Service Design, UX & CX in HR
By: Morten Henriksen
Tags: Design Thinking, Human Resources, Employee Engagement, User Experience, Service Design

A lot of articles are being written and shared about how HR has lost its meaning and need to reinvent itself to justify its existing in the modern organisation. To some degree, I agree with this statement. Too many HR departments still sit behind closed doors and only deal with administrative tasks and payroll and don’t deal with creating “real” value for the employees and employers. Many of the traditional HR administrative tasks can now be taken over by digital solutions anyway. But what is real value in an HR perspective? In my view the potential value HR can bring to the organisation is;

The creation and implementation of supportive structures and processes that enhance employees ability to thrive and evolve in their job hence creating innovation, motivation and growth, Creating an organisation that attracts and retain the right qualifications and skills required to fulfil the organisations vision and mission, Creating a management structure and capabilities that supports the daily operation and implements the organisational values

Not to say that the above is only an HR responsibility but, it is HR responsibility to lead the way and coach senior management in order to build a sustainable organisation which is able to constantly evolve and adjust to its surroundings.

SD, CX, & UX

Let’s start by defining Service Design — Wikipedia defines “Service design as the activity of planning and organising people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between the Service Provider and the customers. Service design may function as a way to inform changes to an existing service or create a new service entirely.”

Customer experience (CX) refers to a customer’s experience with a company or brand, at all touch-points. By touch-point I refer to any way by which a customer interact with the brand, such as when purchasing or using a product or through seeing commercials featuring it. CX design focuses on enhancing and improving the customers experience in all those touch-points.

User Experience Design (UX) is the design of a single touch-point/product between the customer and company. It is the process of creating a product that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product with the user.

All the above are guided by a human-centred approach putting the user in focus as well as engaging with and involving them in the actual design process. These principles of participation ensures that the end product/service/process are designed with the end user in focus and not dominated by the designers/stakeholders own perception of reality.

Employees as Users

If we apply a SD and CX approach we can view the employee as a user of the organisations and look at the entire employee life cycle from initial contact between organisation and employee when the employee first becomes aware of the company (Employer Branding) to the recruitment process and on-boarding, to development and training, to promotion or resignation/layoff. By doing this we can analyse all the touch-points between employee and organisation (both front and back) and create an employee Journey Map and Service Blueprint which helps visualise the actual touch-points and experiences from the employee perspective. By applying principles of UX we can design single touch-points in that employee journey to enhance and improve the experience and help develop greater employee satisfaction and motivation.

The “old” Business Model for many organisations is “Client/Customer” first which mean that the internal process comes second after the customer focused processes. This often means that the customer experience gets prioritised over employee experience. More and more organisations are turning this business model upside/down and putting their employees experience as a high priority. When you focus on the employee experience, an not only your customers, you are one step closer to creating an environment where employees are more motivated and engaged, which mean they will (in most cases) automatically put your clients/customers first and create exceptional experiences for them. By integrating a human-centred approach such as Service Design we can ensure (for the most parts) that we are actually designing for the employees and not only for the clients/customers. We can use the approach to ensure that both the Business Needs, Employee Needs, as well as Customer Needs are met and satisfied. It can help tying together human, physical, and digital interactions and create an experience that meets the functional and emotional needs of the user/customer/employee and help open up new challenges and opportunities to differentiate, grow loyalty, and create business value.

Would love to hear your thoughts on the topic.