This is how HR can benefit from Design Thinking Design Thinking will help HR to sit in the shoes of the employees, empathize and see the world from their lenses. Through this process, they will architect the best possible employee experience.
Telegram
Facebook
Copy Link
ETHRWorld Contributor
Updated On Jan 3, 2022 at 04:45 PM IST
Read by: 100 Industry Professionals Read by 100 Industry ProfessionalsPartha Das, Chief People Officer, Manipal Health EnterprisesBy Partha DasMany organizations in the contemporary world have re-written the norms of employee experience. They have made it possible to enhance creativity, innovation, collaboration, and dedication all while resulting in greater capability building.Design Thinking is the new buzzword that can add value in winning visibility in the marketplace! This has given a completely new dimension to coin strategies for culture creation, performance, business capabilities, etc.In layman’s language, it is a creative problem-solving process that uses a human-centric approach to solve problems. It is based on understanding the situational needs of different stakeholders and is used to generate solutions that bring value to all the stakeholders. Advt It is a powerful tool to address the complex challenges as opposed to traditional methodologies.How Design Thinking is transforming HRIt goes without saying that Human Resources can greatly benefit from the design thinking approach. It focuses on solving problems with a human-centric approach.Contemporary HR should use Design Thinking in every function, i.e., from identifying and attracting talent to assigning them the right roles, mapping them to new future roles, and finally nurturing and retaining and helping them develop into great assets for the business. The strategy offers revolutionary insights that help create a great employee experience.How can HR Benefit from Design Thinking!The future of work will require an alignment of the individual and business. It is believed that design thinking is the answer to pave way for HR to drive this alignment and meet challenges while developing the workforce, maintenance, and planning the future.Here’s how design thinking can help HR• Design Thinking will pave the way for the HR professionals to reinvent themselvesDesign thinking encloses an unseen perspective into HR by exploring and offering exciting techniques to reinvent each and every aspect of work. It transforms the traditional process-oriented model into a much better and sharper people-oriented model, wherein personalized solutions for employees become attainable. Advt • Focus on Employee ExperienceIt is a top priority for HR professionals to improve employee engagement which results in a better employee experience. Design thinking provides a new dimension to create inspiring workplaces, user-friendly systems, innovative roles, and other ways of collaboration. Human empathy is the key ingredient to understanding, identifying, and solving problems.• Design Thinking and LearningConventional learning and development content is generic. It does not account for an individual employee’s learning capabilities.Design thinking can help you create the right learning and development initiatives with more adaptive content using the technology. Based on the business and employee needs it can be designed to deliver the best results.• Feed company-wide innovationTo foster an innovative culture, HR can introduce a stimulating design thinking culture across all departments by integrating a new mindset, new outlook, new attitude, and capabilities in all projects that are placed within the organization.• Create a result-oriented mindsetEmployees need to be placed at the heart of the design and ensure that the design is in tandem with the emotions of the users.How to apply Design Thinking to HRHR uses a design thinking model which includes six steps - Empathy, Definition, Ideation, Prototyping, Testing, and Scaling. Let’s talk about two important functions of HR i.e., recruiting and performance management and see ourselves the difference.• EmpathyThe essence of design thinking is empathy because by putting people at the core and understanding their needs and frustrations, you can find their real problems.Now, for recruitment, you need to understand all about your prospective candidates, their needs, wants, expectations, and their fitment to the organization. On the other hand, a design thinking approach to performance management would look at a WIN-WIN situation for the employees and the organization to achieve the respective goals.• DefinitionIt is important to understand and define the problem statement to figure out better solutions.For instance, from a recruiting standpoint, our actual problem can be to attract more candidates with the right skill set, attitude, and competencies. And, under performance management, we want to create high performing culture and teams.• IdeationThe beauty of ideation is the unleashing your creative side and thinking about the best possible ways to solve the problem through brainstorming. Further, exploring different ideas, each extremely different from the other will widen your scope of thought and help you think out of the box.For performance management, think of ways you can encourage collaboration by setting up leaders to take feedback and mentor the teams whereas for recruitment what could be our best possible sources for different positions.• PrototypingFinalize the ideas to see which fit the best in terms of quality and relevance. If the particular piece of performance management problem is to be addressed, we may have two potential mock-ups like to whether to still follow the bell curve discipline or take a call based on the performance.For recruitment, we probably want to make the best use of technology in creating an impactful job description or use social media channels to attract talent.• TestingTesting is typically done in tandem with prototyping. It will help us assess and evaluate our solutions and fine-tune our prototypes. The solution can be an enhanced version of the prototype, a combination of prototypes, or even a new prototype built from scratch when nothing else solves the problem.For example, within the recruitment scenario, we can test the job descriptions, various platforms and see which has gained maximum visibility with candidates. Within the performance management scenario, we can get feedback from the stakeholders whether they are comfortable with the current process and approach.• ScalingThe last step in the process is to consider the validated solution and is a scalable package that is good to go live with the implementation.Breaking down complex problems into multiple simpler phases is the best way to solve any problem so that there is wider acceptance and our goals are fulfilled. Essentially design thinking is a mindset that can be applied to any situation within any department of the organization, especially HR as it involves human element.To summarise, Design Thinking will help HR to sit in the shoes of the employees, empathize and see the world from their lenses. Through this process, they will architect the best possible employee experience.The author, Partha Das, is Chief People Officer at Manipal Health Enterprises.DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETHRWorld does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETHRWorld will not be responsible for any damage caused to any person or organisation directly or indirectly.
ETHRWorld Contributor
Published On Jan 3, 2022 at 04:45 PM IST
Telegram
Facebook
Copy Link
Be the first one to comment. Comment Now
COMMENTS
Comment Now Read Comment (1)
All Comments
By commenting, you agree to the Prohibited Content Policy
Post
By commenting, you agree to the Prohibited Content Policy
Post
Find this Comment Offensive?
Choose your reason below and click on the submit button. This will alert our moderators to take actions REASONS FOR REPORTING
Foul Language
Defamatory
Inciting hatred against a certain community
Out of Context / Spam
Others
Join the community of 2M+ industry professionals
Subscribe to our newsletter to get latest insights & analysis.
Read by 100 Industry Professionals 
Be the first one to comment. Comment Now 
