We were joined by the brilliant Riffat Ahmed, Head of People Technology and Digital at Bupa, on our recent EX Space webinar. If you didn’t manage to join us you can catch up here. Riffat talked about Bupa’s journey towards a ‘consumer-grade’ people experience, and the story he shared really resonated.
For years employee experience has been seriously lagging behind advances made in customer experience, and never more so than in the digital space. I often share the quote from Gallup, that employees are now the consumers of the workplace, so I was super keen to understand Bupa’s journey towards providing their employees with a consumer grade digital experience.
First up, Riffat talked about the work that went in to understanding exactly what makes a digital experience ‘consumer grade’? It was clear that a huge amount of time and energy had gone into to distilling this complex question into some clear and simple design principles. In summary a consumer grade digital experience needs to:
1. Be simple
2. Look good
3. Be intuitive
4. Be accessible
I had a lightbulb moment when Riffat explained that we have been too focused on providing professional-grade experiences – that is designing solutions for subject matter experts rather than the end users, in this case our employees. The tech landscape has evolved as such to provide multiple products servicing different professional requirements in isolation. In short it feels chaotic, and the experience is a million miles from where it needs to be.
Riffat and his team took a human-centred design-approach to genuinely understand what employees need and want from their digital experience, using employee personas to help them view the experience from different points of view. They identified a range of opportunities, including personalisation, automation and integration, with the over-arching theme being ‘just make it easy and simple to use!’
The team are now on a transformational journey to improve the digital experience their people have, and the improvements they are making have not been designed in isolation but in response to robust discovery work.
One of the most fundamental changes they are making is to provide a ‘single entry point’, kind of like a front door that gives you access to the various tools and resources. So, rather than having to search for and then sign into different tools and apps the single entry point takes you through to what they call the ‘The Experiential Layer’, which is described as ‘where our people live’. This layer involves personalised homepages and content, search engines that work, access to data & insights, the ability to connect with colleagues, and conversational AI bots which trigger automated processes alongside true ‘co-pilot assistants’, which support them with their role.
The journey is still work in progress, but Riffat has promised to come back next year and give us an update on where they are at in their transformation. At People Lab we have been helping organisations develop their digital experience strategy, taking a human-centred design approach, to ensure costly tech investment mistakes are avoided at all costs. If you‘d like to find out more about our approach we’d love to hear from you.
And if you haven’t signed up to The EX Space yet what are you waiting for? Joining will unlock tools and resources to help you develop an amazing employee experience, whether it’s digital or not. If you’d like a tour drop us a line today or book in here.
