The service design community has long recognised the importance of the employee experience as being inherently interlinked with user experience. Employees are integral to any service delivery, whether they are present in face-to-face service interactions, such as hospitality, or whether they are behind the scenes of (primarily) digital services, responsible for apps and interfaces. And of course all backstage service relationships are employee driven and their quality depends on the systematic design of these relationships. Employee happiness, and the efficiency and context in which they work, invariably affect how end users experience a service, in ways great and small.

For many, jobs look quite different than they did just five years ago. Many employers currently compete for highly-skilled workers; in the US alone, unemployment is hovering around its lowest level in 20 years, putting power in employees’ hands. Furthermore, Generation Z bring new expectations into the game; for them, career decisions do not drive their life plans in the way they have done for previous generations. As a result, employers must focus more than ever on factors such as working environments, remote working, work-life balance and DEI. In short, the employee experience simply cannot be neglected, and can benefit greatly from the application of service design.

In this issue of Touchpoint we want to reflect on the opportunities and the specific requirements for service design when designing the employee experience. We want to uncover and share success stories, and find what factors underlie those successes. And we want to open the doors for research questions worth exploring and answering in the field of employee experience.

We are looking for contributions that explore the following questions:

• How can employee journeys be designed that encompass the entire employee lifecycle?
• How can service design impact and influence the ‘Employer of Choice’ positioning of an organisation?
• How does one measure the impact of systematic design of the employee journey?
• What are the differences between service design for end-users/customers, and for employees?
• Which cultural or strategic pre-conditions does it take to successfully design employee journeys?
• How can HR departments be empowered to embrace service design in their practice?
• What are case studies of exemplary service design projects focussed on the employee experience that can be shared with our readers? We are especially interested in cases that span organisational sizes, industries and geographies.

We welcome contributions from throughout the service design community, as well as those with knowledge and experience in this theme, to contribute to this issue. By doing so, you will be helping service designers make the next step towards an even more mature practice of our discipline.

Regular sections

Besides handing in articles related to this issue’s feature, you are also invited to hand in content for the other regular sections of Touchpoint, which are not related to the theme of the issue:

• Cross-Discipline: Highlighting the connection between service design and other disciplines
• Tools and Methods: Introduction and evaluation of techniques and activities for service design projects
• Education and Research: Insights from academia and research. 

Abstract submission:

Read more and submit your abstracts via the online form until 03 April 2023 (23:59 CET).

We are looking forward to many inspiring contributions!