You don't have to choose between empathy and strategy.
Empathy informs good strategy. You just need to apply the right approach, skillset, and mindset.
Employee ExperienceWork is inevitable but a poor employee experience doesn't have to be
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New Product DevelopmentAmbiguous opportunity spaces yield really cool human insights
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Content StrategyGood design provides clarity and empowerment through understanding
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CHALLENGE
A major player in the financial services industry had grown extensively through M&A, but was suffering attrition issues due to a disjointed digital employee experience. Although each client stakeholder had their own hypotheses for what wasn't working, they had never conducted qualitative employee research. |
APPROACH
Through narrative inquiry with 30 employees from across the globe, I amplified the employee voice and captured people, process, and technology needs across groups. I facilitated workshops to foster stakeholder alignment on a north star vision and identify key guiding principles. |
OUTCOME
Together with the client, I identified 34 essential IT investments to improve the digital employee experience, sequenced on a 6-phase roadmap to have the greatest impact on attrition. This investment will save the client 65% of a new mid-level associate’s annual salary in the first 6 months. |
CHALLENGE
The client knew there was a major market opportunity around learning in the flow of work, especially for time-poor executives. They wanted to better understand this unmet need and position a new product whose value proposition appealed to their target users. APPROACH I facilitated conversations with 30 people in 4 global markets, at various level of leadership, to better understand barriers to learning and define learning in the flow of work. In addition to conversation, I developed and tested seed concepts to gather additional context and color around what product solutions people would actually use or not, and why. OUTCOME Research insights were framed in leader personas and a learning experience map, inspired by the 5E experience model. I then facilitated an ideation workshop to down-select opportunity spaces and ultimately align on 3 distinct value propositions to further ideate around. The client is moving forward with desirability testing to better understand target audiences and willingness to pay. |
CHALLENGE
The client's recently redesigned wealth management landing page wasn’t converting. They also lacked a clear strategy for incorporating a recent acquisition into their offerings. They entrusted me with leading the second redesign, understanding that an experience-led approach would yield a visually appealing site that also led prospects into the right product funnel. APPROACH Rather than jumping into evaluative research and identifying incremental improvements, I proposed and led foundational research to understand the customer's journey and mindset. I interviewed prospects and people who recently opened a new account, focusing on trust, perceived financial literacy, and emotional highs and lows. Foundational research led to new insights around the value proposition and messaging that would best appeal to prospects. We conducted additional testing to compare new concepts to the live site, validating assumptions and gathering additional data on the current site's limitations. |