I approach EX as a service designer. I research employee needs while mapping the organisational eco-system people work within. That allows me to demonstrate how employee needs are impacted by a business model and precisely what part of the infrastructure needs to change. Then I run sessions to pinpoint future state aspirations, inspiring teams with emerging ideas from around the world, before helping organisations to build a roadmap to get them to where they need to be. I use a mix of existing and bespoke techniques to make transformation more comprehensible. Here are a few examples of my most recent work.

1.Connecting employee and customer needs

I was asked to help a global automotive brand to rethink the service their customers receive when their vehicles break down. What became apparent was that issues with the customer experience were intrinsically linked to the underlying handovers between employees and teams across a complex global organisational ecosystem. Feelings of helplessness pervaded all teams, which was passed on to the customer. I mapped current day service blueprints for 3 markets and the results were astonishing. So many issues were uncovered and reflected back to the organisation, allowing the team to pinpoint the real work ahead to achieve a best-in-class CX.

2.Self-service support for employees

A popular local university recognised that they needed to develop a staff support platform to help their employees access key IT, finance, HR and procurement services; everyone from tenured professors to the most junior marketing staff. This happened as COVID was accelerating, so the need to enable remote services fast added more pressure. My strategic approach involved understanding the constraints of multiple systems and being able to get to the crux of what a huge range of employees both needed and expected for them to be able to do their work - now and further into the future.

After the strategy was delivered, each of the streams had to deliver 9 key multichannel experiences that made up the support network (service desks, self-service technology, ticketing etc). I was asked to check back in and found that most of the heavy lifting had been done but the interactions weren’t yet unified across touchpoints. For members of staff to feel the benefit of this effort and to opt for self-service online - instead of consistently calling for support - it needed to be as easy and intuitive as possible for people to use the touchpoints available to them. A simple usability analysis of the work in progress allowed the teams to make a few pivots as they were building the solutions.

3.Employee experience for creative making teams

In 2019, I realised that there was a tremendous amount of content emerging about contemporary EX. However, very little focussed on the relatively unique needs of new creative configurations; designers, technologists, strategists, art directors and copywriters, which I refer to as ‘Wolf Pack Creativity’. 

I initiated a research project called The Future of Doing in October 2019, focussing on the workplace experiences of creative makers. I interviewed many outstanding and diverse creative makers around the world and combined forces with The Berlin School of Creative Leadership to covert those insights into a podcast in late 2019 and on open online course in 2020. Read more about the course and the outcomes students achieved.

In August 2021, I founded the Future of Doing as an organisation dedicated to empowering leaders to design better workplace experiences for creative makers. We leverage extensive global insights to inspire challenging conversations about what creative makers really need from their employers.

You can take the course online or start by auditing your your EX and decide if it is suitable for best-in-class innovation and creative making talent. Find out how by watching the video below.