Canvas: Onboarding Experiences in the Workplace
Objective: With design research methodologies find a potential solution of a design challenge where you can subsequently create a business model in order to make it tangible.
Challenge: How can we help organizations prepare for the future of work by understanding, creating and designing better employee experiences?
Why this Challenge? As a project manager and entrepreneur and coming from a family of entrepreneurs I have always questioned the nature of businesses and the trajectory that they must follow in order to become successful ventures. This is why for my thesis I asked myself the following question. How might we scale an unscalable business? I’ve always wondered about the intricacies of growth for small businesses. How can we scale without losing our integrity? Should we merge? Sell? Partner with a stronger company? A lot of these questions crowded the initial phases of my research and by delving into Mergers and Acquisitions, corporate culture and the startup world in which we live in, one thing always stood out; the importance of employee happiness. The people strategy behind the success of many companies in today’s world. This is why I approached my initial challenge from a slightly different angle; that of employee experiences.
The Process: Through literary and secondary research, I explored the field of employment taking into account the rise of Millennial workers and the advent of Generation Z entering the workforce. I analyzed trends within technological, economic and cultural forces that can point us towards the changes that will take place within talent management and human resources. In order to get primary feedback, I interviewed people between the ages of 24 and 35 working in startups and SMB to get their insights into corporate culture, employee experiences and their perspectives on their company’s reactions to unsuspected organizational changes.
The Result: There is not one way to answer the question I asked myself for my initial challenge; there are numerous solutions but I focused on just one that has the potential of growing and expanding its impact on the future of work. I designed a consulting service focused on designing better and more tailored onboarding experiences for employees. If you want to know more about Canvas, please check out the book on your right.
How can we help organizations prepare for the future of work by creating, understanding and designing better employee experiences? Look inside and explore my design research process that led me to this question.
