DEpartment of state: employee experience

Type of Work: Service Design, Program and Service Strategy, User Experience, Customer Service, Project Management, Experience Advocate

Artifacts/Deliverable types: Research Plans, Communication Plans, Employee and Stakeholder interviews, Research Readouts, Service Blueprint, Future State Journey Map, Future State Roadmap,

My Role: Customer Experience Strategist, User Experience Designer, Research Lead, Service Designer, Human Centered Design Subject Matter Expert (SME)

- To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted some content.-

Goals for 2021:

  • Improve integrated service delivery across the Executive Office teams - HR, IT, and GSO (General Services Operations) in general and with a focus on onboarding and offboarding for the Bureau of Global Public Affairs (GPA)

  • Enhance the underutilized GPA intranet SharePoint website to leverage as a primary service touchpoint for the Executive Office and employees

  • Develop and support virtual intern program for Executive Office strategy team

  • Advise on Executive Office services and programs with customer experience subject matter lens

  • Advocate customer/employee experience throughout the Bureau and the Department; build networks to educate and share the value of Human Centered Design methodology to offices and staff

Overview:
Every Executive Office functions independently and with their own managers and goals for the year. Awareness on how their silos impacted the employee experience was not well understood and the Executive Director recognized a need to map our services and design our office with a people-first mindset - the Executive Office employees and the GPA employees (customers).
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GPA uses primarily Google products while the rest of the Department solely leverages Microsoft and SharePoint in particular. Challenge to generate buy-in to develop a robust SharePoint internal website to support GPA employees and their Department customers.
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The Executive Office strategy team is small, has limited resources, and are tasked with creating the overall GPA intern program. Bringing in our own interns has helped understand the constraints and supported the best practices for designing a larger program while supporting students and promoting work in the federal government.
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Need for a advising role on additional Executive Office programs, including Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility research, roadmaps, programs, as well as communication plans for bureau-wide surveys and employee engagement, and return to the workplace initiatives.
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Strive to be an advocate of this work and share best practices across teams, offices, and with interested individuals. The HCD mindset and Design Thinking process are new ways of thinking in the Department and the culture leans towards risk-adverse so there is a need for those internal to the Department to speak about their experience and ‘wins’ for approaching problems in a human centered way.

Executive Office Partnership Analysis - Research Lead, Service Design, Strategy, Project Management, Experience Advocate

  • Duration: 4 months (ongoing efforts to address opportunities identified)

  • Developed and briefed Executive Office leadership on Research Plan

  • Created interview guides and interviewed 20/35 staff that comprise the Executive Office from all teams (IT, HR, GSO, Strategy)

  • Synthesized research to develop an Executive Office ecosystem map and research readout with identified themes for opportunities and workshop series with agendas

    • Due to other office priorities this work has been put on hold

Onboarding/Offboarding Integrated Project Team - Service Design, Experience Advocate

  • Duration: 6 months (ongoing efforts to address opportunities identified)

  • Co-leading with a technical SME (IT), formed an Integrated Project Team (IPT) with representatives from each Executive Office

  • Through working sessions and one-on-one interviews, we captured in Excel/Google Jamboard the current onboarding and offboarding processes for each team, including pain points, opportunities, systems/tools, documents/forms, other offices involved, customer actions and team actions

  • Developed Visio process maps to document team process for future SOPs

  • Created a holistic Executive Office service blueprint to identify the backstage and front stage actions and high-level steps of the onboarding and offboarding processes

  • Developed interview guides and conducted interviews with new employees (within 3 months), managers, and CORs to understand their perspective on the onboarding and offboarding processes and identify pain points and opportunities

  • Created journey maps for each step to understand the customer pain points and opportunities and reviewed with the integrated project team

  • Held working session with integrated project team to craft future state solutions to identified pain points and opportunities, prioritize those solutions by the impact to the office and customer and the effort to complete (short term - long term) and turned into a roadmap that we briefed to Executive Office leadership

    • Currently in the process of handing off solutions to teams

    • Integrated project team is continuing working sessions around an onboarding/offboarding resource on the GPA website for new employees, managers and CORs

GPA SharePoint Website Redesign - Research Lead, Service Design, User Experience, Strategy, Project Management, Experience Advocate

  • Duration: 12 months (ongoing efforts to address opportunities identified)

  • Developed interview guides and conducted interviews with website stakeholders and GPA users

  • Conducted a landscape audit of other Department of State internal websites

  • Synthesized research and developed a research readout with current stakeholder and user pain points, identified opportunities, the landscape audit that identified content and functionality that leverages user experience best practices, and a future state sit map broken out into two phases for implementation

  • Briefed research readout and implementation plan to GPA website stakeholders, the Staff Advisory Forum, and Executive Office leadership

  • Provided three contractors to support implementation on redesigned homepage, sub-site template and training, and Executive Office sub-site development

    • Currently in process with regular stakeholder check ins

Strategy Team Intern Program - Project Management, Mentor, Experience Advocate

  • Duration: 10 months (ongoing efforts to address opportunities identified)

  • Led initiative to support the Virtual Student Federal Service (VSFS) intern program in the Executive Office Strategy team

  • Developed intern project application, interview guides, and conducted intern interviews - selected four interns to support from September - May

  • Held brainstorm session with Strategy team to identify the intern experience we want to have as well as the logistics of first two weeks timelines, getting interns access, and understanding how they will integrate into the strategy team

  • Developed welcome email, first two week schedule, intro placemat activity, availability form, GPA resources folder, template for Strategy team workstream presentation, and has set up weekly 30 min connections with each intern

  • The Strategy team has paired up each intern to work on a workstream (DE&I or GPA Orientation Program)

    • Co-leading/mentoring the GPA Orientation Program that just kicked off

Aha Moment

Politics and policy drive the Department of State, but people solve the problems.

The Department is comprised of problem solvers of every design. The sheer amount of side projects/opportunities and unofficial teams forming after a good discussion is illuminating when you consider the other big problems being solved in the day to day. Harnessing that momentum and directing it to the human opportunities is the next step.

Lessons LEarned

  • It’s okay to not always get ‘past’ research and insights

    (The point of understanding and seeing what lies in front of you is to help you know where you’re going)

  • Intentional virtual connection

    (Embrace virtual and keep engagement with others high through multiple channels and valuable one-on-ones)

  • Be a teacher and accept the small wins of educating

    (bringing your passion and perspective to every touchpoint with another individual will sometimes spark or empower in ways you hadn’t even planned)