Experience Willow - Human Resources Team of the Year

Company: Experience Willow, Decatur, GA
Company Description: Experience Willow is an award-winning experiential design and production agency, headquartered in Decatur, Georgia, that helps its partners harness the power of their shared stories and experiences to drive change, transform culture and deliver meaningful business results.
Nomination Category: Human Resources Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Human Resources Team of the Year

Nomination Title: IEX People & Culture: Cultivating the IEXceptional Experience

At IEX, we strive to set new standards and raise the bar from what came before us – and that extends not only to technology solutions we build for our customers, but also programs and practices we use to hire, manage, grow and retain our talented group of employees we call IEXers. Since our founding in 2012, innovation has been embedded into our company culture because innovation is embedded into our IEX Mission: To inspire fairness and innovation by creating technology that levels the playing field. Together IEXers tackle systemic problems with systematic solutions that make technology work for everyone.

The People & Culture team began when Andrea Ledford, the company’s first Chief People Officer, joined in late 2018. To help her team drive smart innovations, Andrea established a human-centered design approach to systematically define and creatively solve IEX business and talent challenges. The team’s design practice, as they work together to power what they call the IEXceptional Experience, focuses on 5 iterative actions: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test and Execute. By deploying these actions within an agile approach, the People & Culture team has been able to consistently cultivate innovation and improvements that drive significant business impacts.

2019: Year of Performance

-Formalized human-centered design practice and initiated partnership with external design firm to serve as strategic design consultants on people roadmap and experiences (Exhibit 1)
-To jumpstart empathy, deployed employee experience survey and CPO conducted interviews with leaders (100%) and contributors (50%)
-Using needs and insights uncovered, defined IEXer Employee Journey highlighting Pain Point areas (Exhibit 2)
-Prioritized 2 critical Pain Points in Perform journey to redesign first, Performance Management and Compensation
-Conceived and introduced VAMOS (Vision Actions Measures Obstacles Standards), a modern performance management program that couples people management with business management to create the culture of clarity, alignment and accountability IEXers wanted (Exhibit 3)
-Designed and instituted first-ever compensation strategy that aligned resources with business vision and goals and competitively positioned IEX in global marketplace

2020: Year of Onboarding & Workplace Transformation

-Using 2019 data and insights, segmented IEXers into 3 personas for all experience designs
-During height of pandemic, designed, prototyped and launched JumpStart virtual onboarding experience for new hires and hiring managers (Exhibit 4)
-Successfully transitioned from Everyone-in-One-Office culture to Remote-Flexible environment; Rolled out first-ever Flexible PTO
-IEXceptional Experience: Formalized empathy and listening practice with inaugural IEXceptional Experience census, event-specific surveys and guided conversations

The IEX People & Culture achievements are unique and significant:

Standing up an agile human-centered design practice is not standard operating protocol for today’s HR organizations. Empathy, personas, journey maps and prototypes are normally tools used by product developers and managers. Cultivating an agile, iterative practice where HR systems, practices and programs are continually improved over time is simply not today’s norm.

VAMOS (Vision Actions Measures Obstacles Standards) is a simple yet innovative management approach that integrates business and employee performance management to create the culture of clarity, alignment and accountability IEXers craved. This dynamic, conversation-driven approach is not the norm at most companies today.

Flexibility-focused culture changes catalyzed by COVID were well received and successfully navigated by employees and teams. Feedback has been positive and engagement steady or rising throughout the pandemic. According to Gallup engagement gurus, this has definitely not been the 2020 norm.

IEXceptional Experience tracking revealed overwhelmingly positive sentiment on efforts like Compensation and VAMOS. Well-designed initiatives like these have positively impacted experience drivers like teamwork, collaboration, coaching and feedback, career management, learning and growth (Exhibit 5)

Significant impacts on the business and employees include:

-Exceeded projected annual revenues in 2020
-Launched industry-first tech solution on time and budget in 2020
-Employee engagement +11 points YOY; +2 over Top 10% benchmark
-Team trust and respect +19 YOY
-Able to collaborate easily with others +10 YOY
-Regular coaching and feedback +15 YOY
-Feel safe to discuss career aspirations +12 YOY
-Opportunities to learn and grow +12 YOY

-Formalized human-centered design practice and initiated partnership with external design firm to serve as strategic consultants (Exhibit 1)

-To jumpstart empathy, deployed survey and CPO conducted interviews with leaders (100%) and contributors (50%)

-Using needs and insights uncovered, defined IEXer Journey highlighting Pain Points (Exhibit 2)

-Prioritized 2 Pain Points in Perform to redesign first, Performance Management and Compensation

-Conceived and introduced VAMOS (Vision Actions Measures Obstacles Standards), a modern performance management program that couples people and business management to create the culture of clarity, alignment and accountability IEXers wanted (Exhibit 3)

-Using 2019 data and insights, segmented IEXers into 3 personas for all experience designs

-During height of pandemic, designed, prototyped and launched JumpStart virtual onboarding experience (Exhibit 4)

-Successfully transitioned from Everyone-in-One-Office culture to Remote-Flexible environment; Rolled out first-ever Flexible PTO

-IEXceptional Experience: Formalized empathy and listening practice with inaugural IEXceptional Experience census, event-specific surveys and guided conversations