be absorbed by osmosis as our expert has often already moved onto the next urgent thing on their to-do list. There is rarely time to embed the new initiative properly, let alone test it is making the impact that was intended.
- We’re not always involving the right people at the right time: The ‘solution’ is also too often centred on business needs (process, efficiency and cost). While this may offer reasonable solutions in the short term, these solutions are not unlocking the desired impact for our employees (i.e cracks and wallpapering) and in the long run we’re spending more time and money on redesigning solutions.
Working differently — have we asked if anyone even wants wallpaper?
In April, we launched a new ‘Employee Experience Design’ project to show how an employee-centred approach builds certainty that products and services created for employees will work.
With our project, we want to show there is another way of delivering tangible improvements to the employee experience. But it means working differently — by involving our employees at every step of the problem-solving journey, considering the various touchpoints and interactions they have with the organisation (‘taking an ecosystem perspective’ in Service Design lingo), testing and refining concepts through prototypes and feedback, and measuring the impact of services for employees.
Three top tips based on our learning so far.
It’s been four months since we hired a service designer to support our Employee Experience Design project. Here are three of our top take aways:
- Prioritising trust
- The main priority for us, when deciding a focus area for our work, was for others to see us as ‘enablers’.
- Having honest conversations that challenge the status quo but also not assuming we have all the answers. We’re being dynamic, responding to others’ needs and ways of working.
2. Working in the open
- Running short Show and Tells, which puts the spotlight on our work. These sessions generate lots of interest and we’ve been able to share tips and tricks for meaningful engagement with employees. We’ve started to call this ‘lighting small fires’; it’s the work that involves small interventions, creating change that will slowly spread, until the fires connect and grow, bringing widespread change.
- Tracking the decisions and activities from meetings in Miro so everyone can see what we’re doing. For some people, Miro can be difficult to use, so we try to minimise the overwhelm by keeping the boards small (one for each project, rather than one for all our design activities) and by putting instructions for how to use Miro in large at the side of the board.
3. Co-working
- We’re working with only one service designer, so we’re completing tasks as a project team in weekly online 2 hour ‘doing sessions’ (with breaks!) and monthly, in person ‘doing days’. The principle is to upskill others in the team in design thinking by ‘learning by doing’.
- This highly collaborative model is making us more productive and improving the quality of our work.
Our approach in three simple steps.
Exposing the cracks.
Our longer-term intention is to steadily peel back the wallpaper so the true cracks that lie beneath can be understood and addressed. We aim to initially work on two or three focus areas within the overall employee journey, developing journey maps and personas that will improve decision-making and introducing pilot projects based on successful design prototypes.
We’re taking an agile approach — not overcommitting to a certain way of doing things up front, but instead continually testing and reviewing our approach. The benefits are that we’re quick to pivot to focus on areas where we can add real value.
This approach isn’t easy in an organisation not used to working in this way. We’ve faced some challenges. Some doors have been firmly closed; but others have swung widely open. While we’re still in the early days of the project — and will continue to learn, adapt and innovate as we progress — we’re encouraged that most people, including our senior leaders, are keen to understand more about design thinking and how it can ultimately improve the day-to-day experience of our people.
