The Problem
The company on-boarding process was fraught with mishaps and with new employees joining various teams and departments daily, it was a little difficult to give each of them the welcoming experience that they deserved. This left many feeling unsure what to do or where to go during their first few weeks.
The Solution
We developed an end-to-end blended employee experience that makes us connect and feel like part of the Barclays family from the day we decide to join. It works hard to simplify our lives and encompasses three phases of the employee journey:
- On-boarding
- Profiling and engagement
- Line-management
The Process
We put a lot of time and effort into this project to ensure that we were able to gather the right data to make decisions that would benefit everyone concerned. A large amount of time was spent on research before we started developing the product.
Snapshots
Planning Design Thinking Workshops
I planned, designed and facilitated multiple workshops over the course of a few weeks. With 40 000 employees in the company, we had to ensure that we had a sample of representatives from various teams and departments. Due to the sheer number of people concerned, we had to run multiple workshops and gather the information in batches.
Facilitating Design Sprints and Building Empathy
It was important to steer the corporate mindset away from ‘business as usual’ towards a more empathetic understanding of the user. We spent a lot of time trying to understand user pain-points and developing empathy for the person that we envisaged using the solution.
Personas
Getting to understand the new employee as a user was very important to be able to design the right experience. We moved from collecting ideas to making it tangible. Building personas was an activity that many people overlook in lieu of ‘actors’ in the system. We needed to make this more personal so we moved from post-its to empathy maps and then personas.
Mapping the User Journey
Mapping the complete user journey was of utmost importance. There were many points to consider and all of them had to be taken into account. This was an arduous process of collecting the data from various teams, mapping them out and making sure that we had a perspective of the journey that took into consideration everyone’s core needs.
Optimising the Journey through Emotional Design
Once I had a clear understanding of the end to end on-boarding journey, I was able to start the optimisation process. I had to map out every single step in the journey, analyse the empathy notes and pain-points we collected and design the go-to experience that we wanted. This helped me create a new, intentionally designed process for the new employee.
Prototyping, Wire-framing and Testing
Once we had an idea of what was required in each step, we needed to experiment with designs to bring the experience to life. This took a lot of trial and error but we managed to get version one off the ground and it continues to be iterated today.
Reflection
This was enjoyable process from the start. It was important to make people really feel heard. Attuning to everyone’s needs in the moment actually takes a lot of energy and workshops can make you feel drained. It is important to space workshops apart so that you can be fully recharged when you facilitate each one.
Take the time to really digest what is being shared, said and asked – also what is not being said.