Human Resources
The company leaders are revamping the HR process for hiring top talents and retaining productive employees. They are developing an integrated focus on the entire employee experience. According to Yohn (2018), offering a superior employee experience can give employers a competitive advantage in attracting recruits to them and then engaging them in ways that encourage them to stay with their organizations. She also added that employers must provide development more quickly, move people more regularly, provide continuous cycles of promotion, and give employees more tools to manage their careers (Yohn, 2018). Furthermore, she claimed that companies who prioritize employee experience had more than four times the average profit and more than two times the average revenue (Yohn, 2018). With this new plan of adopting the employee experience process, HR leaders are applying design thinking concepts to transform the organization. Eaton et al. (2017) define design thinking as an agile and iterative methodology for solving problems by focusing on the customer's (employees) needs and values to create solutions that are intuitive and deliver against those values. At its core, design thinking involves understanding the physical, cognitive, and emotional needs of HR customers to develop personas that guide the design of services and products (Eaton et al., 2017). The company will employ the strategy shown in Figure 17. Figure 18 illustrates the tactical activities which include the following steps:
1. Define Employee Personas
2. Identify the moments that matter
3. Create Journey Maps
4. Conduct Integrated Global Design
5. Conduct Local Design
Figure 17. Design Thinking applied to HR customer experience. Source: Eaton et al., 2017
Figure 18. Design Thinking Tactical Activities.
MANAGEMENT FLOWCHART
Based on the Design Thinking strategy shown in Figure 17, the company will employ the plan using the OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) Loop process illustrated in Figure 20. The steps will be as follow:
1). Vision and set Employee Experience Principles. According to Coene (2017), developing a shared vision means listening very deeply to your people and stakeholders, understand their hopes and address their needs. She added that apart from creating a shared vision for your organization, it is important to design a vision for the process of change itself (Coene, 2017). How will you bring the vision into reality (Coene, 2017)? What means do you need to reach this (Coene, 2017)? What choices will you make (Coene, 2017)? Thinking this through with the people driving the change is a prerequisite for successful implement (Coene, 2017).
2). Create a persona and empathize with the employees; Define their needs and wants. According to Clapon (2016), this step is about understanding who are the end-users. The persona, the ideal employee, is a construction that helps you understand who to attract and how that person thinks and feels (Clapon, 2016). She explained that it would you where to find them, how to talk to them, what to offer them and how to build a relationship with them (Clapon, 2016). Furthermore, this step focuses on researching the employee's needs, and their objectives like you would be any potential customer (Clapon, 2016). It is essential to go deep into their lives and find out what makes them feel valued, what challenges them, what their passions and fears are, what they do to overcome them and who they rely on to make decisions (Clapon, 2016).
3). Generate and Prioritize ideas. According to Martic (2018), being creative is not an option anymore. It's a must! She added that creativity in the process of delivering best candidate experience, designing and implementing the best Employer Branding strategy, attracting talent and implementing the latest HR technology is a must (Martic, 2018)! Furthermore, she recommends engaging the marketing team when it comes to Employer Branding and attracting talent (Martic, 2018). Brainstorm together and you will come up with great ideas about how to get in front of the eyes of the right people at the right time (Martic, 2018).
4). Build a prototype program and Test. At this stage, Clapon (2016) suggests building a representation of one or more ideas to show to others and check if they work. Select a department that is willing to put in the time in implementing the program and work together to see how this changes the employee experience (Clapon, 2016). Ask them to record their thoughts and conclusions and use that as input and lessons learned for a larger rollout (Clapon, 2016). Lastly, test the ideas and get feedback from the employees (Clapon, 2016). Start implementing changes one at a time and work out a simple feedback system, together with them (Clapon, 2016). Explain to everyone how the process works and what the goals are (Clapon, 2016).
Figure 20: Management Flowchart plan using OODA Loop
RECOGNITION-PRIMED DECISION MODEL
Figure 19: Employee Experience Flowchart. Source: Morgan, 2016
In the next few months, the company will also transform the Human Resource Group into Employee Experience Group. This new group will oversee new areas of the company to ensure a successful transition with a focus on physical, cultural and technological environments. Facilities Safety and Security and Food Program Groups will now be part of the new organization. Figure 19 illustrates the new organization. Furthermore, this new organizational model will concentrate on cultivating the following goals:
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Shared values and culture. According to Bersin (2016), as people operate in geographically dispersed teams which are closer to the customer, they need guidelines and value systems to help them decide what to do, how to make decisions, and what is acceptable behavior. He added that this is driven by mission, culture, and values (Bersin, 2016).
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Transparent goals and projects. Bersin (2016) explained that people operating in teams and small groups have to work with other teams, and they can't do this unless goals are clear, overall financial objectives are well communicated, and people know what other people are working on.
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Feedback and a free flow of information. Bersin (2016) claims that as teams operate and customer interacts with the company, the team must share information about what's working, what isn't working, what's selling, and what problems we have to address.
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People are rewarded for skills and contribution, not position. According to Bersin (2016), the network of teams rewards people for their contribution, not their position. The days of positional leadership are going away to be replaced by growth and career progression based on skills, alignment with values, followership, and contribution to the company as a whole.
According to Klein (2015), Recognition-Primed Decision Model is a recognitional model of decision making that shows how people can use experience to avoid some of the limitations of analytical strategies. He further explained that this model explains how people can make decisions without having to compare options (Klein, 2015). It fuses two processes - situation assessment and mental simulation - and asserts that people use situation assessment to generate a plausible course of action and use mental simulation to evaluate that course of action (Klein, 2015). He claims that this model describes how decision making is usually carried out in real-world settings and much more common than analytical decision making (Klein, 2015).
Figure 21 illustrates the company's decision model when terminating an employee for misconduct or poor performance. The company's goal is to thoroughly document and investigate every situation before any termination occurs. If an employee receives any complaint from a co-worker for misconduct, a representative from the Talent Operations group (TOG) documents the condition, cites the employee a warning notification and monitored in the next ninety calendar days. If the situation does not improve after three warnings, the employee is then subject to termination. In the condition where the employee is performing poorly, TOG documents the circumstance and place the employee on a ninety-day improvement plan. If the employee increases their performance within the ninety-days, the employee will be off the performance improvement program and can continue with the company. If the employee does not improve, then they are subject to termination
Figure 21: Recognition-Primed Decision Model - Employee Termination
