Unifying the Employee Experience

The Situation

HR support was everywhere and nowhere. Ten-plus disconnected tools and sites. No single place to start. Employees spent time figuring out where to go before they could get anything done.

 

The problem wasn't just fragmentation. It was inequity. Non-US employees found information that wasn't available in their language or was poorly translated. Retail employees felt underserved compared to their corporate counterparts. And almost no one knew the full extent of what was actually available to them.

 

My Role

Experience Design Lead. I co-conducted generative research alongside another researcher, owned the experience strategy and journey framework, and led the design of the portal, chatbot POC, and reusable design tools.

 

The Approach

Research came first. I co-conducted in-depth interviews with 100+ employees globally as part of a larger study. The findings were specific and human.

 

Non-US employees felt like second-class citizens in their own HR system. Retail workers felt the whole thing was built for someone else. Nobody knew what was available. Nobody knew where to look.

 

From that research, a distinction emerged that shaped everything. There are major HR moments: a promotion, a relocation, a job change, a misconduct situation, where employees want and need a higher level of human support. Their manager, an HR partner, someone who knows their situation. And there are recurring tasks: requesting time off, submitting a reimbursement, where employees are happy to self-serve, as long as the context is clear and the path is obvious.

 

That distinction became the strategic frame. Not one experience for all scenarios. A spectrum of support calibrated to what each moment actually required. I mapped journeys across seven personas covering major life events and everyday tasks. I worked with HR, IT, and internal communications to align on experience principles. And I designed a unified HR portal concept, a chatbot POC for everyday tasks, and a set of reusable design tools: rich personas in poster, page, and card formats, experience principles, and flows that the client could use independently to guide their ongoing HR transformation.