Why You Should Apply Design Thinking to the Employee Experience | Strategy + Business

Although the employee experience (EX) was a priority for many firms before the pandemic, the crisis has compelled organizations’ to rethink their EX as work, the workplace, and worker expectations continue to transform. And while the pandemic has created various challenges, this article posits that it has also created a once-in-a-generation opportunity to increase engagement and productivity via the EX – shorthand for everything an employee experiences, observes, or feels throughout their employee journey at an organization. The authors note how firms can employ design thinking (a practice used to improve the customer experience by understanding what a customer experiences regarding a firm’s business, product, or service) to enhance the EX. Although the idea of design thinking in the context of the EX is not new, the authors provide a framework known as SPICE (segments, promises, innovation, coherence, and efficiency) to demonstrate how firms can reimagine their EX and use it as a source of differentiation–both now and in a post-pandemic world.