In keeping a user/employee at the heart of problem solving how can businesses start to think about products and services differently?
"Reframing a business challenge in a people-centered one is the starting point. To be successful, businesses must build high value relationships and align the organization around people.

For that to happen, we build empathy by starting on user’s needs and expectations to design meaningful experiences. We map out experiences so that we may revisit the journey to find opportunities to make it better or develop a new offer.

Likewise, involving employees on problem solving and designing a fulfilling work experience will increase their engagement. They will be company's promoters, provide a better service and give priceless insights to keep on developing innovative experiences."

What should the role of human resources be within organizations?
"Their mission of HR is to ensure that employees have a good experience within the organization. Employee experience begins even before the employee start to work in the company. The process of attraction and recruitment is crucial to align expectations from both sides.

HR must ensure that company values are reflected in all the moments of the employee experience, and that those moments are embodied in clear and tangible touchpoints— as service design does with the external client.

Just as happy clients are loyal, happy employees are more committed, more enthusiastic, and more productive. We believe all human resource employees should be service designers or know the tools to incorporate them." 

How do you get internal buy-in at organizations to create meaningful change in the ways that they operate?
"It is important to address the needs of each internal buyer – starting from the CEO down to all the team leaders.

At the highest level, the CEO, we focus on winning the employees loyalty as they are his first customer. For that, it’s important to create an organization where employees feel comfortable and engaged to be the ambassadors of the CEO’s vision.

For the HR Director we highlight that this approach and the human-centered mindset will increase the attractiveness of the company for talents, and that the innovative strategies that we build together will help them finding, retaining, and motivating their employees.

Working with team leaders, we can help develop teams with higher levels of motivation and productivity. We do this by understanding needs and expectations of employees."

For a person embarking on bringing service design to their organization what advice would you have for them to be successful?
"When you are asked to bring a different approach, you face a challenge. As humans, we wish to embrace innovation on the same level that we are resistant to change – and one does not live without the other. This is an even more critical issue on big organisations with high impact projects.

Our main goal is to design better experiences for employees, so they can be the ambassadors of a people-centered business vision. Each organisation has to discover which are the better tools and techniques to design the Employee’s Experience inside each organization.

To be successful, it’s important to:

1. Use Design Thinking to innovate in HR and create an organization human-centered, where people feel recognized, motivated and engaged.
2. Identify the priority personas (e.g., a manager, a new recruit, an experienced hire, etc.) and design HR policies and tools from the lens of these personas.
3. Conduct a focused research within the organization to gather important insights, such as empathic interviews, focus groups or employee’s satisfaction surveys.
4. Identify the moments that matter to the employee’s, and create rewarding journey maps of their employment experience."

What are the podcasts/books/blogs that you go to to stay inspired around service design?
"I’m always on LinkedIn searching for the latest articles, posts and comments on Service Design and Employee Experience. But here is a shortlist of books from our shelf and 'to read list':

Service Design:

• Service Design for Business: A Practical Guide to Optimizing the Customer Experience
• Sprint: How To Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

Employee experience:

• The Employee Experience Advantage: How to Win the War for Talent by Giving Employees the Workspaces They Want, the Tools They Need, and a Culture They Can Celebrate
• The Employee Experience: How to Attracht Talent, Retain Top Performers, and Drive Result"