Design Thinking in Tech Hr

Design has great power to influence and transform human behaviour and take it to a whole new dimension. Design is a procedure wherein situations are created in a manner that will elicit the desired behaviour put of an individual rather than their individualistic traits showing up. This helps drive an organisation’s productivity towards the positive side of the growth graph. Design thinking aims towards influencing the behaviour of humans. Hence, this influence can be both positive as well as negative. The design thinking procedure and strategy, therefore, needs to be such that the results are positive. An instance of negative influence of design is when a candidate applying for a job finds the application process to be cumbersome, he/ she tends to form a negative opinion of that particular organisation and all services related to it.

Design thinking needs to be integrative of the individual needs of a person. With the advancement in technology, there has been a rapid change in the way an organisation functions and the way the employees as well as the leaders of the organisation function within the structure. Positive design thinking strategies play a very important role in bridging any gap that might exist in such a situation. People look for simple and intuitive systems that are easy to work with and understand. Implementing design tools accordingly can actually help create solutions which are more human centric.

The domain of HR has been making a move towards a more person centric approach to ensure a better alignment of employee interests with the interests of the organisation. Design thinking is the key to achieving this goal. Employee engagement has come to the forefront with HR tools and strategies focussing more on gathering data right from the target group. Hence, companies like CISCO and AirBnB have been bringing in changes in the way their HR policies function by taking into account the opinion of the employees that are engaged within their organisations.

CISCO has conducted interesting exercises across all sections of its employee base to elicit plausible solutions to problems from the employees themselves and implementing them to a positive effect. The company has recognised certain “moments that matter” from the employee’s point of view such as joining the company, changing jobs, managing emergencies within the family and redesigned HR functions accordingly for a better experience.

AirBnB has recognised the importance of the “experience” of an employee within the workplace and has changed the function of the Chief HR Officer to that of Chief Employee Experience Officer.

With the onset of HR trends such employee engagement, learning, organisational design, analytics (associated with the analysis of employee data) and digital HR, design thinking is gaining importance. Linking design thinking to all these trends, especially when coming up with new digital tools will help create a better