Maternity Leave
Maternity Leave Revamp
Envisioning an improved leave experience
About this Project
Ford HR had made improvements to the corporate maternity leave policy, but were still learning of overwhelming negative experiences with the process. With a new focus on design thinking, the team looked for a small team to lead them through to identify both quick wins to improve and far term goals to reach for. At the end of the 8 week sprint with a cross functional HR and D-Ford team, a prioritized strategy for the now, near, and far term was crafted with 3 prototypes being launched.
Timing
February 2019 - April 2019 ( 8 week sprint )
My role(s)
Coach, UX Researcher, Facilitator
Approach
Using the framework of learn, imagine, and build, we used design thinking methods and tools to uncover our customer pain points, create high-level customer journey maps, ideate solutions, and synthesize and prioritize to craft a strategy that could be iterated with other leave policies. This was important as when the project started the scope included all forms of leave at the company, which was then narrowed down in the first workshop.
Process
After initial meetings, the project can be broken into four distinct activities: a Central Question workshop and synthesis, User Research and synthesis, Concept Generation, and Prioritization.
Central Question Workshop
When the project started, the HR team had tried at crafting their own central question: “How can our employees take a leave of absence and experience customer satisfaction with the process?” While it was a fine start, it was not quite specfic enough for what they were going for. We spent the first two weeks focusing on how to scope the project, which culminated in an interactive life-sized board game themed workshop to walk thorugh an analogous experience to best understand the emotions involved through maternity leave. From there we were able to distill to our three design themes of culture, joy, and presence, and land on our central question.
“How might we create a parental leave process that is simple and frustration free allowing the parent to place focus where the need it to be?
”
User Research and Synthesis
Creating the journeys from interview synthesis
Due to recent changes in the policy, to identify the correct pain points we were left with a very specifc user profile, for which HR was able to identify 5 unique people to interview, covering edge cases of working in different environements, moving for Ford, and paternity leave as that was a new add. I developed an interview guide and worked with HR to properly notetake to understand each journey of our interviewees. These journeys were then synthesized into three distinct high-level jouney maps with three personas: Mona, Olivia, and Rosa, which would be used for our concept generation workshop.
Concept Generation
With a cross functional and diverse team of new mothers, HR, and designers, we ideated off of the journey we crafted to identify both where we could fix pain points but also elevate neurtral and positive experiences to truly capture a simple and joyful process where we could. We also revisted our central question with the team, and were able to refine it with these new insights.
“How might we create a simple, seamless parental leave experience that reinforces the employee’s positive connection to Ford?
”
Prioritization and Results
Prioritization
The core team came together and synthesized the workshop inputs first into themes of where the most change could be implemented. Using a matrix of feasibility and now/near./far, we plotted solutions to prioritize and create a strategy.
Results
The strategy developed received positive feedback from HR leadership. Three concepts were selected for prototype, including updating maternity rooms and gifting new mothers the pump accessories that match the pumps in the room.
