EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE - TECHNOLOGY
Enhancing the employee experience is a big part of the technology team's job. Understanding that and identifying opportunities was the first step.
THE CHALLENGE
Technology has a vital role in the experience employees have during their relationship with the company. While using tech solutions the company provides for an employee to perform the work, he/she will build a perception of the company's on various aspects such as level of modernity, agility, complexity, and hierarchy. The employee can be considered the most important stakeholders of a company since he/she will be the one relating to other stakeholders and, therefore, producing the most truthful image of the company's brand.
When we started this project, the company I was working for was in a turning point, in which being perceived as "digitized" was crucial for its strategic repositioning goals. The IT team I was part of had to understand and take its role in the general employee experience to get there. This movement should happen during a profound culture change, and new directions to the business plan have just been set.
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THE PROCESS
Research: understanding of the field, related themes, areas that should be involved, bridges and limits between them (since tech is not a self-sufficient feature and respond to processes or specific needs).
Setting the scope: based on employee experience theory and connecting the dots with brand positioning and culture-changing, it was possible to define the scope and goals for this project. Looking closer to IT scope, we could understand that an employee had different uses for technology solutions: as a person (using systems to manage their life as an employee) and as workforce (using tech tools to perform their duties). That was important because the expectation level can change through the day, according to one's needs.
Articulation: negotiating and engaging related areas such as HR, Process Improvement, Governance, Communications, and Corporate Services, bringing them on board.
Understanding: there was a big question: how can technology enhance employee experience in this company? After mapping the employee's journey throughout their lives in the company, through a design thinking session, it was possible to identify and build personas for different kinds of employees considering their stage of the relationship with the company (from trainee program to after retirement). It was then possible to understand their feelings and expectations, map touchpoints (and pain points), and identify opportunities for improvement from a technology perspective. The final stage was to prioritize actions that could quickly eliminate pain points and even create "wow points" within the IT team's scope.
Tools: Project Management - Jira, Business Model Canvas Framework, Design Thinking Sessions
RESULTS
I was the team leader for this project's first phase (since I left the company before the next phase was started). I believe the first phase's main achievements were: (1) bringing a human-centered perspective based on people's psyché to the IT team with this project, considering that technology should be in service of people's needs from the start. (2) identifying and addressing each corporate area's scope in this project properly, building bridges between silos in a high-complexity environment. (3) Setting premises and clear objectives for the next phases of the project, establishing the first step for a change of culture for the IT team as a whole.
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MY ROLE & DEVELOPED SKILLS
Project premises & structuring
Project management
Theoretical research
Design thinking methodology*
Group facilitation*
Negotiation with related areas
* In proud partnership with Tiago Pereira and Augusto Tirre.
