4 principles for designing hr solutions
Is it just me?
Does anyone else find it odd that we learn to use smartphone apps intuitively but often have to sit through hours of training to use HR solutions? It just feels like a missed opportunity when I can search a song or artist name at the press of a button but have to go through excruciating training to learn how to press “Save”. Organizations know the importance of user experience when it comes to attracting and engaging their customers, so why don’t they consider employee experience when building HR solutions to attract and engage employees?
Testing 1…2…3…
Our team tested this idea when we took on a project to re-design a performance management solution. The existing solution had low usage levels, little business relevance, and did not result in meaningful employee development conversations.
While brainstorming our approach, we realized even our team had pent-up frustration toward performance management solutions. We’ve all experienced the feeling of HR asking us to do one more thing at the busiest time of the year especially when the business value was not clear. There had to be a better way … and we were determined to find it.
When life gives you lemons
So, we decided to channel this frustration into our approach by developing four design principles upon which we would not compromise. While these design principles were developed for a particular project, we realized quickly that they apply to any HR solution or deliverable.
Principle #1 – Start and stay focused on organizational purpose and strategy – always. Let’s be honest: any solution will fail if it does not have a clear connection to advancing the organizational purpose and strategy. Employees need to see this connection and immediately understand what is in it for them and why they should be using it. For us, it was critical that the performance management solution result in an overall ratings distribution aligned to business performance and enable productive development conversations. HR solutions need to drive organizational results – the best way to do this is to ensure it is aligned with what the organization is striving to accomplish.
Principle #2 – Employee experience matters more than you think. There is no excuse today for bad design or a poor employee experience. Today’s employees are discerning and have high expectations. A modern, clean, and simple-to-use interface is a must of any system. No one wants to navigate through a cluttered, outdated process or system. Also, the same is true for training and presentation materials. Users have a short attention span. A good rule of thumb: if a user can’t be trained in fewer than ten minutes, something is wrong with the solution design and likely misses the opportunity to engage employees.
Principle #3 – Use conversational language to communicate concepts and ideas. Every functional area (HR, IT, Legal, Finance, etc) has its own jargon. It makes sense – each of these areas has difficult and complex concepts and ideas. When designing solutions, the goal is to translate these concepts into business terms to make them relatable and understandable to all employees. On our project, we replaced terms such as diagnostic information gathering with simple statements like makes decisions based on facts. Again, a solution that is easy to use and understand will motivate employees to commit time to it.
Principle #4 – Be allergic to all things complicated and cumbersome. HR has a reputation for building solutions that are difficult to use and compliance-based. We have to build solutions that drive specific outcomes in a simple way. For example, during our performance management project, we mapped a dozen competencies into four that were critical to shaping the culture and driving business results. We received employee feedback that the solution was easy-to-use, relevant to the business, and facilitated productive year-end conversations.
Apply liberally
These four design principles helped us deliver a solution that advanced business goals and engaged employees. As I mentioned, these design principles can be applied to every deliverable. I would encourage HR professionals to try these principles – whether you are building a presentation for your business leaders, designing a process or system, or creating training materials. In order to engage the employee base and get a “seat at the table”, HR deliverables need to be as intuitive and consumable as smart phones are.