IMPRESSIONS || Jan 2020

IIM Rohtak Humane R presents

Impressions JANUARY EDITION

humane.r@iimrohtak.ac.in

Impressions CONTENT Design Thinking in HR 1. Samridhi Bhandari (SIBM-B) 2. Riya Chopra (Appejay Coolege, Jalandhar) 3. Niladri Poddar (MDI Murshidabad) 4. Lobhas Patil (SIMSREE) 5. Sanchari Pait (SIBM Bengaluru)

DESIGN THINKING IN HR Today, the HR is required to don multiple hats as he’s standing at crossroads. Therole of an HR is transforming into a transformational role from a transactional role.With the advent of AI and machine learning, HR’s role as astrategic business partner has becomeeven more important. 50% of the HRs are notprepared to use the technology according to KPMG.Agility has become essential for dealing with digital transformation. Hiringthe right people with right skills, upskilling and reskilling the existing personnel can makethe journey of digital transformation smooth. HRs have to make technology their friend andprepare themselves for disruption in the future of work, especially with the emergence of gig economy. They have to prepare for the futurechallenges and adapt to advanced technology and analytics. Millennials are expected to makeup 50% of the global workforce by 2020 as per PWC report. This requires the HRs toreconsider their workforce policies and design them as per the needs, desires, ambitionsand motivations of Gen Y. In such times of constantly changing workplaces, it’s crucial for Hr to follow the most innovative practices. Design thinking can enable organizations in developing a human-centric mindset by transforming HR practices and creating a happier workplace. It makes an HR empowered to revamp all the aspects of work- the environment, culture, the way people interact with each other, how the managers coach their employees and the way organizations hire, engage, empower, train and evaluate the people.

5 steps of Design Thinking: •

Empathise The first thing to do is to step into your employees’ shoes and gain a 360-degree view of your organization as a workplace from their eyes. Try to get an understanding view of the challenges that they encounter relating to commuting to work, relationships with co-workers and boss, flexibility in working hours, stress at workplace, etc.

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Define In this stage, try to identify and define the pain points of your employees in a clear manner.Here, it is very important to ask the right questions like ‘what is the biggest problem faced by the employees?’, ‘Do they have the access to the information that they need for their work?’, ‘what motivates them to work?’, etc. You have to define the issues encountered by your employees in terms of what, when, where, why and how.

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Ideate Ideate This stage includes brainstorming and listing down unique and creative ways to solve the issues. Choose the best method that is feasible, viable and desirable.

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Prototype Going for mock trials, designing storyboards and carrying out experiments for the selected approach would be helpful in learning how good it is. E.g. you can experiment with your recruitment policies by using various employee testimonials, blogs, career site controls, employee career stories, etc. for attracting candidates. You may also try different types of questions in an interview.

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Testing First test the prototype(selected approach) on a small number of people to find its viability and effectiveness. It is important to make improvements depending upon the feedback received. Once the solution is proved applicable after testing, you can apply it. This is how the solution can be refined, improved and finally implemented in the organization.

Today’s VUCA world is compelling HRs to play a strategic role and place the ‘employee’ at the centre of experience. HRs have to transform from “process developer’ to ‘experience architect”. The success of any organization mostly depends upon the productivity & satisfaction of the employees. Design Thinking helps an organization focus on the issues and challenges encountered by the employees at the workplace and ideate innovative solutions for the same. This would ultimately help build a great culture and keeping the employees engaged. The objective is to create employee experiences through feasible, desirable &viable solutions. Differentiation and satisfaction can lead to customer loyalty and increased market share. So just imagine what wonders can employee experience do for the organization!

Creating the best employee experience can be a source of a great competitive advantage. This becomes even more relevant in the case of millennials who reject standardized treatment or benefits and demand hyper-personalization.

Design Thinking can transform the role of an HR in its very core. It lets an HR develop anemployee-centric approach whose focus expands beyond devising processes in order to create the best experiences for employees. It can enable organizations change their approach in delivering value, organizing work and finding solutions.

Innovation is an inseparable part of Design Thinking. It enables HR to adapt to the changes taking place in a fast-moving environment that requires solutions be designed on the basis of the needs of customers and the internal clients. E.g., the HR teams at Cisco were given training to use Design Thinking. They decided to focus on areas where HR could change in practical and tangible ways like recruiting, onboarding, L&D, etc. Cisco could use Design Thinking to re-design itself by emphasizing on the importance of ‘experiences’ rather than ‘processes’.Similarly, IBM created a cross-functional team for the design process and the teams were empowered to co-create a new onboarding experience. It began with the assessment and understanding of the new hire’s opinions.

According to a 2016 Deloitte report, the function of HR is moving to the new role of a steward and designer of new people processes. HR is required to simplify the processes, help people manage huge amount of information at work and create a culture that fosters empowerment, collaboration and innovation.

The most crucial part of Design Thinking is emphasis on “solution finding”. Oftentimes, we struggle to find the correct solution without even realizing that our problems are neither welldefined nor well-structured. Hence, it becomes extremely important to carefully observe, build comfortable conversations on the basis of those observations and then try to gain insights to be able to find the right solutions.An observation, for example, might reveal that some employees don’t share their opinions in the meetings. The conversation might reveal that they are introvert. Solutions could possibly include asking the employees to speak with randomization and write the impressions and share what they have written.

Another possible method to gather relevant information is asking probing questions. This is known as the technique of “Five Whys”. E.g., if an employee is demotivated, the HR, in order to gain a deeper understanding of his situation, can ask multiple ‘whys’ –‘why is he/she demotivated’, ‘why he/she and his/her co-workers behaved in a certain way, ‘why he/she is not interested in doing the required work’, etc. This technique helps in fetching an in-depth understanding of the issue and finding various methods to solve the problem. Such methods that include finding the facts by observation and then experimenting are a part of Design Thinking. This shows that simple insights can help in designing different approaches to solve a problem. We might not determine the best answer, but we might be able to develop an approach that seems to be promising. This is possible only the accurately identifying the problem and quickly learning from what has worked and what hasn’t.

Areas that can be transformed through Design Thinking • Recruitment - A good candidate experience is crucial for attracting talent. The candidates form their opinions on the basis of the recruitment experiences and are the external brand ambassadors for the company. Recruiters need to brainstorm innovative, creative and digitalized processes of recruitment that enables continuous communication with the candidates. Sending updates about the hiring status, for example, is a great way of creating a good candidate experience. Special attention should also be given to employer branding for creating an ‘aspirational value’ for candidates.

• Performance Management - Hr processes have transformed with the rise of continuous performance management. It gives paramount importance to the employees and focuses on regular check-ins, continuous feedback and conversations about the performance.

• L&D - The focus of L&D is shifting from ‘push’ to ‘pull’ that puts the onus of learning on the learner. The L&D team should create a culture that fosters learning and establish an eco-system that fosters continuous learning and self-learning also with the help of insight-based learning.

• Employee Engagement - Design Thinking enables managers empathize with employees and understand them. This is the most important thing for keeping the employees engaged. Sentiment analytics can be of great help when it comes to understanding and analysing the drivers that motivate the employees. Managers can use this to design engagement and retention practices.

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Rewards - One-size-fits-all approach is no longer useful. HR needs to personalize compensation packages and other benefits that best suit the different employees on the basis of age, interests, etc. This customized approach can be easily achieved through Design Thinking.

One of the most essential aspects of Design Thinking is putting ‘employees’ before ‘processes’. This should be applied in each and every step of the employee’s relationship with the organization, right from the moment the prospective candidate starts exploring job opportunities, they are assigned specific roles, they are prepared for future roles to the day they leave the organization and even beyond What is needed is identifying the gaps that exist between the current experiences and the desirable experiences of the employees which the company intends to provide at each and every stage to all the employees.

It also means focusing on how employees interact with co-workers and managers, aligning them with the company goals and requirements and building the desired culture.

An article published on Deloitte Insights highlighted the importance of the challenge that arises in workforce development and future planning. Navigating through the future of work needs an alignment of the businesses, individuals and governmental institutions.Design Thinking that could create this alignment.

The role of HR is on the cusp of something entirely different and new. It’s about ‘meaningful experience’ for a workforce comprising of multi-generation, digital and gig workers.

Designing Thinking empowers today’s HR leaders with tools to build a culture of innovation & experimentation for accomplishing goals and achieving success.

Name: Samridhi Bhandari College: SIBM Bangalore Ph no.: 7533974624

Design Thinking In HR Design Thinking is seen as a multi-disciplinary, non-direct way to deal with see business challenges from a crisp point of view. It has infiltrated pretty much every field of the business, including HR. It is a methodology taken to assemble a top to bottom comprehension of a framework's partners, characterizing their issues unmistakably and planning arrangements which might not have been so evident beforehand. At first, design thinking was related with product-based organizations. Over the previous years, associations have begun applying configuration thinking across different capacities, including HR. Design Thinking can be easily applied to any field of work for a better outcome or result/ solutions.Design Thinking has really helped improve the work culture and helped the employees. Design Thinking has helped the employers understand the importance of empathy and helped understand the needs of the employees.

The ways in which companies may apply Design thinking are: Identify: The first step is to step into the representative’s point of view and accumulate a 360-degree perspective on the work environment from their viewpoint. Difficulties that representatives experience on an everyday premise, for example, driving to work, adaptability in working hours, agreeable work connections, etc should be considered and comprehended from their viewpoint.

Characterize: The subsequent stage is to recognize and diagram the representatives' torment focuses plainly. This is the place posing the correct inquiries gets urgent. For instance, what is the most concerning issue representatives face in their everyday work? Do they invest a great deal of energy searching for data which ought to have been accessible in any case?

What is the greatest inspiration for representatives at work? It gets important to characterize the specific difficulties looked by representatives as far as how, what, when, where and why.

Ideate: Brainstorm and by and large work towards posting down some inventive approaches to address these difficulties. Be that as it may, it is important to remain centered, as frequently the best arrangement is the least complex arrangement which will in general get disregarded. Select an answer which is generally attractive, practical and suitable in the association's unique circumstance.

Model: Creating storyboards for given situations, utilizing mock preliminaries and assembling trial situations for the picked arrangement help see how feasible and successful it could be.

Test and refine: The model can be tried out in littler gatherings to measure its adequacy and suitability. Input can be gathered from the example to comprehend what upgrades can be made to the arrangement/approach received.

As needs be, the arrangement can be refined and applied to the association on the loose.

Design Thinking has become a necessity in today’s time. Being creative is not an option anymore, it is a must. Hence even when it comes to design thinking in

HR it is important. Fields like Human Resources also requires well planned and designed ideas to improve the working of any company or organization.

Companies all over the world have been opting for ways to improve the environment of the offices or factories. Better and more comfortable the environment, better the working. It is important for employers to understand the needs of the employees to improve the atmosphere at work and further improve work productivity.

Various big associations as well as MNC’s are applying design thinking in HR. Some of the common names are Uber Eats, IBM, Stanford etc.

Ritz Carlton is also a major example of application of design thinking in HR. The Ritz-Carlton has developed by executing thorough self-examination dependent on institutional structures, working couple with inventive client experience the executives. The lodging started rethinking its administration structure in 2001, a long time before the worldwide downturn in the last 50% of 2008 had its full effect. There were a few minutes that filled in as impetuses, inciting The Ritz-Carlton to move from its status as an officially organized association with a unified chain of command and conveyance of reliably topnotch tasks. Rather, it turned into a new association that all-encompassing those frameworks to support self-sorting out among representatives. One method for understanding new properties and versatile frameworks is through chaordic frameworks thinking, or CST. The chaordic perspective on an association contemplates the equalization and stream between the association's structures and systems (request) and the developing imaginative self-arranging among workers (disorder). Seen through the viewpoint of chaordic frameworks thinking, the subjective research attempted for this article inspects The RitzCarlton as a developing association that has reconsidered its administration configuration forms so as to convey all the more experientially-based worker and client commitment.

Another major example of design thinking is the Stanford Hospital. A junior at the Stanford university developed an appreciation for medicine when she realized that change could be evolved in the field of medicine.

On the main day of class, the understudies talked with patients and families about their encounters with therapeutic consideration. Soon thereafter, they partook in the activity.

The reproduction "included the estimation of strolling from a patient's perspective, a passionate worth that supplemented the meetings," said Emilie Wagner, a structure strategist who co-showed the class with MarneyBoughan, another plan strategist who prepared with d.school fellow benefactor David Kelley, the Donald W. Whittier Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford.

"Unexpectedly, our understudies could sympathize," said. "It's an apparatus that urges understudies to step out of structuring for themselves and trust the individuals they're planning for."

That first day delivered a wealth of material to direct the class' second day of prototyping: Certain subjects were rapidly clear. Patients needed a standard progression of data to assist them with bettering comprehend what was occurring, and they needed to realize that their consideration suppliers were speaking with each other. Composed and clear correspondence, they stated, would ease a lot of their increased nervousness and dread.

The members closed the class by introducing their examination and thoughts to clinic chairmen and crisis prescription experts. With the help of S.V. Mahadevan, MD, partner teacher and seat of crisis medication, and Alison Kerr, VP of tasks at Stanford Health Care, "we are investigating a portion of the thoughts that were exhibited," Alexei Wagner said. "I don't believe that we'd do this on the off chance that we hadn't had the class."

Another example of design thinking can be Uber Eats.UberEATS is an application that embarks to give clients simpler alternatives to discover redid and moderate nourishment conveyance at the tap of a catch. It has every one of the fancy odds and ends of a Yelp, yet with the client experience of Uber where you can follow progressively where your conveyance truly is on the application.

They are building a help for nourishment conveyance, yet in addition a spot for cafĂŠs to enhance their business and for nourishment darlings to fabricate their social network.

The UberEATS group utilized structure thinking by making programs where the group can drench themselves in ordinary conditions. "The Walkable Program" is the place they truly visit areas in the city to consider the nourishment, individuals and culture. "Request shadowing" is the place they test their models

out by viewing their clients' certifiable encounters utilizing it. "Fireside visits" is the place they welcome conveyance accomplices, eatery works and clients to pick up input on the application. This procedure has picked up esteem on the grounds that UberEATS presently works in more than 80 urban communities all around is still on the ascent.

Many big projects for the social causes as well as for the homeless are also coming up with the use of design thinking. "Structure for the Homeless" is an open door for fashioners to utilize their abilities and imagination to plan inventive arrangements that will assist destitute with peopling have more promising times and evenings until they have homes of their own. Paul Bryan from UX Strat is leading this task, which propelled in December of 2018. His vision is to utilize configuration thinking to initially comprehend vagrants and the experience of being destitute, and to distinguish key issue zones where configuration can have the greatest effect. "At that point we will utilize configuration thinking to ideate and plan potential arrangements that can be tried and brought into creation," Bryan says.

Varying backgrounds are electing to meet up and give 1 percent of their opportunity to creating inventive, implementable answers for give vagrants a superior tomorrow.

Design Thinking has major scope in transforming the world. Major companies like Google and IBM are also opting design thinking in HR to improve the work environment. Not just that many other companies all over the world including small ones are realizing the importance of empathy and to understand the needs of the employees so that they can help the employees work better and without stress and also help them solve minor to major problems with ease. Design Thinking in Human Resource is the need of the hour and of the world. It is important to understand that design thinking can help each and everybody mentally, physically and emotionally. With the pace at which the world is running it is essential for everybody to understand the importance of design thinking.

Riya Chopra APEEJAY COLLEGE JALANDHAR Ph no-9501652129

What is Design thinking – The most talked about concept in the recent years?

Design thinking is an approach which seeks to understand the target, identifying the problems and develop innovative solutions which might be less obvious to tackle the problems.

Design thinking has its uses in many fields not just in product development and services, but also in the field of HR. Design thinking in HR HR professionals followed a very process oriented approach when dealing with employees and their problems. Now as we are moving into this modern era of business where human resources are acknowledged to be the most important asset of any organization HR is considered as a strategic function of business.

“Design thinking is a mindset not a series of steps” -Arne Van Oosterom design thinker We are moving from a process oriented model to a more people oriented model. The “one size fits all” approach doesn’t work for all employees let alone all organizations. This is all the more important because we are working in a multigenerational workforce. Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z differ both in their behavior expectations and also how they see work.

Hence HR professionals need to develop innovative problem solving skills to help employees and businesses.

Empathize

Define

Ideate

Prototype

Test

Design thinking follows the Agile model which involves developing and testing in an iterative manner till perfection.

Generally, employees from all hierarchies or even all business units come together to identify problems which are faced by the company. The problems can be with performance appraisal, talent acquisition, learning and development or attrition. They gain a deep understanding of the problem and situation. The next step is defining and analyzing the problem. Everyone brainstorms about the problem and comes up with innovative, feasible and viable solutions and produce it on a board with sticky notes. They next try out the best solution and test it in the real environment.

The whole process of traditional onboarding, training and development can be upgraded to make it more enthusiastic and appealing to people. In this era of technological disruption AI can help create a more enhanced learning and onboarding experience for employees and candidates respectively.

Where does Design thinking come into play with respect to Employee engagement?  

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 

Empathize: This step deals with understanding an employee’s needs and problems without any assumptions.

Define: Analyzing the problem or needs that lead to less job engagement. For example What is causing less motivation to the do the job.

Model personas whose employee experience we want to create Ideate: This step involves brainstorming and coming up with innovative solutions to the problems. For exampleHR teams and employees sit together to ideate solutions, putting them on a board.

Prototype: Coming up with the best possible idea to put it into test.

Test: Test the selected idea on the employees and check to see if it actually works or not.

It is an iterative process and if the test fails the team goes back to redefining the problem.

Considering a situation wherein employees are not happy with the performance cycle or performance evaluation method, which is causing them to get demotivated in the workplace. There is also a discrepancy when it comes to measuring smart work and hard work. There is a thin line which separates the two and it becomes a problem if the right KPIs are not measured. So one solution which can be tested is involving employees to change the performance evaluation method with the HR department. Once this is implemented there is a very less chance that people who have been involved in the designing process of the performance evaluation method would resist the change.

Distinguishing between what employees think they want vs what they really want Understanding insights with data How does design thinking come into play in employee Hiring experiences: According to LinkedIn HR trends 2015survey report, 83% feel a negative interview experience can change their view about a company or role they liked and 87% feel a positive interview experience can change their view about a company or role they disliked. Hence an onboarding experience can have an impact on an organization’s talent acquisition objectives.

Hiring experiences:To understand how onboarding experiences can be changed through design thinking and why is it so important for employee engagement we need to understand the employee life cycle from an HR perspective and the employee perspective.

Candidate selection

Transition

Recruit

Employee life cycle

Develop

Perform

HR function perspective

Job search

Alumni relations

Selected Employee life cycle

Leaving

Onboarding Work and learn

Employeeperspective

If we look from the point of view of a candidate, the applicant starts showing interest long before he/she applies for the job. A company looking to hire should focus on building on this liking for the job. A positive employee experience not only attracts talent but also helps portray the organizational culture. If the candidate gets selected the onboarding experience is all the more important for retention. It doesn’t stop with an employee becoming an as the experience shared by the employee may influence others.

In addition to the five steps in the design thinking process the following two tools are essential in understanding employees:

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Building personas: Buildingpersonas which are fictional characters but represent the typical candidates with all their necessities, emotions and goals. For example, a college graduate who is getting hired from campus life will have different necessities and emotions than a person who is getting hired having a 5+ years of experience or lets say more. Necessities vary from individual to individual and from generation to generation.The key is to understand the differences and problems faced these individuals through one on one interviews.

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Candidate journey map –employees tell about their experiences about how they felt.

Helps HR teams to understand the problems about faced throughout the employee life cycle. For example, knowing the employee expectations and what to focus on when onboarding an employee. Exit interviews are part of the end process which helps knowing the real problem of the attrition and the last step in determining the employee experience.

Once HR teams identify the gaps in onboarding and understand the problem they can come with ways which change the onboarding experience.For example, instead of providing general information about the company a company should focus on leveraging AI to make aware of the responsibilities and agendas before the joining date.

It can have an impact on employee retention and hiring, It shows how employee experience affect how they feel and decide on that job.

Learning and development:High potential employees always look for upskilling themselves. Having and developing content tailored for each individual through learning management systems(LMS) can give an enhanced learning experience. Relevant learning content keeps employees motivated and engaged.

For example, Digital mentorship,

An AI based unobtrusive nudging tool by Penn state university which monitors a learner’s progress and connect them to advisors when they experience difficulty.

We Millennials don’t want to get nudged by our bosses. Its like having a mentor without having a real mentor. These provide enhanced learning experience to the target audience which ultimately leads to job engagement.

Performance management and compensation planning using design thinking In performance management, we can understand the grievances of employees through one on one interviews and informal interactions with HR professionals. Let’s say “empathize” with the employees. The problem can be that employees are not viewing a change in appraisal system as beneficial to them and not transparent. The HR team can sit with middle management to implement design thinking. In order to review the compensation plan both teams take the views and chart out solutions which are feasible and viable. So it goes without saying a change in an organisation would be less resisted if employees had a hand in shaping them. For example, Infosys after 2001 made changes in the variable pay. In addition to measuring individual performance it tied it to the business unit performance and overall company performance. This change in policies were not received well by the employees which led to dissatisfaction and attrition.

So a change in policies which are critical to employee engagement should be done with the HR team and as well as a team of employees from cross functional areas. Many companies involve employees in certain decision making processes. For example, IBM used design thinking to make organizational changes like onboarding and even performance management.

Conclusion HR can leverage this Design Thinking approach creating cross-functional teams to use design thinking in onboarding, learning and development, performance management and other HR functions. According to an article in Deloitte insights, the future of work pose opportunities and challenges when it comes to workforce development and planning. The article’s authors suggested that the future of work demands an alignment of the individual and the business and also social and governmental institutions. In order for this alignment to work design thinking is necessary. Job restructuring with the advent of technology and the change in balance between automation and human influence over these processes are essential to understand employees in a newer perspective. HR needs to transform it’s approach from making employees do what they want rather than forcing it on them. This mindset is the “Design thinking” mindset. Design thinking is the new tool for HR as it moves to an employee centric approach and the outcomes are greater employee engagement and experience.

Nilari Poddar MDI Murshidabad Phone no-8777085610

DESIGN THINKING IN HR

News flash “HR will be dead by 2020”, “People analytics is the future of HR” Eyes has been rolling over the job of HR. Professional and leaders across the world has been talking about HR trends that will shade its future. But what has changed? In the beginning, HR was a Personnel manager where its looked after leaves, payrolls, policy compliance. Recruiting then meant posting of Job in the newspaper and hoping for the best. With time role of HR evolved as technology emerged. Recruiting became easy through various sites and social media. Employee brand was born. With years, even the organizations became resource centric, where it has started putting their people first along with adhering to objectives of organization of maximizing the ROI on resources.

As the technology abruptly shaped the various roles, HR was no exception. With new HR analytics stepping in, HR now looks after broader goals of organization by performing the role of business partners. So the repetitive work is done by software. But there is one area where technology cannot step in as of now and that is employee experience. So, we have to put human back into hr.

Employee are considered to be the biggest asset of any company. So there comes a need to retain best of the talent, to look after the needs of employees and give them the best of experience at workplace. Today many organizations now go for diversity and with such a diverse workforce there are different needs and goals of each employee. An young employee who was just hired will have different goals and need as compared to a senior employee. So in the diversity of generation HR has to be more efficient in evaluating each one’s need and goal.

When it comes to building good work environment one must ensure that the environment is welcoming, people get break whenever there is need, health & safety are taken care of, positive team spirit, no negative influence on employee, recognizing acheivements, and most importantly collaboration of employees with one another.

Design thinking is an human centric approach to deeply understand the stakeholders, defining their problems and addressing the problems in an innovative ways. Design thinking brings about innovation. Initially design thinking was used in a product based company to understand the consumers, but now many organizations such has Apple, Google, IBM, Nike and many more has taken this initiative and they have shown fabulous result by outperforming with their peers by 211% as measured by design value index.

Today, in this digital era HR need to have a strategy which will not only build the work culture but also moves the employee from the age old constraints to more free environment where they can express their problems, feel empowered and can align with the goal of organization. Along with this employee need to have a key to information, data and tools as and when needed. They also want to have support of their immediate managers and need to get feeling that they are making an impact and should be rewarded for their good work.

According to Sage’s Changing the Face of HR report, out of 500 HR professionals surveyed 94% see HR to have people centric approach in the next 3 to 5 years. 82% feel that this shift will make the role of present HR unrecognizable in the next 10 years. About 18% of HR and people leaders have already shifted to people centric approach. If you invest well in people you get better outcome that can be in terms of productivity or company performing well than its competitors. But there are many companies who are reluctant to such changes and hence are concerned about the organization’s ability to keep up with changing technology. Currently about 42% of decisions about people such as hiring, onboarding, performance management are data driven.

Linkdin, in its recent report has found that employee experience is drastically growing as a key consideration not only for leaders but for employees and job seekers as well. Since 2014, there has been a significant increase in posting of jobs titles which includes ‘Employee Experience’ Linkdin’s researcher said that the time has come where we have to move beyond feedback and move into shoes of employee to give a collaborative culture to company.

British Investment firm nationwide has setup the training for it’s employees to be future ready by investing $160mn. Under the employee digital literacy training it is offering it’s employee personalized curriculum to give them learning opportunities which is specific to business unit. It has taken an initiative to make its employee capable and choose a career path through this initiative. Other skills training initiative taken by organizations include amazon investing $700mn which is spread over six years in order to train over 10,000 employees, WEF working towards leveraging the skills of its worker globally.

‘HR Breakathon’ organized by CISCO has the slogan “In 24 hours HR will never be the same” the motive behind was to cease the existing silo’s, time zones and cultural obstacles in order to develop better work culture by sharpening the HR department.

When it comes to employee happiness and productivity, Google leads the way. Why? Because it has fostered a workplace culture which is full of innovation, employee motivation leading to increase in productivity.

There are 3 r’s that influence the employee experience • Realizing how the employee’s job contributes to the organization • Receiving timely feedback and recognition of performance at every level • Regular learning opportunities that help them to grow in this changing era.

So from hiring, skilling, engaging employees, mentoring and retaining; all these aspects can be improved by applying design thinking to it. Lets look at the five steps involved and how has companies used it:

1. Empathize Firstly as an HR you have to step into employees’ shoes and look through their perspective. The challenges faced by employee such as working environment, commuting to work, work hours, relations with peers and managers and so on need to be considered by their perspective. So this step answers two main questions: Who? And What? An excellent example of that can be ISS of Copenham which is a service provider and has an employee base of over 500000 across the world gives best of employee experience. It links employee engagement with that of customer experience. They believe that more are the employees’ engaged, more likely it is that customers will be satisfied with the service provided to them. Hence it correlates employee experience with customer satisfaction.

2. Define This step involves narrowing down the focus from broad discovery involved in initial step to outlining the pain points that an employee has to face daily. For example, what is the biggest motivator at work? What are their goals? and so on. The problems has to be defined clearly. KPMG has the initiative “We Champion Democracy”. The challenge that they faced was improvement in employment brand, retention and employees’ sense of pride. So they began by conducting hundreds of interviews and asking employees: what is unique about the firm’s culture? And how does KPMG operates when it is at it’s best?.

The firm analyzed the data and emerged with a new purpose statement: “Inspire confidence. Empower change.” This resulted into better work culture and pride among the employees. about 94% of the employees feel that KPMG is a great place to work for and they are proud to work there. So when the problems are defined clearly then only can a robust solution be produced.

3.

Ideate

True innovation comes when brainstorming sessions are created. So brainstorming will give different creative solutions to problems and the most feasible, viable and desirable fitting into organization’s context can be selected. In analytics brainstorming can be done about data sets or analytical approaches Hewlett Packard (HP) uses analytics to retain its’s employees in order to reduce the cost associated with finding a new candidate and training them. It uses a Flight risk score for it’s employee to determine their behaviour in order to retain them. this score gives an idea about how likely is one going to quit his/her job? So if an employee is given higher salaries, rewards or job rotation then there is less chances of him quitting the job. But if an employee is paid lesser then there are higher chances of leaving. So the HR team ideate to bring the solutions to this problems. The focus is on what should be the steps taken? Which should be the target group? How relevant is the data obtained? What could be the variables to be tackled upon?

Scientists at HP believed that this method will have a potential saving of $300 million relating to attrition replacement.

4. Prototyping This involves creation of storyboard for the given scenarios. The most promising ideas a are considered. Analytics is incomplete without prototyping. In this step we can see if the solution is viable or not otherwise more brainstorming session can be conducted.

5. Testing Now the solution can be tested by taking the small samples in order to determine how effective the solution is to the problem. Feedbacks and areas of improvement can be taken from the group where the test was conducted. The solution/ approach is refined and implements at various levels in an organization. Walmart has a test and learn team as a part of people analytics. The main aim is to push the abilities of each one and increase the productivity; insights are generated to create more value to the company.

Based on feedback appropriate solutions can be tested. So when a particular learning tool is developed in order to help them become more effective. If the prototype works well, it is transferred to IT department. It is now converted into production solution. By using their tools, one can upgrade their skills. This impacted to success of their business.

Opower is a company that is helping the utility companies building clean energy and energy conservation. Year 2015 was declared as “Year of Trystorming” as they tried many iterations using analytics to get the best solution for customers. Even though they have a small team of people analytics, the problem settled by them was to get the metrics, talent acquisition functions.

In an interview with peoplematters, IBM’s Senior VP, Huma resources, Diana Gherson shared some insights about how IBM has implemented design thinking. During her tenure she has redesigned all the aspects in order to shape culture with continuous learning, to implement agile methods. She has set an example of company’s global adoption of design thinking. She said that some HR professional are now using chatbots that answer the employees grievances and doubts regarding onboarding process, appraisals and performance management. As technology is changing the skill sets required daily, IBM makes sure that employee hired are curious about learning, so whenever new skills are required the employees are made aware of and where they need to learn is said to them. This brings about innovation and sustainability with the changing time. So there is higher contribution from HR team to ensure that they’ve gained new skills and are better adapted to changing needs. Also the team leaders are trained well enough to handle the team efficiently so that regular feedback can be taken from teams, also even the uncomfortable truth can be spoken of by them to their leaders. This ensures that trust is being build up between the team when proper action is taken.

Fig 1 : The shift in IBM’s approach to performance management (Source : MIT SMR)

So embracing the emerging technology with AI replacing many jobs and creating new jobs that require new skill sets will prove the persons sustainability in the market. Afterall it is well said “change is the only constant” which will not only improve your skills but will also shape each one of us to be more HUMAN.

Lobhas Palit SIMSREE

DESIGN THINKING IN HR

Design thinking has become quite a buzzword in the business world today. Design thinking is a process of finding solutions or taking decisions that is built around a human-centric approach. Whatever process we build, we put the user at the center, and try to find solutions keeping in mind the convenience and satisfaction of the user and develop the process accordingly.

Looking for an apt example of design thinking, I recently came across this special type of classmate notebook.

Now, what do most college students do about notebooks? Yes, most of us make one single notebook for all our subjects! It is driven by a student-centric approach.

These notebooks by Classmate are divided by partitions into multiple parts, one part of the notebook for each subject!

This one shown here is called the Six Subjects Notebook. Also,

there are doodles all over it!

Great design thinking indeed!

Now that we’ve got a basic idea of design thinking and how design thinking automatically results in a good product, let now us explore how it can be applied to the HR domain. Until now, design thinking has been largely limited to the areas of product and services development, keeping the consumer at the center of the process.

With this article, we’ll delve deeper and reason out how HR processes and practices can be pivoted around the needs of the employee.

Millennials are taking over the workforce. A survey by CNBC reveals that millennials and Gen Z currently account for a third of the workforce, which is projected to increase to over half in the coming decade. And this is the section of the workforce that is extremely particular about an employee-centric culture, which makes it all the more important for HR leaders to look towards imbibing design thinking principles in HR. A traditional design thinking process encompasses five basic steps namely Empathize, Define, Ideate,

Prototype, Test.

Taking an example, suppose an organization is trying to engage and retain millennial employees. How would they implement EDIPT?

Empathize: The HR leaders of the companies need to get into the shoes of a millennial and think about what would make a young millennial happy. Millennials are generally found to be tech savvy with a low attention span. Also, they place higher emphasis on company values and culture rather than a fat paycheck! These insights might give some clues to HR leaders to shape their HR practices accordingly.

Define: This essentially means defining the problem at hand. If the company is facing high millennial attrition, what exactly is the main problem? Defining the problem well will help in the further steps.

Ideate: This will mostly involve a lot of brainstorming and coming up with ideas that can help to overcome the challenge we are faced with. The idea has to be feasible, cost effective and in sync with the organization’s short and long term goals.

Prototype: Developing a model that demonstrates how the new idea will be implemented and how it might work out.

Test: The final stage, where our newly developed idea is to be tested on a specific group of employees or at a specific location. The 4-day work week experiment by Microsoft in Australia can be an apt example of this!

While this was just an example, designing thinking can similarly be implemented in other verticals of HR including performance management, training and even compensation!

In case of performance management, there is the need to analyze as to what kind of appraisal and feedback mechnisms are the most effective in evaluating employee performance most effectively. Applying principles of Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Testing, HR managers can develop the most employee oriented evaluation process. For example, a lot of companies have shifted to instant appreciation and 360 degree appraisal systems from traditional annual appraisals.

Training and development as well, has a lot to gain from design thinking. It will enable trainers to come up with the most trainee-friendly learning methods and activities. A good example can be MOOCs or online courses provided to employees, instead of classroom training sessions. Saves the company a lot of costs, and it allows the employee convenience and flexibility!

Compensation and benefits can look at design thinking principles in terms of giving the most optimized compensation package to employees. A lot of companies today, including Flipkart and Philips, have adopted a flexible benefits package in which the employee can pick a basket of benefits that suits them best.

Examples of design thinking in HR While design thinking in HR is still an uncharted territory, some companies have already applied design thinking in some form or the other in their employee related activities.

Cisco Breakathon They used design thinking to “break” and then re-imagine HR solutions for their 71,000 employees worldwide. Cisco actually closed their HR functions completely for 24 hours and announced to the employees they were using these 24 hours to engage the HR team and key stakeholders to create innovative HR solutions to deliver a memorable employee experience.

Create a new mindset

Use design thinking

Superior employee experience

Recognize winners and start implementation

Create hacks to break and transform HR

Zomato While this is not something that is spoken of as an implementation of design thinking, we’ll take the example of Zomato’s initiatives for their delivery executives. Can this qualify as a good example of design thinking implementation? Let us see!

How can this result in a win-win situation for Zomato?

These nudges ensure that the customer treats the delivery person with dignity

Well-being of the delivery person

Delivery Executive

Also benefits the company as loyalty of these delivery agents towards the company, increases

With initiatives like this, keeping the delivery executives at the center of the process, Zomato has Empathized with the delivery agents (put themselves in the shoes of delivery persons), Defined the problem faced by them (lack of water in hot weather), Ideated a solution (nudging customer to help delivery people with water), Prototyped the initiative (whether these messages should appear on the app itself or show as popups) and finally put it to Test.