In a previous article, we explored design thinking as a way to craft employee-centric HR solutions. Now, we take that approach a step further. This chapter is all about co-creation: bringing employees directly into the design of HR processes and services. The goal is to move beyond designing for employees, to designing with them.
The result? HR services that people actually use, value, and even love.
In this guide, we’ll explain why co-creation is transformative for HR, outline practical steps for doing it, introduce new frameworks to reshape your thinking, and share bold ideas and real examples to inspire you.
Senior HR leaders: get ready to reimagine your role – not as policy makers, but as experience co-creators alongside your people.
Chapters
- The Shift from Top-Down HR to Co-Creation
- Why Co-Creation Matters for HR
- The Co-Creation Continuum: From Feedback to Ownership
- Building a Co-Creation Culture and Mindset
- HR’s New Roles in a Co-Created World
- How to Co-Create HR Services: A Step-by-Step Guide
- Co-Creating a Better Onboarding Experience (A Practical Example)
- Conclusion: Leading the Co-Creation Revolution in HR
5 use cases for AI in HR service delivery
This report delves into the dynamic intersection of AI and HR Service Delivery, unveiling five compelling use cases where AI technologies can catalyze significant improvements. Read Now.
The Shift from Top-Down HR to Co-Creation
For decades, HR programs were built in a top-down fashion: experts in HR or consulting firms designed policies and processes, then rolled them out to employees. Employees were expected to adapt to what HR designed.
This traditional approach is being turned on its head. Forward-thinking HR leaders now treat employees like customers of HR, engaging them as partners in design. As IBM’s Chief HR Officer put it, HR had to undergo “a shift in mindset” – moving from relying solely on experts to “bring[ing] employees into the design process, co-create with them, and iterate over time” (EduBirdie). In other words, HR is becoming a collaborative endeavor, not a solitary one.
Several forces are driving this shift. The experience of the pandemic and the ensuing “Great Resignation” underscored that employees expect more from work. Millions quit jobs that didn’t meet their needs. Simply tweaking old HR practices or adding wellness perks isn’t enough. Business thinkers argue that what’s missing is a move away from an emphasis on ‘management’ and towards a focus on co-creation.
When people have a hand in creating their work experience, they feel heard and empowered. In fact, research shows that entrepreneurs (who design their own ways of working) report higher happiness and sense of meaning than regular employees (KCL). The lesson for HR: to re-engage employees and spark innovation, give your people ownership in shaping their workplace. Co-creation turns a one-way management monologue into a two-way dialogue.
Let’s clarify what we mean by “HR co-creation.” Scholars Rebecca Hewett and Amanda Shantz define HR co-creation as “a continuous process in which HR and stakeholders create value through collaborative efforts to problem-solve and innovate in the design and use of HR practices to better satisfy stakeholders’ needs” (AACSB).
In simpler terms, HR co-creation means HR teams working together with employees (and often managers, and sometimes even customers or partners) to design and continually improve people practices. This approach is inherently more democratic – and ultimately more effective – than designing HR initiatives in isolation.
After all, “HR practices only create value if they satisfy users’ needs,” and that goal “can be best achieved when stakeholders are active agents in creating value”. Co-creation recognizes that employees are the true experts in their own needs and the day-to-day reality of work.
By inviting those voices in, HR can design services that actually fit and flex to how work gets done.
Why Co-Creation Matters for HR
Co-creation delivers tangible value. HR initiatives developed with employee involvement tend to enjoy higher adoption, satisfaction, and business impact than those developed for employees but without their input. Why? Because co-created solutions address real user needs, not assumed ones. They also foster a sense of ownership among employees, which drives engagement. Let’s break down the key benefits and evidence:
Higher usage and adoption:
HR policies have little value if employees don’t (or won’t) use them. Co-creation ensures the end product actually resonates with employees’ needs and preferences, making them far more likely to embrace it.
A simple example is flexible work arrangements. Instead of HR unilaterally creating a one-size-fits-all flex time policy, some companies co-create flexibility guidelines with employees. The result is a program people actually take advantage of. Research indicates that when employees have a say in setting their work hours, companies reap more benefits in terms of happier, more productive workers (AACSB). In short, participation drives buy-in.
Greater employee engagement and satisfaction:
When people contribute to designing a process – be it a new performance review system or a parental leave policy – they feel a greater sense of control, fairness, and commitment to the outcome. Co-created HR solutions send a powerful message that the company trusts and values its employees’ input. This can boost morale and engagement significantly.
Consider a real-world case: a multinational telecom company struggling with sagging engagement shifted from a top-down approach to co-creating an employee engagement strategy with its regional teams.
Initially, some were skeptical, but once people saw their ideas incorporated into real changes, trust grew. Engagement levels rose and employee satisfaction scores improved measurably across the company (Tamer El-Tonsy, LinkedIn). Co-creation not only solved the immediate engagement problem – it changed how that company approached improvements going forward, making it a continuous, inclusive effort.
Stronger performance and innovation:
Empowering employees to shape HR services can unlock ideas and improvements that HR alone might miss. Employees on the front lines often have creative solutions to workplace inefficiencies or customer service issues – if given the chance to share them.
Many organizations have discovered that internal co-creation can drive innovation. For example, IBM involved about 100,000 employees in an extended, hackathon-style process to redesign its performance management system.
The resulting program (eventually launched as their “Checkpoint” system) was one that employees felt proud of and engaged with, leading to better feedback exchanges and higher overall engagement with performance development (HBR). IBM essentially crowd-sourced the design of a critical HR process, and it paid off in a solution far better received than their old, HR-devised appraisal system.
Similarly, manufacturing giant Ford solicited thousands of ideas from employees (through internal innovation challenges) to regain its innovation edge – and within a year Ford hit a company record for new patents filed, many stemming from employee co-created ideas (The Washington Post). When you invite employees to co-create, you tap into a wellspring of entrepreneurial energy inside the organization.
Improved retention and employer brand:
Co-creation also makes employees more likely to stay and recommend the company. People are less inclined to leave a workplace where they feel their voice matters in shaping the culture and practices. In today’s tight labor market, that’s pure gold.
One reason start-up cultures and agile tech firms boast high engagement is that employees there often feel a sense of agency and co-authorship in building the company. Traditional HR can emulate this. Studies have found that workers who feel confident about their growth and input are multiple times more likely to stay for the next year (Deloitte Digital).
Millennials and Gen Z employees especially expect to be empowered and accountable for making things better – not just passive recipients of corporate rules. Co-creation feeds that desire. It invites everyone to help shape “the way we do things,” which can deepen loyalty.
As one thought leader put it, co-creation might be “the key to getting everyone feeling entrepreneurial” inside your company – and thus less likely to disengage or depart.
Efficiency gains and ROI:
Surprisingly to some, co-creation can also streamline operations and save money. By designing with the end-user in mind, you often eliminate unnecessary steps and pain points that frustrated employees (or managers) would otherwise spend time working around. Additionally, when employees co-create solutions, they tend to design out inefficiencies that only a user would spot.
For instance, global medical device maker Smith+Nephew shifted from an “overly compliant” HR approach to a more employee-centric philosophy, after realizing they needed to stop assuming employee needs and start anticipating them (SAP). HR leaders there formed focus groups and surveys with employees to reimagine processes that were causing friction – one of which was their travel and expense reimbursement system. By incorporating employee feedback and leveraging new tech (like AI for expense auditing), Smith+Nephew streamlined their expense process and actually gave 20,000 hours of productivity back to employees in a single year.
Freed from tedious expense admin, managers and staff could reinvest that time into more strategic work. This co-created solution not only improved the employee experience (“we care about you and want you to have a smooth experience” was the message, says their project lead) but also delivered bottom-line benefits in time savings, accuracy, and compliance. The win-win outcome underscores that involving employees in redesigning work processes can unveil efficiencies that top-down designers might overlook.
💡In summary:
Co-creation leads to HR services that are more effective (because they solve the right problems), more utilized (because people are invested in them), and often more efficient.
It transforms HR from a rule-maker to a value-generator. It’s also worth noting the ethical dimension: giving employees a voice in shaping policies that affect them is simply the right thing to do in a modern workplace. It treats adults like adults.
As researchers Hewett and Shantz emphasize, HR co-creation is “inherently democratic and ethical” – it acknowledges that those who use a service should have a hand in creating it (AACSB).
For HR leaders, embracing co-creation is a chance to elevate the function from enforcer to enabler, enabling people and the business to thrive together.
The Co-Creation Continuum: From Feedback to Ownership
Co-creation in HR can take many forms. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition; there’s a continuum of employee involvement. Understanding these levels can help you assess where your organization currently stands and how far you want to go. We propose a simple framework called the Co-Creation Continuum with three major levels:
Level 1: Solicit Feedback (Listening):
At a minimum, co-creation starts with actively gathering employee input on HR initiatives. This goes beyond a perfunctory annual survey. It means building continuous “employee listening” mechanisms into your HR design process.
For example, before overhauling a performance review process, HR might conduct focus groups, interviews, or pulse surveys to learn employees’ pain points and ideas. Or after a new policy launch, invite feedback and iterate. At this level, HR still makes the final design decisions, but employees’ voices heavily inform those decisions.
Smith+Nephew’s focus group approach to improving their expense process is a great example: rather than HR assuming what employees and managers needed, they asked them directly and listened – and that feedback guided the solution (which included new software and policy tweaks).
Even this foundational level of co-creation – doing things with people’s input instead of in a vacuum – can markedly increase success. It flips the mindset from “we know what’s best” to “let’s discover what’s best together.”
Level 2: Co-Design (Collaborating)
Here, employees are not just providing input; they are actively at the table with HR, jointly designing the solution. Co-design can take the form of workshops, design sprints, hackathons, or project teams that include a representative mix of employees. HR still provides structure and expertise (e.g. facilitating a design thinking workshop), but employees are equal partners in generating ideas, prototyping solutions, and refining them.
The output is very much a joint creation. A hallmark example is IBM’s co-designed performance management system: instead of HR designing the new process alone, IBM ran a company-wide initiative inviting tens of thousands of employees to contribute ideas and prototypes for the new system. They essentially crowd-sourced the design – an extreme but highly successful case of co-design in HR.
Not every project will involve 100,000 people, of course. You might start smaller: for instance, co-design a new onboarding process by convening a workshop with recent hires, hiring managers, HR staff, and maybe an IT partner. Together, map out the current journey, identify moments that matter, and brainstorm improvements. Co-design taps into collective creativity. It’s based on the idea that those who experience the problem often know the best ways to fix it. HR’s role shifts to facilitator and curator of employee-generated ideas.
Level 3: Co-Ownership (Empowering)
At this most advanced stage, employees have true decision-making power and ownership in the creation and even ongoing management of HR services. Co-ownership can mean giving employees the ability to tailor aspects of their HR experience to their own needs, or involving them in governance of HR policies. It may even extend to letting employees drive certain HR initiatives with HR in an advisory role.
A classic (and bold) illustration of co-ownership is the case of companies that let employees set their own work hours or even salaries in consultation with peers – effectively co-creating fundamental “rules” of work. This level requires a high degree of trust and a culture that is comfortable with decentralization.
A more common example of co-ownership is when organizations implement flexible benefits or modular HR programs, allowing employees to choose the options that best suit them (within limits). The policy is co-created in that employees shape their own experience from a framework HR provides.
Another example is forming an employee-staffed council that continuously reviews and updates workplace policies – giving employees an ongoing seat at the governance table, not just input at the design stage.
HR co-creation, done really well, turns users into co-owners. It acknowledges that the best HR services are not static “products” but evolving experiences that employees help run. Not every company will be ready for full co-ownership in all areas, but forward-thinking leaders are pushing in this direction. They recognize that when you entrust employees with more agency, you often get better outcomes than if HR tries to micromanage every detail.
As one HR futurist noted, co-creation invites “ownership at every level,” which encourages teams to adapt solutions to their context while staying aligned on purpose (Unleash). In essence, employees move from customers of HR to partners of HR.
Where does your organization sit on the Co-Creation Continuum today?
You might be at Level 1 (maybe you run engagement surveys or occasional feedback sessions). Perhaps you have instances of Level 2 (a design workshop here or there). Level 3 might sound aspirational, but elements of it might exist in pockets (for example, some companies let employees elect representatives to safety committees or to boards – a form of co-ownership in certain decisions).
The goal is not to leap blindly into Level 3 on everything, but to progressively involve employees more deeply wherever it makes sense, building trust as you go. Even moving from Level 1 to Level 2 in a critical HR project can be revolutionary. The key is a mindset shift: believing that employees are not obstacles or mere recipients – they are co-creators of value.
The HR Perception Gap: A Problem You Might Not Even Know You Have
Ivan Harding explores the disconnect between how HR leaders perceive their organization's employee experience and how employees actually feel about it. Read Now
Building a Co-Creation Culture and Mindset
Co-creation isn’t something HR can do in a silo; it requires a supportive culture and a new mindset across the organization. You’re essentially changing the way decisions are made and who gets a voice.
As a senior HR leader, part of your role is to cultivate the conditions that make co-creation possible. Three foundational values make up the backbone of successful co-creation: connection, trust, and commitment (Tamer El-Tonsy, LinkedIn). Let’s explore these and what they mean for HR, along with the new roles HR professionals must play.
1. Connection
Co-creation is about people coming together to create something new. That requires genuine human connection and empathy. HR should foster an environment where employees feel connected to each other and to the organization’s purpose.
This goes beyond functional teamwork – it’s about psychological safety and personal connection. When people feel a sense of community, they are more willing to share candid feedback and wild ideas.
Practical ways to build connection include creating cross-functional project teams, hosting informal team-building activities before jumping into co-design work, and rotating team members so that silos break down.
In a co-creation session, an HR facilitator might use ice-breakers or shared storytelling to help participants bond. Think of it as priming the trust pump. The stronger the personal connections, the richer the ideas and the more open the communication will be.
2. Trust
Trust is the bedrock of any collaborative effort. Participants must trust that they can speak openly without fear of ridicule or repercussion, and they must trust that their input will be taken seriously.
For HR, this means practicing transparency and consistency. Follow through on promises; if you say employee input will shape a new policy, show evidence of that happening. Also, model vulnerability: HR leaders should be willing to say “I don’t have all the answers, that’s why I need your ideas.”
As Tamer El-Tonsy writes in his HR co-creation playbook, “Trust cannot be demanded; it must be earned through consistent and transparent behavior”. One concrete practice to build trust is establishing ground rules for co-creation sessions (e.g. “all ideas are valid,” “what’s said in this room is confidential”) and reinforcing that leadership genuinely wants dissenting opinions.
Another practice is sharing data and context with employees so they have the big picture – trusting them with information. Over time, as employees see their input resulting in action, trust snowballs. And where there is trust, people will commit more fully.
3. Commitment
Co-creation isn’t a passive exercise. It demands that participants be fully present and engaged, not half-heartedly nodding along. All parties – HR, managers, frontline employees – must be committed to the process and the goals you’re trying to achieve. Part of HR’s job is securing that commitment upfront.
Explain the why of co-creation to everyone involved: for example, “We are redesigning our career development program with you because we want it to truly help you grow – and we need your honest input and energy to make that happen.” Set expectations that this is a hands-on effort and that their role is crucial.
When people understand the purpose and believe in it, they bring their best selves. Maintaining commitment can be challenging, especially if co-creation extends over weeks or months. HR can keep commitment high by celebrating small wins (e.g. “Thanks to this team’s ideas, we just launched a new mentorship signup that 50 employees have already used!”) and by regularly checking in on engagement levels.
If someone’s participation is waning, a quick one-on-one chat to re-energize or address obstacles helps. Remember, co-creation is not a one-time event; it’s an ongoing process. Sustaining commitment means continuously inspiring and involving people, not just at kickoff but through implementation and iteration.
These values – connection, trust, commitment – reinforce one another in a virtuous cycle. As HR leaders, be very cognizant that a breakdown in any one of these can unravel the whole process.
For example, if employees offer ideas (demonstrating commitment) but then see no transparency about what happens next, trust will erode and they won’t bother participating again. Likewise, if teams never build personal rapport, they may not trust each other enough to challenge ideas or think boldly. Co-creation is as much about how you work together as what you create.
HR’s New Roles in a Co-Created World
To foster these conditions and guide co-creation, HR professionals themselves will likely need to stretch into new roles. In a co-created HR model, the HR team are no longer seen merely as policy writers or service providers, but as facilitators, designers, and connectors. Hewett and Shantz identify three critical roles HR must play in successful co-creation.
- Knowledge Broker
HR can act as a knowledge broker, gathering and circulating insights from across the organization. This means spending time with employees and managers to learn what practices actually work on the ground and what pain points exist. Then, bringing those insights into the design process.
For example, an HRBP might collect success stories of how one department onboarded new hires creatively, and share that knowledge with other teams during a co-creation workshop on onboarding. The HR team has a bird’s-eye view of the organization and can broker knowledge between groups. They also keep an external eye out for industry best practices or new tools, essentially enriching the co-creation with research and expertise.
But unlike the old HR expert model, as knowledge brokers, HR isn’t hoarding information to unilaterally decide – they’re curating and presenting knowledge to empower employees in the co-design process.
- Experience Designer
Embracing co-creation doesn’t mean HR abdicates all design responsibility. Rather, HR becomes a design expert in orchestrating the process. HR professionals should develop skills in design thinking, journey mapping, and user experience design, so they can guide collaborative design sessions effectively. They focus on the user experience – ensuring that any HR practice we create centers on the humans involved, not the administrative convenience.
In co-creation, HR might sketch prototypes, draft storyboards, or facilitate role-playing exercises to help employees envision new solutions. An HR person proficient in service design might create a mock-up of a new HR portal interface based on employee ideas, and then seek further input. They provide the design craft that turns raw ideas into tangible proposals.
Think of HR here like an architect who translates the community’s needs into a blueprint, then refines it with the community’s feedback. This design role is crucial to avoid co-creation becoming a chaotic free-for-all – HR provides structure and keeps the process user-centered.
- Relationship Manager
Perhaps most importantly, HR must be a relationship builder across the organization. Co-creation is inherently cross-functional and multi-level – it brings together stakeholders who might not usually collaborate. HR’s role is to cultivate those connections and a climate of trust (back to the values above).
This includes getting leadership on board to sponsor and participate in co-creation (leaders must show they’re listening), and also empowering the quieter employee voices to speak up. HR becomes a facilitator of conversations, a mediator when there are conflicts, and a cheerleader for those contributing.
In many ways, HR might act like an organizational coach, encouraging people to share their insights and helping teams gel. They also manage the ongoing relationships – for instance, if you have an employee council giving input on HR policies, HR should nurture that group, keep them engaged, and ensure their recommendations loop back to decision-makers.
In short, HR spends more time in the field, building bridges: between employees and management, between different departments, and between the status quo and the desired future.
By stepping into these roles – broker, designer, relationship manager – HR professionals become the backbone of a co-creative culture. They set the tone that “we’re all in this together” and provide the glue and guidance that keeps co-creation efforts productive. It’s a more dynamic, and frankly more meaningful, role for HR than policing policy compliance. It positions HR as the catalyst of collective innovation within the company.
How to Co-Create HR Services: A Step-by-Step Guide
Co-creation might sound abstract, but it is highly actionable. Here we outline a practical, step-by-step guide to involving employees in designing an HR process or service. Think of this as a playbook you can adapt to various HR projects – whether you’re reengineering onboarding, updating your benefits offering, or creating a new remote work policy.
The key is to blend structure with flexibility. You provide a process and tools, and employees provide insight and creativity.
1. Choose the Opportunity and Define the Purpose
Start by identifying a clear area where co-creation will be beneficial. Not every HR project needs co-creation, so pick one with high impact and where employee experience is paramount. Good candidates are processes with known pain points or low engagement (e.g. a clunky performance review system everyone dreads, or an onboarding that leaves new hires confused).
Define the scope and goals. What problem are we trying to solve, and what would success look like? Just as important, clearly articulate the intent of co-creation to the organization. Communicate that HR will be partnering with employees to design a solution, explain why you’re taking this approach, and what outcomes you hope for. This framing is crucial to get buy-in.
For example, you might announce: “HR is kicking off a project to reinvent our onboarding experience. We want every new joiner to feel welcomed, informed, and excited. To do that, we’re going to co-create the new onboarding process together with a team of employees from across the company.” By setting this collaborative tone from the outset, you signal that this will be different from the old top-down ways.
2. Invite Diverse Participation and Create Connections
With the project defined, gather your co-creation team or mechanism. This could be a core design team of, say, 10-15 people (a mix of employees from different levels, locations, and roles, plus a few HR and possibly IT folks). Or it could be a wider series of workshops/open forums to involve many voices. Choose the format that fits the scope. Either way, ensure a diverse representation – the people affected by the HR service should be represented in its design.
Then, set the stage for collaboration by building connections. Hold a kick-off meeting or workshop that isn’t just about business; use it to humanize the group. Consider doing a round of personal introductions with a fun question, or pair people up to interview each other about their best or worst onboarding (or whatever process you’re tackling) experience.
The goal is to create a comfortable environment where everyone, from a junior employee to a VP, feels equally valued and safe to contribute. Emphasize that titles are left at the door – in this process, all voices carry weight.
By investing time here, you pave the way for honest input and creative thinking. This step is about forming the community that will co-create. If some stakeholders can’t be in the room continuously, find ways to involve them through surveys or asynchronous brainstorming, so their perspective is not lost.
3. Set Guiding Principles and Ensure Full Participation
At the outset of co-creation, establish some guiding principles or “ground rules” for how the group will work. For instance: “Group goals come before individual agendas” (we focus on what’s best for the organization and employees as a whole); “Every idea is welcome” (no hierarchy in creativity); “Speak candidly, but respectfully”; “Commit to the process” – meaning participants should be fully present, not multitasking or dipping in and out.
Also clarify the level of commitment expected: Will this team meet weekly for two months? Is there work to do in between sessions?
People need to know what they’re signing up for. Securing full commitment is vital. One effective tactic is to have each participant literally or figuratively “sign on” to the mission – for example, ask everyone to share verbally why improving this process matters to them.
This personal investment helps bind the group to the goal. It can also be helpful to get a public show of support from senior leadership: e.g., the CHRO might drop by the kickoff to say, “Thank you for contributing to this important project; we are counting on your ideas.” Such gestures reinforce that this is mission-critical, not just a fluffy workshop.
Finally, remind everyone that co-creation is a journey. There may be ambiguity and iteration, and that’s okay. Set the expectation that we might not get it perfect on the first try, but we will learn and adjust together. This encourages participants to stay engaged even when things are complex.
4. Co-Create Through Iterative Cycles
Now comes the core creative process. This typically involves multiple cycles of ideation, prototyping, feedback, and refinement. In design thinking, you might call these empathy, define, ideate, prototype, test – and then loop.
Practically, you can structure this as a series of workshops or sprints. In the first session, explore the current state and pain points, e.g., map out the current employee journey for the process and highlight “moments that suck” and “moments that shine”.
Use techniques like empathy maps or persona stories to really understand the user’s perspective (our previous design thinking tools come in handy here). Next, have the group brainstorm solutions without constraints – encourage bold, even “wild” ideas.
From there, identify a few promising concepts and break the group into smaller teams to prototype those ideas. A prototype could be a mock policy outline, a storyboard of a new digital tool, a role-play of a new process, or a simple paper sketch – whatever makes the idea tangible enough to gather feedback. Then, critically, create feedback loops.
Present prototypes to other employees outside the design team and capture their reactions. For instance, if you’re redesigning onboarding, show a draft itinerary or portal design to some recent hires and managers: What do they like? What’s confusing? Iterate based on that input.
The design team should expect to go through multiple refinements. Build in reflection points where the co-creation group asks, “Are we still aligned with the goal? Are we addressing the needs we heard?” This iterative mindset is essential. It might feel non-linear – that’s because it is. Co-creation is a bit messy by nature, but it yields a well-vetted result.
Throughout these cycles, HR’s job is to facilitate and maintain momentum. Keep the energy up with creative exercises, and ensure quieter voices are drawn out (e.g., use anonymous idea submissions or round-robin speaking turns to avoid dominance by a few).
Also be the realist when needed – if the group veers into unfeasible territory (like a solution that violates legal requirements or budget constraints), guide them to either adjust the idea or find alternative ways to meet the underlying need. However, do this sparingly; in co-creation, HR must resist the temptation to steer too much. Let the team explore and even make mistakes – sometimes a “far-fetched” idea contains a kernel of innovation that can work with tweaks.
5. Implement, Evaluate, and Embed Co-Creation in Culture
Once the co-created design has been refined and agreed upon by the group, it’s time to put it into action. At this stage, getting leadership approval (if needed) is usually easy – when leaders see that employees themselves helped create the solution, there’s inherent credibility and likely less resistance to change.
Roll out the new HR service or process, and make sure to communicate the story of its co-creation to all employees: “This new onboarding program was designed by a team of your peers and HR, based on feedback many of you provided.” This transparency boosts trust in the outcome and signals that the company truly listens.
Don’t stop at implementation. Co-creation doesn’t end when the policy is published or the tool is launched. Establish mechanisms to evaluate and continue improving the solution. Perhaps you keep the design team intact as an advisory group to monitor the rollout and collect further feedback (“co-creation never stops” could be their motto). Use surveys, usage data, or focus groups to see how the new process is working and where it might need adjustments.
In other words, follow through with reflection and refinement as an ongoing cycle. This prevents the new solution from becoming a static thing – it can evolve as needs change.
Finally, take what you learned from this co-creation project and embed those practices into your culture. Maybe institute a norm that any major HR initiative will involve an employee co-design panel. Or incorporate “employee co-creation” as a value in your HR strategy.
The more you normalize it, the more proactive and second-nature co-creation will become, rather than a one-off experiment. Some organizations go as far as training employees in basic design thinking and facilitation, so that co-creation capability is widespread.
The end game is an organization where co-creating with employees is the default way of doing HR work, not the exception. When that happens, HR truly becomes a continuous conversation between the organization and its people.
By following these steps, you create a repeatable model for co-creation. Start with a focused project, nail the process, and then expand the approach to other areas. Each successful co-creation builds trust and confidence in the next. Yes, it requires an upfront investment of time and collaboration, but the payoff is HR solutions that stick, and a workforce that feels genuinely heard.
The HR team at one company reflected that after a few co-designed initiatives, employees’ skepticism toward HR melted away – they started approaching HR with ideas, turning the relationship from “us vs. them” into a partnership. That cultural shift is priceless.
Co-Creating a Better Onboarding Experience (A Practical Example)
To make this concrete, let’s zoom in on one HR service ripe for co-creation: employee onboarding. Onboarding is a pivotal moment for new hires, yet many companies suffer from lackluster onboarding processes (think boring orientation sessions, paperwork hassles, and new employees left to sink or swim). Co-creating an onboarding journey with employees can dramatically improve the experience.
Here’s how that might look, and how technology can support it:
Imagine your company has inconsistent onboarding across departments. HR typically emails a checklist to managers and new hires, and hopes for the best. New employees often report feeling lost in their first weeks – some even say, “I wasn’t sure what to do or who to ask.” This is a common scenario when onboarding is designed mainly for HR’s administrative convenience rather than the employee’s perspective.
Now, apply co-creation. HR gathers a team including recent hires (who can vividly recall the experience), a few managers, IT support, and some HR coordinators. Together, they map out the current onboarding journey – and the pain points jump out. “Too much paperwork upfront,” “Manager didn’t reach out until day 3,” “I had no access to systems I needed,” “No sense of company culture or how to find information,” etc. The team, feeling these frustrations firsthand or through their teammates, starts brainstorming a better way.
A new hire suggests a peer buddy system to create community. A manager suggests a streamlined IT setup process before day one. HR suggests an interactive portal that consolidates tasks, videos, org charts, FAQs, all in one place. The group co-designs a more human onboarding journey: one that might start before the first day with a welcome video from the CEO and the new hire’s team, includes a clear roadmap of the first week, assigns a buddy, and so on.
To bring this to life, HR leverages a modern employee experience platform to implement the ideas. For example, using a no-code platform like Applaud, the HR team (with minimal IT help) quickly builds a unified onboarding portal accessible via web or mobile. It’s personalized to each new hire’s role and location.
All the tasks – from filling HR forms to getting laptop setup – are organized in one intuitive checklist, combined with rich content like meet-the-team intros and culture snippets. The co-creation team ensures it’s designed from the employee’s point of view (not an HR checklist) – meaning it flows in a way that feels logical and supportive to a newcomer. For instance, instead of dumping 20 forms on day one, the portal might spread tasks out and intersperse them with engagement moments (like “Have coffee with your buddy today, here’s a conversation starter”).
Such a platform allows real-time adjustments: HR can continuously collect feedback via embedded pulse surveys (“How confident do you feel after Week 1?”) and see if any onboarding step is causing delays or confusion. New hires and managers essentially co-own the onboarding journey – managers get automated nudges to do their part (e.g. schedule a check-in by Day 5) so no one is left waiting.
The outcome is an onboarding experience that feels very different: cohesive, welcoming, and responsive. One new hire might say, “Wow, it’s like this process was designed with me in mind” – and they’d be right. It was co-created by people like them.
The benefits of this co-created onboarding are immediately apparent. New hires hit productivity faster because nothing falls through the cracks (the portal integrates with all backend systems, so it’s truly one stop). They feel more connected – that “buddy” idea the team had is now a formal part of the program with reminders to meet, easing social integration.
HR sees fewer support tickets because the portal’s AI assistant answers common questions on the spot (“How do I enroll in benefits?” – answered at 10pm via chatbot instead of a panicked email to HR). And managers love it because they’re guided on how to provide a great first week, rather than each manager reinventing the wheel or forgetting steps. Essentially, onboarding was re-engineered from the employee experience outward, rather than from HR’s internal checklist inward.
Crucially, this wasn’t a one-and-done redesign. Because the onboarding journey lives on a flexible platform and HR set up live pulse dashboards, the company continues to iterate. If feedback shows new hires are still unsure about something (say, company acronyms), the team quickly adds a glossary page or a fun quiz to the onboarding flow. Co-creation becomes continuous improvement.
The approach avoids the typical pitfalls of old onboarding: those “day-one dead-ends” where after orientation new hires are left idle, the lack of a single source of truth, and the absence of culture-building. By co-creating and utilizing a modern HR tech tool, the company eliminated many of the frustrations that “modern talent won’t tolerate” in onboarding.
This example shows co-creation in action: employees and HR collaborating to design an HR service and using enabling technology to deliver it. The role of the technology (like Applaud’s no-code journey builder) is subtle but important – it empowers HR to implement co-created ideas quickly without needing a year of IT development, and it enables personalization at scale.
The role of the people is front and center – it’s their insights and creativity that shape the experience. Together, they achieved an onboarding process that both new hires and HR can celebrate.
As an HR leader, you can replicate this pattern for other HR services: identify the pain points, bring employees into the lab, and craft a solution that is user-centric and agile. The tools are there to support you, but the real magic is in the co-creative process itself.
Conclusion: Leading the Co-Creation Revolution in HR
It’s time to view HR not as the sole architect of employee experiences, but as the convener of a co-creative process. Co-creating HR services with employees is a visionary strategy – one that treats employees as partners in innovation rather than passive recipients of policy.
This approach may feel provocative to traditionalists (“What, let employees design HR?!”), but the evidence is clear that it works. We’ve seen that organizations embracing co-creation enjoy higher engagement, more effective programs, and even ROI in saved time and innovation outcomes. More profoundly, they cultivate a workforce that feels heard, valued, and invested in the organization’s success.
For senior HR leaders, championing co-creation is a chance to elevate your impact. It requires humility – acknowledging that HR doesn’t have all the answers – but pays back in solutions that genuinely move the needle. It also requires courage to challenge old HR orthodoxies. You might face skeptics who fear loss of control or quality. But as we discussed, co-creation is not about ceding control, it’s about sharing ownership to gain better results.
HR still guides the vision and upholds constraints (legal, ethical, etc.), but you create space for employees to influence how that vision is realized. The role of HR evolves into that of facilitator, coach, and innovator. You’ll find this role far more rewarding than policing policies no one reads.
Adopting co-creation at scale will transform your company’s culture. When employees see time and again that their input shapes outcomes – that flexible policy they suggested got implemented, that new tool they helped design makes their job easier – a powerful message gets sent: this organization trusts its people. In return, people trust the organization more.
That mutual trust becomes a flywheel for engagement and continuous improvement. HR co-creation, as Hewett and Shantz noted, is “democratic and ethical,” but it’s also just smart business (AACSB). It ensures HR is delivering value, not just programs.
In a world where employee expectations are sky-high and change is constant, co-creation makes HR more agile and resilient. Instead of reacting slowly to problems, you’re proactively solving them with the very people who are affected.
As you lead this co-creation revolution, start small if you need to – a pilot here, a focus group there – but keep pushing the boundaries. The future of work demands bold and collective innovation, not incremental tweaks.
HR has a unique opportunity to be the catalyst for that collective innovation by harnessing the ideas of the workforce. The most progressive HR teams in the coming years will be those that routinely say, “Let’s build it together” to their employees. They will co-create not only HR services, but also the very culture and norms of the company.
Ultimately, co-creation is more than a method; it’s a mindset – one that sees employees as whole humans with creativity and insight, not “human resources” to be managed. It’s a human-first approach, aligning perfectly with an ethos of empathy and respect.
Yes, it takes energy and yes, it can feel messy. But the reward is HR solutions that actually work and a workforce that’s energized, because they had a hand in shaping their world of work.
As a senior HR leader, dare to be peer-level with your employees in design sessions. Dare to be provocative in dismantling old HR habits. Your boldness will be met with employee enthusiasm – and that is a powerful force. The companies that thrive will be those that unlock everyone’s ideas and commitment.
HR is no longer about serving employees in the traditional sense; it’s about serving with employees. Co-creation is your path to get there. The vision is set: an HR function that is empathetic, dynamic, and co-owned by your people. The practical steps are in your hands from this guide.
Now, the invitation is open: involve your employees, experiment, and lead the way. The age of co-created HR is now, and the results will speak for themselves.
After all, when employees help build the very services that support them, everyone wins.
Are you ready to co-create the future of HR?
How Applaud Helps You Make It Happen
At Applaud, we believe employees are a company’s most important customers. That’s why our technology is built entirely from the employee’s point of view—delivering more human, intuitive, and rewarding HR experiences that empower HR teams to do more for their people.
If you’re ready to turn employee-first HR from vision to reality, we’re here to help. Get in touch to see how Applaud can transform your HR Service Delivery and create a workplace where employees truly thrive.
About the Author 
Duncan Casemore is Co-Founder and CTO of Applaud, an award-winning HR platform built entirely around employees. Formerly at Oracle and a global HR consultant, Duncan is known for championing more human, intuitive HR tech. Regularly featured in top publications, he collaborates with thought leaders like Josh Bersin, speaks at major events, and continues to help organizations create truly people-first workplaces.