Design Thinking in Human Resources: How to apply it and why?

28 de March, 2024

An absolutely decisive part of the success and competitiveness of organizations depends on their ability to involve and retain their human capital. To do this, those responsible for human resources must be prepared to give up obsolete visions and processes and to incorporate tools and approaches that are more in line with the current world of work.

One of these approaches is design thinking. Come and discover with us what design thinking is, how it can be applied to human resources and why it can have a very positive impact in this area.

What is design thinking?

Design thinking is a people-centered approach that consists of finding solutions based on the needs of the stakeholders involved. The focus is not on the challenge or problem itself, but on who is being impacted by it.

Simply put, design thinking focuses on people and their experience, rather than on processes. That’s why one of the five pillars of design thinking is empathy.

What are the five principles of design thinking?

Design thinking is based on five pillars:

• Empathy: this consists of understanding people’s experience, looking at a particular issue from their perspective, with the aim of trying to find a relevant and effective response to their needs.
• Collaboration: having different ideas and points of view allows for a more solid and comprehensive understanding of needs, which is why design thinking is a collaborative approach.
• Ideation: people’s needs are constantly evolving, so it’s essential to create a safe space in which people feel they can regularly share new ideas.
• Experimentation: design thinking is very much associated with the idea of testing, making mistakes and trying again based on the feedback gathered.
• Action: as an approach that aims to put ideas into practice in order to solve problems, it is necessary to get down to work, rather than spending too much time discussing the feasibility of measures.

Based on these five principles, processes involving design thinking are typically developed in five phases:

1. Empathizing: getting to know people’s real needs (participating in their activities, collecting feedback).
2. Define: use the feedback gathered to formulate the problem in a simple and understandable way. It should be formulated from the point of view of the person and not from the point of view of the organization.
3. Ideate: brainstorm in an environment that promotes creativity and discourages judgment, with the aim of finding potential solutions to the problem.
4. Prototyping: creating a model that makes it possible to project the implementation of the measures explored – for example, a pilot or a test with a small group – in order to assess their viability and effectiveness.
5. Testing: testing solutions outside of “controlled environments” to analyze what works well and what needs to be improved or adjusted. The ultimate goal is to have the solution validated by the stakeholders concerned.

How can design thinking be applied to human resources?

The very name “human resources” contains the crux of the matter: the fact that companies are made up of people. People who have their own specificities, goals, expectations and needs.

In this sense, the essential function of HR professionals should already be to understand people, to understand the work environment and the challenges it presents. And this is deeply linked to design thinking. By prioritizing the people perspective, design thinking can help optimize the entire employee experience.

Thus, some of the areas to which design thinking can be applied are:

1 – Recruitment and onboarding

Find out what experience candidates have in a recruitment process for your company. At the same time, find out what the needs of newly hired employees are so that they adapt and feel welcome.

By collecting feedback at these two crucial moments to shape professionals’ perceptions of your organization, you can propose and test solutions to optimize the experience.

2 – Professional development

Use design thinking to draw up and personalize career development plans. Understand the needs and objectives of different employees and, based on this, provide flexible, relevant and adaptable professional growth opportunities.

3 – Performance management

Performance management presupposes that the work carried out by employees is aligned with the company’s business objectives.

In this sense, a design thinking approach can help HR managers and leaders define clear and precise objectives and design plans that encourage good performance and productivity.

4 – Diversity and inclusion

Design thinking can also be used to reduce any unconscious biases in recruitment and to find strategies for attracting more diverse talent.

It can also help to design a more inclusive organizational culture that, in practice, improves the experience of minorities or marginalized groups and effectively celebrates diversity.

5 – Remuneration and employee benefits

The empathy adjacent to design thinking should help HR managers and managers to understand the socio-economic context in which employees are inserted, to consider their needs and possible difficulties, and to prioritize their financial well-being.

In turn, the ideation phase should help to analyze possible solutions, whether in terms of salary or extra-salary benefits that help to improve the value proposition for employees.

Benefits of design thinking in human resources

Applying design thinking to HR processes implies being really interested in and committed to answering the following question: “What needs to be done to guarantee a good experience for professionals from the moment they join the company until the moment they leave?”.

As soon as human resources departments base their decisions and measures on people’s needs, rather than hunches or opinions, the impact on employee experience and engagement is noticeable.

Some of the benefits are:

• Improve engagement, satisfaction and productivity;
• Develop relevant and effective professional training and career development plans;
• Defining competitive and attractive extra-salary benefits policies;
• Reduce turnover turnover and absenteeism;
• Optimize recruitment and selection processes;
• Consolidate internal communication and organizational culture;
• Improving employer branding;
• Promoting innovation.

In short, design thinking has the potential to reinvent human resources and the growing adoption of this model by many organizations reinforces its importance and value.