When users are part of the staff

Monday, 23 april 2018 | Redacción CEU

The DNA of enterprises is being modified by all the disruptive changes that affect their environment. Companies need to respond with innovation and creativity to the demands of a society in constant transformation. In these changes of the script, the work models that emerge find a common path, all converge in the growing importance of the role of people both inside and outside the companies. Among these new methodologies that defend a greater "humanization" of work, there is one that has gained strength in the past few years and which, in turn, stands out for its particular focus on users, it is the Design Thinking. Customers gave up being simple recipients, now, they can become members of the team. How is this affecting the staff?

Leaders in the market like Apple, Airbnb or Google are just some of the ambassadors of the Design Thinking. However, this is not a new methodology available only for the top firms. In the past few years, many companies have started using these innovative models. There are also many who defend and support the benefits of its adoption. But, if something really gets our attention about this methodology, it is not its growing importance in the definition of new business strategies, but its great influence on the transformation of the Human Resources field.

Design Thinking is not only a method that pursues to find creative solutions through design, always taking as a point of reference clients or users, in a viable technological and a feasible commercial way; it also serves as a lever that is transforming the labor sector, the structure of companies and the management of the talent found both inside and outside of them.

Designing new ways of thinking about the people management

This methodology places users at the central axis where work rotates. This disposition is based on the premise that Customer Experience has an impact on the growth of the business, but we cannot forget the important role that Employee Experience also has on it. The relationship established between them is key to achieve a negative or positive result. As it might be seen with examples like the case showed in the event organized by The CEU IAM Business School about  Room Mate Hotels, a Customer Experience aligned to the Employee Experience is a guarantee of success. It is not surprising if we take into account that, in the Human Resources departments, the clients are precisely the workers themselves.

Design Thinking can serve both for the definition of the Employee Experience and for the identification of the Candidate Personas. In the same way that the Buyer Persona is defined in marketing, it is possible to improve and refine the strategy of a company in relation to its Talent Acquisition thanks to a design based on the study, the observation and the analysis of ideal candidates and everything that surrounds them -how their experiences, behaviors, interests or emotions are-.

A working model based on Design Thinking requires collaboration between the departments and  the multidisciplinary teams. The work cannot focus only on the performance of the parts. This new methodology is inspired by all the differences of the participants, the more different they are, the more enriched work will be. Therefore, Design Thinking implies a different way of approaching to work, a new labor mentality oriented to the innovation, the diversity, the work through observation, the rethinking of the assumptions and, ultimately, the openness to creativity.