Entrepreneurship Assignment: Design Thinking For Employee Engagement

Question

Task:
Think of a business opportunity or problem that you would like to work on and prepare a report on how you would apply design-thinking methods in this context. An integral foundation of this entrepreneurship assignment is to clearly articulate an appropriate start-up ecosystem in which your proposed start-up is intended.

Answer

Executive summary
The origin of design thinking dates back to 1969 in Herbert Simon’s “The Sciences of the Artificial”. It is a method of answer based thinking to create a positive effect or conclusion. “Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford” is used here to solve the issue of employee engagement and retention. High-turnover organisations have a tough time structuring the culture they desire as there are fewer long-term workers to show the perfect behaviours. Growing worker engagement can help in improving retention. Design thinking engages developing empathy which is a main human-centred design standard for the people it is designed for.

Introduction
Organizations nowadays are concentrating on recuperating worker experience and this is being held up by a massive amount of criticism kit, wellness and health apps, and worker self-service knowledge. Design thinking is particularly well matched to tackle the dispute of worker engagement, contentment, and withholding. Designers carry out a profound ethnographic investigation to fabricate empathy and consideration for the worker experience. Through background investigation, immersive meetings, and other methods, designers put up belief and might expose concerns stakeholders in the business had not considered asking their workers about. Workers might also be enquired to keep a diary of their activities and feelings throughout their workday—that can give way insights into the core reasons of worker dissatisfaction. The paper uses the stages of design thinking to improve the problem of employee engagement in businesses.

Entrepreneurship ecosystems
Entrepreneurship has the probability to tackle breaches in financial development, constancy, and other methods of comfort in countries. The surroundings or ecosystem in which a mogul is functioning directly and circuitously influences entrepreneurial achievement and impact. Advances to defining and calculating capitalist or entrepreneurship ecosystems differ extensively, however, a mixture of active frameworks illustrates a set of areas that are the solution to the majority of these ecologies (Johennesse & Chou, 2017). The major symbol for the development of entrepreneurship as a monetary expansion scheme is the “entrepreneurship ecosystem.”

Design thinking
The origin of design thinking dates back to 1969 when Herbert Simon in his hardback “The Sciences of the Artificial” originally initiated the idea of design as a means of thinking. However, this is a new concept for HR. Design thinking is a means for the imaginative resolution of troubles. It is a method of answer based thinking to create a positive effect or conclusion. Design thinking is at the present measured as a means to construct goods that incorporate industry and technical requirements together to distribute what the public requires (Ma, Mayfield & Mayfield 2018). The idea has established a normal flow into how businesses are currently thinking regarding designing persons, procedures and practices making workers at the centre of it. Design thinking also referred to as a human-centred plan, is a course that can authorize human resources meanings to assist and care for worker engagement. The method offers the required equipment, mindsets, and habits of functioning to rethink the complete worker experience from an employee-centric perspective.

Design thinking models
“Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford” presents programs with the objective to bring jointly undergraduates from across Stanford University and trade influential from the business into discovering their imaginative assurance and its DT structure has a 5-level drive. The stages are “empathise”, “define”, “ideate”, “prototype”, and “test”.

"Idea Couture" unites DT with potential thinking and relates natural method as a way to attain a business plan for consumer experience modernism. Idea Couture's DT structure unites the areas of "System Thinking", "Business Strategy" and "Design", while as well combining "Futures Thinking" to have a logic of tomorrow's advertising for consumer experience (Kundu & Gahlawat, 2016).

“Frog” has an appealing DT method that is flowing and permits searching of facts in a non-linear way. It has a statement that groups might begin with a joint idea although the objectives would alter each instant they find out and develop from an action. The structure is delineated in six steps: “Clarify”, “Build”, “Seek”, “Imagine”, “Make”, and “Plan”.

“Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford” is used here to solve the issue of employee engagement. This framework is used here as it is agile and helps in easily learning what answers might fencing for the workers. This framework provides the chance to ask workers to test the thoughts throughout the way of implementing the solution (Huq & Gilbert, 2017).

Overview of the service
Best workers are hyper-conscious of their worth in the market. To keep them, HR requires starting curating worker experiences with plans and procedures that give out the wants of top faculty. Design Thinking has the possibility to carry human-centred knowledge that twists the best persons into the prime fans. Design Thinking values compel the business to begin prototyping rapidly and allow the faults in the idea to disclose themselves before time (Hadi & Ahmed, 2018). Together with common chances to guide, gather feedback and repeat, Design Thinking will assist the business to stay away from a lot of the anticipation and examination. The better the company appreciates its persons, the better it can plan programs that distinguish them in the manner they desire to be documented and expand them the means by which they desire to be developed. Design thinking services that are based on understanding for the customer might be a necessary piece of the plan to retain the top workers.

Define-research-ideate-prototype-choose implement and learn
Define
After finding the problem, the business needs to create a map of the issues. This can be done by writing worker response from the survey conducted on notes. The notes need to include both negative and positive attitudes of workers. HR needs to focus on one theme per note. "Affinity mapping” must be done to look for patterns in the issue. A faster method to do this is by utilising “sentiment analysis” in the worker survey tool. The HR will be competent to simply observe worker responses in a word cloud. These responses can then be put onto the post-its. After writing the issues on the notes, the business needs to go through the issues and frustrations that the workers are facing and their wants and needs. A “point of view statement” is then needed to easily identify the issue (Schönebeck & Schönebeck, 2016). This statement for the business is the workers are leaving the company as there are inefficient training and no career growth.

Ideate
When wanting to recognize possible answers to a crisis, it is significant to divide the act of providing the facts from the performance of assessing or narrowing down information. Brainstorming must take place in its own "time-boxed" room, to produce as many facts as probable. Ideation is all regarding coming up with as numerous facts as possible. This stage has to be conducted in teams that can comprise the HR team, and also workers who are superior in engagement. It must be made sure that the opinions of each worker are taken into consideration. Wild and innovative ideas have to be encouraged at this stage. Every worker in the team must be provided with a chance to speak about their ideas without any judgement (Dam & Siang, 2018). All the ideas offered by the workers must be considered and the one that can best suit the issue of employee engagement and retention must be put to use. After talking about the thoughts, the aim of the business is to rise with a solution report. For the company, the incentive program provides workers who want to stay in the company with proper rewards and recognition.

Prototype
The resolution to the trouble has not been determined. Instead, there are one or more runners for ideas. At this point, each competing thought will yet have a few faults or omitted aspect. As the particulars are indistinct, there might be a little cynicism adjoining the thought. Rather than forcing a conclusion around an indistinct thought, clarity has to be built and the particulars need to be made clear. Now that the company has arrived with a workable plan, it needs to construct or sketch what it might appear like. There are lots of methods that the company can prototype (Luchs, 2015). Flip charts can be used with the team to come about with a thought for the design. The plan create can be given a name and symbol and the profits can be incorporated into a motto.

Testing
Design thinking is constructed on teamwork so the testing must begin with a petite pilot group of workers and feedback has to be collected. Workers from all ranks, sites and subdivisions can also be included. They can be requested to join working groups. Their criticism can be asked for with the help of the employee engagement platform that is created. The idea can be developed according to the feedback of the workers. Testing at an early stage of the idea and failing will provide the initiative a “tried and tested” approach before launching the initiative (Wrigley & Straker, 2017).

Apply
The splendour of this structure is that it does not require to be utilized in linear series. As there is an effective solution to the issue of employee retention and engagement, there is no requirement to return to the first stage. The solution can be applied whenever needed by the company after gathering feedback.

Fig 1: stages of design thinking
(Source: media.nngroup.com, 2021)

Problem
When workers are not busy at work, they have the slight motivation to wait. Yet pay boosts frequently cannot continue a worker who is not occupied, particularly if they do not perceive a talented future that comprises satisfying labour and an apparent growth course. Concentrating on engagement might assist decrease turnover, which also eases staffing problems as there are fewer empty places to fill up The price of turnover comprises misplaced output, lost income, staffing, education, and so on (Elsbach & Stigliani, 2018). High-turnover organisations have a tough time structuring the culture they desire as there are fewer long-term workers to show the perfect behaviours. As well, when workers perceive that others regularly depart the business, it puts a pessimistic attitude and makes them query why they are in the company. Growing worker engagement can assist perk up retention and besides offer the profit of enhanced efficiency and superior employee contentment.

Solution
Conventionally, human resources are responsible for directing a new worker through the course of being a worker at a company. This can engage employing, arranging payroll, health insurance vote, and using process- and paperwork-connected trouble as they happen. This symbolizes a more transactional association among human resource experts and workers. Design thinking, conversely, engages developing empathy which is a main human-centred design standard for the people it is designed for. This needs that the HR goes to where workers are to appreciate their wants, desires, and behaviours. This is frequently conducted by in-person discussions, comments, and a profound interest in the world of the target spectators. As well, “organizational improve” might be an outstanding tool to develop empathy. Design thinking needs extreme caring on the experience of workers. After the company has this understanding, it can start to imagine far more deliberately regarding the employee knowledge and go further than the fundamental “resource”-inspired rules and events. Design thinking supports that the company use its profound understanding of the audience as a way for designing answers (Liedtka, 2017). In human resources this means asking the company and the workers how each choice might have an effect on the worker experience After carrying out the empathy-based study, the company might have customers list out the standards or philosophy that they desire a worker to utilize when telling what it is like to have a job at their business. As the company has deeply appreciated its workers, it might be more convinced that the principle declarations please what workers want. After the company has recognized what kind of experience it desires them to contain — and the HR has a profound understanding of their wants and what is important to them, it can make choices that resolve real problems. The company can self-assuredly undertake significant issues and resolve the problem of employee experience by having a proper understanding of the problems that employees are having and thus leaving the company (Elsbach & Stigliani, 2018).

Ethical behaviour
Ethical Design Thinking is methods that hearten designers centre on human-adjusted principles all through their design course. Though we think of ourselves to be moral persons, there might be times when human-based values are not considered while making products. Consequently, shortcuts are taken and the material, mental, and emotional consequences of the products are not seen. By inserting principles at the heart of the services, designers can be offered the equipment to produce an additional ethical advance to design (Gasparini, 2015).

Conclusion
Design thinking provides a human-centric approach that helps in solving the issues of employee engagement and retention. By having a moral approach the issues that the workers are facing can be understood and empathy can be used to solve these issues.

Reference list
Dam, R., & Siang, T. (2018). What is design thinking and why is it so popular. Interaction Design Foundation. Retrieved from: http://athena.ecs.csus.edu/~buckley/CSc170_F2018_files/What%20is%20Design%20Thinking%20and%20Why %20Is%20It%20So%20Popular.pdf

Elsbach, K. D., & Stigliani, I. (2018). Design thinking and organizational culture: A review and framework for future research. Journal of Management, 44(6), 2274-2306. Retrieved from: https://escholarship.org/content/qt5qh451j5/qt5qh451j5.pdf

Gasparini, A. (2015, February). Perspective and use of empathy in design thinking. In ACHI, the eight international conference on advances in computer-human interactions (pp. 49-54). Retrieved from: https://www.academia.edu/download/36907810/gasparini-final-3.pdf

Hadi, N. U., & Ahmed, S. (2018). Role of employer branding dimensions on employee retention: Evidence from educational sector. Administrative Sciences, 8(3), 44. Retrieved from: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/8/3/44/pdf

Huq, A., & Gilbert, D. (2017). All the world’sa stage: transforming entrepreneurship education through design thinking. Education+ Training. Retrieved from: https://researchrepository.rmit.edu.au/view/delivery/61RMIT_INST/12247602150001341/13248407370001341

Johennesse, L. A. C., & Chou, T. K. (2017). Employee Perceptions of Talent Management Effectiveness on Retention. Global Business & Management Research, 9(3). Retrieved from: http://www.gbmrjournal.com/pdf/vol.%209%20no.%203/V9N3-4.pdf

Liedtka, J. (2017). Evaluating the impact of design thinking in action. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2017, No. 1, p. 10264). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management. Retrieved from: https://journals.aom.org/doi/pdf/10.5465/ambpp.2017.177

Ma, Q. K., Mayfield, M., & Mayfield, J. (2018). Keep them on-board! How organizations can develop employee embeddedness to increase employee retention. Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal. Retrieved from: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e3ef/1b066f89f944b9f1e42fa41359a4b7629755.pdf

Schönebeck, J., & Schönebeck, M. (2016). Engagement and Retention: Introduction and Overview. Handbook of Human Resources Management, 617-627. Retrieved from: http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/38948/1/238.Matthias%20Zeuch.pdf#page=625