Design Thinking for Employee Involvement

"The current approach to the employee experience simply doesn’t work." Employee experience often gets treated as a comp exercise, fixes to onboarding, maybe a revised perf process -- often built "one size fits all." Companies invest heavily in customer experience. Research, data science, human-centered design and product management creates massive results through personalization, loyalty and deep understanding of emotional drivers. What if we applied a lot of the same tools to employee experience? What if we thought of employee experience through the lens of product management? Great #EX boosts retention and drives great #CX. Visibly in retail: Trader Joe's and Costco have excellent EX, strong financials and very loyal customers. This movement is growing. It will get larger because the demographics of labor are changing: slow growth, more diversity, tradeoffs well beyond comp and benes. Here's some faves, 🔗 in comments: follow them all if you don't already! ⭐ Samantha Gadd and Kalyn (KP) Ponti have been leading with their EX Manifesto and focus on human-centered design. How to work directly with employees to understand needs, and build together. Which leads to... ⭐ The top quote from "Reimagining Work as a #Product" by Dart Lindsley & Eric Anicich brings product design thinking to life with stories from Eli Lilly, Shopify and Dropbox where the Melanie / Alastair / Allison trifecta are re-imagining #EX. They share a framework that breaks down a job into tasks, understanding what's rewarding vs drudgery. Work that ... ⭐ Debbie Lovich & Rosie Sargeant quantified: increasing joy boosts retention by almost 2X, and that you can't make assumptions about what brings someone joy: a break where you write notes might be joyful. Debbie and I just talked about how Clay Christensen's "Jobs to Be Done" (JTBD) framework applies to employees. Why the job someone takes often has less to do with comp and title than a broader set of tradeoffs. "JTBD" shows in Dart & Eric's work, and is central to... ⭐  Ethan Bernstein, Michael Horn & Bob Moesta's "What Companies Get Wrong About Employee Experience" which breaks down four typical quests of people taking on a new role -- what are they "hiring" that role to do? Understanding the emotional context of leaving or taking a new job and the desires and tradeoffs of individuals boosts outcomes -- especially retention. Emotional context also shows up in #AI adoption... ⭐ Christina Janzer & Lucas Puente's work on AI personas, which I recently shared -- how might those personas overlap with someone's "JTBD" of their role? ⭐ Rodney Evans knows this is a major transformation, and one group who needs help changing how they work is #HR. Rodney and team do work with people who want to do the work... Which leads to one last quote: ⭐ "Let the work do the work" Iain Roberts, taking a design-centered approach to improving EX by working on it directly with the team. Who am I missing? #FutureOfWork #retention

5 Design Thinking Questions That Transform Change Management Change management often focuses on processes and timelines, but design thinking brings human experience to the forefront. Here's how five essential questions can revolutionize your approach: 1. What's the lived experience of this change? Beyond the organizational chart lies daily reality. Consider: -How does this change affect daily routines and workflows? -What invisible pain points might emerge? -Which comfort zones are we disrupting? 📋 Quick Assessment: Shadow team members to document workflows and identify disruption points. 2. Where are the emotional touchpoints? Change triggers emotional responses that can make or break implementation: -Which moments might trigger anxiety or resistance? -What current sources of pride need preservation? -How can we create positive emotional anchors? 📋 Quick Assessment: Create an emotion map tracking key transition moments. 3. What solutions would users design? The best insights come from those closest to the work: -How would employees modify the change if they were in charge? -What workarounds have people already created? -Which aspects do people most want to preserve? 📋 Quick Assessment: Host solution-storming sessions where teams sketch their ideal future. 4. How can we prototype this change? Small-scale experiments reduce risk and build confidence: -Which aspects can we test in a limited environment? -How might we create safe spaces to practice new behaviors? -What quick wins could demonstrate early value? 📋 Quick Assessment: Identify three elements to pilot within 30 days. 5. What feedback loops will drive iteration? Continuous improvement requires structured listening: -How will we gather real-time feedback? -What metrics will tell us if the change is working? -How can we make adjustments transparent? 📋 Quick Assessment: Design a feedback system combining metrics and insights. 🔑 Key Takeaway: Effective change management isn't about perfect plans—it's about creating human-centered processes that evolve through continuous learning. #ChangeManagement #DesignThinking #Leadership #Innovation

🧠 Designing Retention: Why Stay Interviews and Design Thinking Are Your New Talent Resilience Superpowers The Great Resignation taught us one thing: exit interviews are too late. If you're waiting until people leave to understand why they already did, it's time to flip the script with stay interviews powered by design thinking. Stay interviews aren't just about asking why people stay. They're about uncovering what keeps them engaged, challenged, and committed. Now combine that with design thinking, a process built to empathize, prototype, and iterate, and you've got a robust framework for building workplaces people want to stay in. Here's what this looks like in practice: ✅ Empathize: Talk to your high performers. What's working? What's frustrating? ✅ Define: Identify day-to-day friction points that cause burnout or boredom. ✅ Ideate: Co-create possible improvements with your team. ✅ Prototype: Test small changes. Don't overthink. ✅ Test and repeat: Make listening a habit, not a one-off. 🛠 Retention isn't a policy; it's a design challenge. Stay interviews give you the data. Design Thinking gives you the toolkit. 🔁 The result? A talent strategy that evolves with your people, not after they're gone. Don't wait for the exit interview if you're serious about talent resilience. Start designing Retention now. #niketkarajagi Atyaasaa Consulting Private Limited #DesignThinking #HRInnovation #EmployeeExperience #RetentionStrategy #Leadership #StayInterviews