Centralizing corporate communication channels to connect with different worker profiles and contexts...

How to engage and connect with each worker of every department along the country?

Role: UX Researcher and Product Strategist

Sector: HR from Beverage Company

Project time: 6 months for MVP

Status: Launched, Iterated and Scaled

Team:

Product OwnerProject ManagerUX Lead DesignerUX Researcher and Product Strategist (Me)UI Designers (2)

Tools:

Adobe Xd
Adobe Illustrator
Miro
Google Analytics

Workers across different departments had varying levels of connection and engagement within the company. Plant operators felt excluded, sales force faced unique challenges, and HR lacked the necessary insights. To address these issues, we created "Embajadores BeerOffice," a platform that centralizes communication and enhances engagement strategies for AB-Inbev employees.

💡 Opportunity

To enhance employee experience and foster a sense of belonging, we improved communication channels and established meaningful connections that align corporate culture with the perspectives of our collaborators. Valuable insights were gained from our workforce in the process.

🎯 Product Goal

We aimed to create a meaningful employee experience that fostered a positive working environment, increased a sense of belonging, promoted the adoption of company culture, and encouraged proactive engagement among collaborators.

📊 Business goal

Our goal was to minimize frictions between employees and the company resulting from departmental disparities, reduce personnel turnover, gather data for more effective engagement campaigns, and enhance overall employee performance by fostering a sense of inner satisfaction.

Process

Context

HR gathered valuable insights about employee frictions through exit interviews, work environment surveys, and one-on-one feedback sessions. These inputs played a crucial role in the project planning, especially during the discovery phase. Despite the challenges posed by the Covid quarantine measures, the team quickly adapted by implementing the planned tools and frameworks, becoming a successful case study and setting a benchmark for digital transformation within the company.

Process

Research

As part of the team, I defined and executed research strategy to validate business hypotheses and understand employee needs, desires, fears, and motivations in relation to their connection with the company.

Process / Research

The research plan included co-creation workshops, surveys, interviews, card sorting, brainstorming, and analysis sessions involving various employee profiles and stakeholders. Through these methods, we generated deliverables such as empathy maps, user personas, journey maps, and quantitative analysis.

Process

Scope Framing

Based on research insights, we co-created a value proposition with three key pillars:

Beer Culture: Democratizing knowledge about the company's product across departments.

Compensation and Benefits: Providing comprehensive information on monetary and emotional rewards.

A Better World: Encouraging employee engagement in social responsibility initiatives..

Process

The product was initially designed to cater to over 3,500 employees in AB-InBev's Colombian branches. Due to its rapid adoption and successful goal achievement, it garnered significant attention and support from stakeholders in LATAM branches. As a result, there was a push to expand the reach of the product to other countries in the region, including Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, and more

Process

Concept & Strategy

I collaborated with the design lead in architecting the product, defining user flows, task flows, and low-fidelity wireframes. We also established visual and UI kit guidelines. Through thorough data analysis, we gained insights into the complexity and developed a robust value proposition. We then created a roadmap to effectively manage the backlog and ensure a holistic approach.

Process

Wireframing and prototyping

After strategic planning, we translated the gathered information into page-flows, aligning key actions with the product goals.

We then focused on interface layouts, detailed flows, and edge cases to create high-fidelity sitemaps and user flows. Collaborating closely with UI roles, we seamlessly integrated aesthetics and visual communication.

Process

Handoff and development

Collaborating with the UI team, we built the User Interface Kit with an atomic approach, incorporating affordance, color hierarchy, and element sizing.

We ensured comprehensive task flows that addressed technical scenarios and edge cases aligned with the roadmap and epic task division.

Results & Conclusions

We successfully launched the first version of the product, achieving the traffic goal within a week. Over 95% of the workforce embraced Embajadores, accessing essential information on compensation, benefits, and alliances. It also served as a channel for learning about the company's beer production process and initiatives for positive social and environmental impact.

We streamlined employee touchpoints, integrating internal events, brand campaigns, and corporate processes into a single platform accessible on various devices. These innovations fostered stronger employee engagement and a closer connection to the company's core values.

To enhance the employee experience and gather valuable data, we closely monitored user behavior associated with the pillars. This allowed us to identify areas for improvement and iterate on content, screens, and flows to align with both product and user goals. Collaborating with the analytics and SEO teams, we optimized content searchability and findability, resulting in increased engagement with the new corporate communication channel.

Takeaways

The onset of Covid-19 disrupted our project plans, pushing us into uncertainty. This revealed the primary pain point behind Embajadores: the disconnection felt by employees in remote departments. We adapted our research approach, transitioning from on-site to remote methods and engaging participants from across the organization.

Maintaining a focused perspective, we explored opportunities and addressed frictions while adhering to our initial plan. The cohesive team environment proved invaluable, emphasizing the importance of a positive work culture in delivering value to the process and product.

💡 Strengthened soft skills

Pitching decisions to c-level stakeholders
Negotiation
Prioritizing tasks and roadmap them
Data-driven decisions making
Opportunity, problem and solution framing
Assertive communication
Product and team strategy

⚙️ Strengthened hard skills

UX research planning and execution
Data collection and analysis
Responsive design
Information architecture
Adobe Xd
Google Analytics
Progressive Web Application approach

Diego Franco

Process

Context

Process

Research

Process / Research

Process

Scope Framing

Process

Process

Concept & Strategy

Process

Wireframing and prototyping

Process

Handoff and development

Results & Conclusions

Takeaways

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