Transforming HR Services Through Design Thinking
Situation
HR leadership at a major international shipping and logistics company wanted to improve service delivery and enhance their employee experience. A task group consisting of process owners and developers was set up to identify and increase the number, availability, and ease-of-use of self-service HR options.
A challenge facing the group was a relatively short timeframe to present their initial recommendations to leadership. Additionally, the team was scattered across multiple time zones, which would complicate collaboration.
Key Initial Objectives:
Generate low cost but innovative solutions for HR processes
Improve employee satisfaction with HR services
Leverage cross-functional team expertise.
Unique Challenges:
Geographically distributed team spanning multiple countries
Complex scheduling across different time zones
Tight timeline.
Project
The team engaged JCY Advisors to facilitate the reimagination of HR services at their company and the generation of an initial set of recommendations. The expectation was that, if successful, the process could be repeated to create additional solutions in the future.
Due to the distribution and composition of the working group, we took an unorthodox approach to driving collaboration:
Conducted the workshop virtually
Utilized collaborative digital tools for remote teamwork
Structured daily two-hour collaboration sessions
Refined ideas continuously between sessions
Shifted focus from technical requirements to user experience.
The team chose to focus on two hypothetical employee use cases:
A regional sales executive preparing for a second child
A finance manager recruiting to replace a retired team member.
For each of these we:
Developed detailed user personas to guide solution design
Conducted a series of short, focused collaborative sessions
Focused on understanding real user needs and experiences.
Results
The project successfully transformed the team’s approach to HR service delivery by placing user experience at the center of solution design, and by focusing on specific use cases.
Achievements:
Developed innovative "Hills" (key objectives) including:
Enabling employees to determine family benefits independently
Streamlining new hire request process with minimal external guidance
Shifted from cost-reduction focus to user experience optimization
Created a forward-looking To Be state for HR services
Demonstrated value of cross-functional, user-centered design approach.