Reimagining employee experience.
Designing and deploying a consolidated enterprise HRIS for a global strategy consulting firm, driving employee satisfaction through transparency in metrics and career growth.
People-first, tooling last.
A global strategy consulting firm whose proposition rests on a people-centric approach to talent management. Paradoxically, the work of managing a career happened everywhere except in one place.
How might we consolidate and redesign disconnected enterprise platforms to improve the overall employee experience and reduce attrition?
“I want to know the information I’m putting in is being fed somewhere. It’s a vacuum. I don’t see it happening so I lose trust in the tool.”
“I don’t feel like I need a magical dashboard, but some of these tools don’t talk. This is so archaic.”
“It is a laborious process to get a role approved.”
“Gives directions on how to transition my career, which could be clearer, but useful nonetheless.”
“People are going to leave the company because of this platform. I’m having to spend 40 hours filling out these questions.”
Verbatim, from thirty interviews across title and tenure.
The goal was to make every metric, opportunity and career path visible in real time, so that growing here no longer meant leaving here.
Researching the problem before redesigning the platform.
Thirty user interviews and a fifty-person survey were conducted before any wireframes were drawn. The work ran in six phases, from primary research through to accessibility and behavioral metrics.
01Discover
Interviewing thirty people across title and tenure.
Live interviews were conducted with thirty employees of differing title and tenure. Each 30-minute session was split in two. The first fifteen minutes were contextual inquiry, with participants walking through the current platform as they normally use it. The second fifteen minutes covered the tasks they were trying to complete and where the platform got in the way.
A self-guided survey was sent to fifty more employees for quantitative data, and the themes from the interviews were validated against the survey results.
The number of questions you have to fill out is insane.
It feels like rewriting your resume, but for [the company].
It feels like an individual experience that we’re all doing because we have to.
02Define
Affinity mapping the interview and survey data.
Interview notes and open-text survey responses were added to a Miro board as individual observations, with no categories set in advance, and each note was tagged as a pain point or a positive response. The notes were grouped by affinity and regrouped over several passes until the groupings stopped changing, and the board settled into twenty clusters.
- 30User interviews 50Survey responses
- 20Affinity clusters
- 6Prioritized features
- 3User archetypes
“The number of questions you have to fill out is insane.”
“I’m having to spend 40 hours filling out these questions.”
“It is a laborious process to get a role approved.”
“Gives directions on how to transition my career, which could be clearer, but useful nonetheless.”
“It feels like rewriting your resume, but for [the company].”
“Some of these tools don’t talk. This is so archaic.”
“It feels like an individual experience that we’re all doing because we have to.”
Scroll the board sideways to read it.
Six of the clusters were prioritized as features to reimagine, and all six centered on two user needs: transparent performance management and clearly defined career growth. Several of the largest clusters were also the most heavily tagged as pain points.
Actionable metrics
Team members want utilization metrics displayed in real time alongside recommendations for improvement.
Talent networks
Team members want to search for other practitioners and network globally by capability as well as by name.
Learning opportunities
Team members want relevant learning and career growth content recommended to them instead of searching for it.
Workforce management
Team members want relevant client staffing opportunities recommended to them.
Team performance management
Team members want regional and global metrics displayed alongside their individual metrics.
Career growth pathways
Team members want clearly outlined steps toward a defined career outcome without having to change employers.
02Define
Defining three user archetypes.
Affinity mapping also produced three archetypes: the consultant, the people leader and the market leader. Consultants want to complete their work and have it recognized. People leaders want visibility into their team’s performance without having to ask for updates. Market leaders want a view of performance across the whole business.
Each archetype was built from the clustered research data rather than drafted in advance.
03Develop
Mapping the current and future state user flows.
The current state user flows were mapped first, covering every route through the platform from the dashboard to profile, roles, time, opportunities, the role library and learning. The maps showed that reaching one job-critical metric required a different, disconnected sequence for each feature.
The current state was mapped before the future state so the redesign would not carry the existing structure forward by default.
Current state
Future state
Card sorting informed the future state information architecture, so the navigation was organized around how users group these tasks. The proposed future state flows were tested with users and refined against their feedback before moving to higher fidelity. Several variations were explored, and the strongest elements of each were merged into low fidelity wireframes.
03Develop
Extending the existing design system.
The platform already ran on a custom design system. The wireframes and prototypes extended its existing components rather than introducing a second system, which kept the redesign from adding tech debt.
Review sessions were conducted weekly with product owners and solution architects. Technical and financial constraints raised in these sessions were addressed during design rather than after handoff.
04Deliver
Designing for accessibility and tracking behavioral metrics.
High fidelity prototypes were built once the structure had been validated in wireframes. A dark theme was designed alongside the default light theme.
As features were deployed, four behavioral metrics were tracked: bounce rate, pages per visit, click rate and visit duration. The design was adjusted based on that usage data.
Designing the future state talent platform.
Each of the six prioritized features was designed as its own screen in the future state platform. The flows below walk through each screen in the high fidelity prototype.
Displaying utilization against target in real time.
My Insights displays three metrics in real time: utilization, contribution ratio and experience index. Utilization and experience index are each shown as a gauge with the target marked on the arc. The career growth panel sets the current title beside the next level, with the expectations for each.
Tracking role approvals from submission to sign-off.
Priority roles are shown as cards with category, mastery, status and an approval tracker. The full role table and the favorited staffing opportunities expand in place, so the status of every submission is visible from one page.
Filtering open roles by mastery level.
Open roles are filtered by role and mastery level, and each applied filter is kept as a removable chip. Each role expands in place to show its description, client outcome, hours, dates and stage. Roles are favorited from the list and followed from My Roles.
Recommending learning instead of requiring a search.
Suggested learnings, favorites and required training are shown as separate rows on one page. Required training is listed by due date and resumes from where it was left.
Reviewing team utilization from one dashboard.
The people leader dashboard shows every direct report in one view. Selecting a team member fills the quick actions panel with their utilization across three periods, the gap to their target, a utilization trend and recommendations, while the rest of the team stays visible.
Finding colleagues by capability.
The profile places the employee between their people leader and their direct reports in one view. Experiences, technologies, languages and certifications each have their own section, so practitioners can be found by capability as well as by name.
Carrying the profile to mobile.
The profile was designed for mobile as well as desktop. The contact card collapses to save space, and the six tabs scroll horizontally to keep the active tab in view. The Organization tab shows the employee's people leader and direct reports.
People first, and a design to match.
Six pain points, one cohesive resolution.
The six needs the research identified (real-time metrics, talent networks, learning, workforce management, team performance and career pathways) arrived in one place, replacing the separate internal sites people had been moving between.
Accessible designs by default.
A dark mode and a high-contrast variant were designed alongside the default prototypes, rather than retrofitted once somebody raised accessibility concerns.
Future-focused design system.
The updated design system worked inside real technical and financial constraints, so future internal platforms stay usable and consistent. Through iterative release, bounce rate, pages per visit, click rate and visit duration were tracked, and the design was adjusted to what people did rather than what they said they would do.