Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task. – Tim Brown
Image by: Arpan Mitra Meets Interactive Media
A team from Standford d. school worked on a design challenge and created a portable incubator called Embrace, similar to a heated sleeping bag to save newborn babies born outside of the hospital from hypothermia. Without interviewing moms, healthcare workers and shopkeepers and learning of key barriers the iterations pro-typed from this product would not have been adopted. Using a beginners mindset and immersing oneself in the user’s experience and guessing less on the product design helped with the success of Embrace (Woolery, 2019).
Design Challenge
My design challenge is no large feet like Standford’s team embraced, however one that is still important for the success of the organization I’m with. The design challenge is to create a meaningful and engaging on-boarding experience for all new employees. Using similar approaches and considerations of interviewing, learning from those involved, along with having beginners, open and unprescribed mindset will certainly help in the right direction in creating a remarkable new employee on-boarding program.
With recent increases in voluntary turnover of employees less than 1-year on the job, supported by comments captured in exit interviews and exit surveys on the unsuccessful acclimation during their first few months on the job, along with 2019 annual engagement survey capturing existing staffs concerns of impacts to team and production with the recent higher volumes of attrition has drawn lots of attention to this organizational problem.
As I look at an employee life cycle from pre-onboarding, to on-boarding, to developing and growing (retention) and finally off-boarding I will specifically focus on on-boarding and learning technologies, as the primary focus for this design challenge. Centered on acclimation as the first phase, and then followed by development and growth as phase two and three in the new employee on-boarding program, I will be seeking out ways to possibly leverage learning technologies to help build new employee learning communities to create an environment of belonging, safety, connection and support as they transition in to a new organization, new team and new role within their first few months. As quantitative and qualitative data suggested this through exit interviews and survey’s it will be a consideration as one of many solutions that may need to come in play to help with the growing problem of high voluntary turnover and no formal on-boarding program. However, as I immerse myself in to the design challenge I will remind myself part of the quality of design is “empathetic understanding goes beyond knowledge; when empathizing you do not judge, you relate to [the user] and understand the situations and why certain experiences are meaningful to these people” (Kouprie & Visser, 2009, p. 438 as cited by Battarbee, 2004).
Key Stakeholders
Existing new employees that are less than 6 months on the job
Existing employees 6-12 months on the job
Ex-employees left organization in the over the past 6 months
Managers, supervisors and department heads who have had high voluntary turnover of new employees over the past 18 months
Recruiting managers
Talent Acquisition Specialists
Human Resources Business Partners
Information Technology team members
Office support
Learning partners who currently support new employees on-boarding
Why the Journey Map Empathy Method
Many of the methods suggested by Standford University Institute of Design are ones I can see leveraging throughout the process of empathizing as part of the human centered approach I will need to gain insights, appreciations, perspectives and understanding of the people for whom I am designing (2016), such as assuming a beginners mindset and not judging and being mindful of biases, questioning, being curious, being present and actively listening, as well as interviewing, engaging with extreme users, especially those that have left the company recently, story share, saturate and group, and empathy map. The method I can see using right away from my design challenge will be the journey map. The reason I am choosing a journey map is I am finding there is a natural employee life cycle progression and particular milestones that earmark the success of one cycle to another. As it is all interconnected and interdependent, even though I will be focusing on on-boarding, I can’t lose sight line to the other key dependencies and will want to also flag those in the process of my design as entry or exit points. For instance pre-onboarding if not successful, could set the on-boarding phase off on the wrong foot with an employee who is already perhaps feeling slightly disengaged and demotivated possibly. As well without a clear transition from on-boarding to growing and developing the employee in their specific role as well as future career goals and succession could also lead to possible missed connections in the greater success of the new employee on-boarding within the first day they start to their 90 days. Honing in the first day and the moment they set foot in to the building, to who they meet and what they do first thing in the morning such as filling out forms or meeting their team or getting a tour of the building, eventually looking at their first week and first month up until their first 90 days as they hit the completion of their probationary period. How many opportunities have they had coaching sessions with their manager, to how many hours did they spend completing mandatory online learning alone to time shadowing team mates and informally learning? How many times did they call they help desk for help and did they participate in any social events and meet any of the senior executive team.
How will I use the Journey Map
I plan to capture all the various things one encounters in from day one to day 90 through observations, discussions and conversations, individual reflections, interviews, surveys, check-ins, workshops and focus groups. By capturing these moments of good and bad experiences throughout their first 90 days, such as after day one, after the first week, after the first month etc. it will help identify what is meaningful and important to the new employee as part of their experience. What went extremely well and what didn’t go so well. When did they find those favorable movements up in their experience to make it feel like they made the right decision to join and those times where those dips left them thinking if they should have not left their previous employer? Through capturing these on a journey map in these different time intervals on a large facilitator paper through post it notes and images that may have been through all the various methods in capturing empathy will provide a robust story and picture of what employees are wanting and needing as part of their new employee experience to make it engaging and meaningful.
Possible Challenges
There are few challenges I already can anticipate such as the timelines suggested for on-boarding, through research have suggested on-boarding can range up to possibly 3 months or probationary period, or in some cases it could carry out as far out to 9 months, so how do I ensure I have captured the right amount of time for this new employee on-boarding program and I guess that will be quickly identified through empathy and finding out from end users what they perceive as a sufficient amount of time for on-boarding.
I will have external contractors involved in the design and development of the courses and lessons, so ensuring there isn’t much lost in translation from what the end users have stated to what I have relayed to the external contractors.
There are multiple stakeholders involved and it will be important to capture each of those user experiences. So, not only is the sheer volume of connecting and hearing from different end users critical, but to do it within timelines to keep the project moving. Also there could be competing spaces of different end users and they may conflict, for instance IT members are in charge of setting up computers, hardware and required software applications for a new employee. There have been several instances no workstations were set up or delays, which has left new employees feeling dissatisfied, arriving with no desk making them feel un-welcomed. In the current process IT has suggested due to the short notice and/or lack of ticket from the hiring manager delays occur, whereby the recruiting managers have said they work based on quick turnaround times so someone may be hired within a very short window.
Finally, my own assumptions and space in building new employee programs from previous organizations and also being a new employee in the organization I work for as well could create some biases and perspectives that might lead to leaning towards a certain direction.
Kouprie, M., & Visser, F. S. (2009). A framework for empathy in design: stepping into and out of the user’s life.Journal of Engineering Design, 20(5), 437–448. https://doi.org/10.1080/09544820902875033
