2024
Creating long-lasting tenant relationships through an employee engagement platform
The stakes
Our client, one of the world’s largest real estate developers with nearly $100 billion in assets, faced significant challenges due to the rise of hybrid working models. This led to radical changes in office space dynamics, resulting in higher vacancy rates and shorter lease terms.
However, even with remote & hybrid teams, the office has a role in attracting, engaging, and retaining talent. Thus, we wanted to transform our client from a traditional landlord into an active partner in enhancing employee engagement. Tenants would no longer buy space from our client, but a higher output from their workforce.
My contributions
Prototype design
Product design
Customer research
The team
x2 Customer Researchers
x1 Customer Research Lead
x1 Product Lead
x1 Project Lead
Timeframe
Sep 2023 - Jan 2024
The problem space
Traditional office environments often fail to meet the evolving needs of hybrid employees. This inadequate workplace experience increases turnover rates and makes it difficult to attract top talent, leading to poor human capital outcomes that negatively impact organizational success.
Critical to an experience-based solution are Employees and Experience Leads. Employees are essential because employee experience efforts must prioritize their desires and needs. Meanwhile, Experience Leads play a crucial role as key decision-makers in purchasing and adopting experience-related solutions.
Discovery research
At the start of our engagement, our client had shared findings from initial research they conducted on the workplace experience domain. I helped create 20 concepts based on these insights.
Through two rounds of concept testing, it became clear that we didn’t have a great grasp on Experience Leads’ needs as their feedback lacked meaningful desirability signals.
To fix this, we designed a new testing approach, creating a customization exercise asking Experience Leads to select areas where they most desired support.
Through two additional rounds of testing, we discovered that Experience Leads needed real-time employee data and continual learning about their workforce. They struggled to adapt to the constantly changing needs of their employees, making it difficult to create environments that attract and retain employees.
Understanding Experience Leads’ buying motivation highlighted the need for a tool to engage employees and collect accurate data on their behaviors:
Gathering disparate employee data is difficult and time-consuming.
Experience Leads lack tools to analyze and extract insights from the data.
Acting on employee insights requires too much time, resources and coordination, leaving many initiatives incomplete.
Validating needs
We also wanted to further assess what offerings would truly enhance hybrid employees’ workplace experience in a way that would collect that data for Experience Leads.
Based on our research thus far, we created three pillars of employee needs (meaningful connections, agency, belonging) that would serve as inspiration for 15 new concepts. We tested these over three rounds of interviews with Enterprise Employees.
Though we gained useful qualitative feedback on employee preferences, we needed a larger sample size to show significant quantitative differences between our value props. We created two surveys on Qualtrics to address this:
Survey 1 - 275 Responses
The first survey aimed to validate our concepts with a larger sample size. I compiled this data to help us narrow our potential employee offerings to those focused on wellness, connections, convenience, and spaces.
Survey 2 - 300 Responses
We created a second survey to clarify which specific perks and benefits would be needed in an MVP. I analyzed the 300 responses which gave us insight into how employees prioritized certain features over others.
Prototype design
Guided by our discovery research and concept testing, I created a landing page prototype with two versions to further define product-market fit.
Version 1 - Experience Leads
The first landing page was designed for Experience Leads, detailing how our solution would help them gain actionable insights to improve workplace experience.
Version 2 - Enterprise Employees
The second landing page was created for Enterprise Employees, showcasing what benefits would be available to them through our solution.
Three rounds of prototype testing confirmed that data and continual learning was a compelling value proposition for Employee Experience Leads and that Employees were excited and willing to engage with the offerings.
The MVP
Three rounds of prototype testing gave us formative feedback used to shape our MVP: a workplace experience dashboard that provides employers with real-time insights and recommendations to optimize employee engagement. I collaborated with our Product and Customer Research Leads to create the final designs.
Outcome
The MVP we delivered has received funding for further development and has evolved into a core piece of our client’s business operations. In-market testing continues under CEO leadership.
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