How might we make more meaningful connections with our teams and employees during social distancing?

SOLUTION: OPEN SPACE*

Open Space is a digital platform that helps companies and employees maintain and build on the meaningful connections they created during the COVID-19 crisis.

It is a community space that any company or working individual can join to share, exchange, or simply be inspired by others’ experiences of having meaningful connections while working remotely. Companies are able to create private channels that are exclusively for their employees, who can connect in a variety of ways: as a whole group, by department, by initiative or project, and by personal interests. Open Space features include employee profiles, a section for posting individual stories (video, audio, or written) about creating meaningful connections, the ability to create culture communities, an Idea Jar, and a "Hallway" for spontaneous and unintentional exchanges. * Note: Open Space is a concept title that emerged during the #HRvsVirus Hackathon.

WHAT WE LEARNed DURING DISCOVERY

We conducted primary and secondary research- interviews, a questionnaire and articles. We got 57 responses to the survey and 8 responses to interviews- employees and HR managers.

We analyzed the data we collected. Our findings were as follows:

People who responded to our survey and interviews mostly have had a positive experience during the crisis.
More productive and have better time management
Silos are coming down
More work is getting done electronically (that people thought couldn’t be done that way - law, advertising)
Being able to see people in meetings (using video)
Trust remained or increased thanks to transparent and open communication
The initiative to connect has not always come from HR. Sometimes it has been individual leaders or managers who have started a meeting or happy hour or check-in.
Meaningful connections have changed. Less physical interaction has translated into more meaningful virtual interactions
We are seeing the more “personal” side of people (dogs, kids) and we are making time for that.
People are getting more comfortable sharing their life - there is a sense of humanity - we are all human and have similar issues.
In some way it is also breaking down the hierarchy. We might be seeing that higher level managers are vulnerable people too (but this is not true for everyone)
It’s forcing companies to accept initiatives like “bring your whole self to work” - making space for people’s life situations. Humanizing work.
It reduces uncertainty and stress for people if they know where the company is going - even if it’s bad news (lay-offs) It’s better to do all the lay-offs at once, rather than in pieces.
People have become more intentional with creating interaction

Research details and tools can be accessed here.

WHAT WE brainstormed DURING IDEATION

Based on our findings from the research, we realized we needed to redefine our HMW (How Might We…?). We realized that employers are feeling more connected now. So we decided that we needed to take what good is coming out of this situation and try to continue in the post-COVID scenario.

Much discussion led to this statement: How might we help employees maintain meaningful connections to the company and their colleagues in a way that builds on the connections created during the crisis?

We also decided that we are focusing on building a solution for HR managers as they would buy this, but employees are the real final users. The user of the solution will be employees.

After we spent some time on ideas, we plotted them on an impact vs effort chart, and we chose to focus on solutions that would be low on effort but have high impact for the prototyping purposes. However, we will list a few other ideas we had, since it may be picked up and elaborated on by some others with more time and resources.

We used Miro to ideate.

The Solution We Designed

We redefined our challenge based on our survey results. We realized that connections are being made, but we need a constant reminder and a platform that enables them more easily. So we created an app for employees, in a company. They can share their connection stories, join communities and join hallways- where the impromptu connections happen. We are recreating the workplace accident meetings.

Our solution is an app where meaningful connections are made, continued, and encouraged.

1. a place where people can share stories of how they had or have meaningful connections

2. a hallway where they bump in to colleagues and have spontaneous, unplanned chats

3. a Culture Community that promotes/ encourages teams to communicate.

All the designs we created can be found here.

The Design Team

Barbara Boldt, Stuti Dhandhania, Leila Matta, Mackenzie Rohn, Katerina Bohle-Carbonell, Janke Behnen