The architecture of experience: Tying it all together. Part 2

In our series we’ve been talking about the importance of integrating human-centered design throughout your HR digital footprint. That all sounds great when you are deploying a single HR technology solution, but what happens when your organization uses multiple HR solutions?  How might you bring the human-centered design aspects together to create a unified feeling and not have it feel like a bunch of disconnected tools with different ways of interacting?

Learn 

Perhaps the most important step of human-centered design is the learn phase. It’s during this phase that we slow down to truly understand the needs of the workforce. 

We start by understanding the visions for your transformation which includes the promise to your customer. In other words, once the technology is deployed, how will your workforce be served and what benefits will they experience?

During this time, it is also imperative to capture the voice of the customer to provide insights into the moments that matter to your workforce. This is achieved through a number of different mechanisms. Ideally, surveys, focus groups, interviews, etc. are all used to drive a holistic look into the diverse needs of your people. 

During this phase you will create personas and journey maps that capture the essence of the worker. What are the motivators, needs, and pain points for each segment of your organization? These insights help you understand what we are designing for. 

Innovate 

At the Innovate stage, we understand the core problems and we begin to provide structure for solving those problems. This includes setting clear priorities, defining an action plan, and identifying immediate next steps to make vision for experience a reality. 

From a design perspective, this is our opportunity to dream big and intentionally. This can be the most energizing time in a transformation initiative because it’s our opportunity to ideate and challenge the current state. It is important during this time to not be afraid to fail and try again, to continue to think big with the end goal of creating an ideal solution for our people. During this time we prototype our solution by transforming our ideas into a tangible future state solution. This moves us from design thinking to design doing. 

Deliver 

It’s time! You have listened to your customer, you have designed a solution that meets their needs. Now is the fun part! We get to roll out a solution that should fundamentally make things better for your workforce. During the Deliver phase, your team becomes heavily focused on providing the necessary support to ensure the experience comes to life in a meaningful and compelling manner. 

Use of marketing campaigns, infographics, videos, in-system support are all effective tools for engaging your employee base through the transition. And you know you will be successful because you have designed with the workers at the forefront and you have pressure tested your engagement approach.

However, you can’t just go-live and call it a success; go-lives are actually your first step on your journey to becoming digital. For that reason, at Leapgen we refer to it as go begin! 

This is where the real value starts to emerge as you can leverage your new tools to create a culture of continuous innovation. This ensures that you don’t just embark on an implementation but that you are becoming a digital culture. This also requires you to revisit your strategy and the values and measures of success that you documented at the start. By putting in place a measurement plan you will be able to track whether you achieved the goals you set out to achieve from the beginning. 

By leveraging adoption analytics, governance and new releases and enhancements you can ensure your digital solution will not only be adopted but will continue to evolve as you do. 

So why digital transformation from a human-centered approach? 

Organizations that are successful at human-centered design in employee day to day activities provide an elevated workforce experience which boosts employee morale, drives engagement, increases performance, accelerates business, and provides a strategic differentiator in retaining both talent and customers.

There are a number of ways to ensure your solutions include the same human-centered experiences across your Human Resources ecosystem. Here are some opportunities to keep the employee experience in the forefront while also getting the advantages that a “first-stop” shop provides.

Consistently Leverage Personas

Personas call out the needs, wants and desires of your workers.  You may have personas for different roles in your company.  For instance, you may create personas to represent the different needs, wants and desires for your managers, individual contributors, executives, HR professionals, and your sales team. By developing personas for your key stakeholders, you will have the information needed to develop user experiences that meet employee needs and are consistent across different digital tools.  Having these at the ready, when needed, will allow you to dive in and design for the people who will be interacting with the tools.

Create Journeys for Key Intersections of Humans and Technology

Taking the time to develop journeys, tied to your organizations’ personas will provide you with the blueprints for designing frictionless services for your employees. Journeys may vary by personas and they will call out the positive interactions, the paths of least resistance, for a variety of activities including human to digital and human to human interactions. Having well-developed journeys and blueprints will ensure you provide experiences based on the preferences of your workers even if technology looks different depending on the transaction.

Consider Adding an HR Experience Platform

An HR employee experience platform connects your various technology tools with an interactive layer that integrates with your various HR solutions.  While your tools may each have a unique look and feel, an experience platform can connect all of the systems into one experience.  Experience platforms provide a variety of options that can be deployed, such as providing nudges to employees, a portal where your workforce goes for all HR related activities, search features for solutions or documents and can also leverage AI, knowledge articles, case management, all with a mobile-friendly experience. By deploying an employee experience platform, employees will not realize there are several different HR systems behind the scenes that are connected via integrations.

If your organization is moving towards a first-stop shop, incorporating various HR digital tools, there are a number of important ways you can enhance the day-to-day experience of your people. As we’ve previously identified in our series and as experience layers evolve, those that can best leverage the tools available to create a personalized and engaging experience will be well positioned as industry leaders for cultivating and retaining top talent -- a clear differentiator in the ever changing world we live in.