Why are design thinking and Agile methods so critical to your HR strategy?

Changing expectations and the pressure to attract and retain talents are prompting organizations to shift to an Agile methodology. The methodology entails constant cooperation with stakeholders and continuous improvement at every stage, including creative thinking and management. And one of the approaches that help companies become more agile is design thinking. Let’s see what the design thinking process is, how it works for HR, and why it’s essential.

Design thinking is an approach to solving problems through innovations based on human-oriented design. It relies on observing, with empathy, how people interact with their environments and employs an iterative, hands-on approach to creating innovative solutions.

Although this approach appeared a century ago, perhaps even earlier, it gained popularity in the modern business world after Tim Brown, the CEO and president of design company IDEO, published an article about design thinking in the Harvard Business Review.

Tim Brown suggested using design thinking to implement creativity in your business or your HR strategy. He also shared the example of 19th-century English engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who was looking at his business from the design thinking point of view. Brunel said that the railway isn’t just a road passing farther and letting you go faster from one end of the country to another. He wanted to provide an experience for his passengers of floating across the countryside, to make it look like a trip. To do this, he had to create a railway with flatter gradients than had ever been conceived of before, with massive, long viaducts over the rivers and valleys. Design thinking results in a holistic idea of the goals a company wants to achieve. Those ideas were thought up a long time before the design profession emerged.

According to IDC research, 30% to 35% of projects fail because of a reluctance to try creative new approaches. Organizations often turn to Agile methodologies such as Scrum to solve this problem, as they can increase success rates by promoting better collaboration and communication. However, Agile methods provide only part of the solution. So how can we solve the problem completely? That’s where design thinking comes into play.

Combining Agile methods and design thinking is no simple task. It requires a change of culture — getting used to a new way of thinking and acting. But once you do, you’ll see how your teams improve their productivity. Agile methods and design thinking value people, not processes. Organizations should identify the right people for their projects, ensure cultural coherence between teams, and coordinate Agile methods with the design thinking process.

The combination of design thinking and Agile methods can help change HR at its core. It helps companies to develop a human-centric mindset that focuses on creating meaningful experiences. This combination results in an iterative approach to solving complex problems, where the employee is placed at the center of the process.

We have identified six steps in the transition to design thinking. The first move from concrete to abstract thinking and back as the process repeats. So how can the design-thinking approach help HR manager?

Imagine you have complex problems from one side and issues that affect people on another. First, empathize with people in the organization. Ask them what makes them uncomfortable. What are their frustrations? Then define the most urgent problem you want to tackle. Second, brainstorm the best ideas and define the solutions you came to. Finally, think about creating a functional, easy-to-change model of this idea you brainstormed. Do it to test what works and what doesn’t. The design thinking process also helps you scale and ensure that the model of your planning or development is adaptable and quickly implements Agile methods.

While most frameworks and ideologies are broken down into steps, the design thinking process doesn’t require that these steps be taken in a precise order. You can switch between cycles and processes as you see fit until you reach the right solution and design.

Design thinking differs from other processes related to innovation and ideas because it’s solution-based and user-centered rather than problem-oriented. This means it focuses on solving the problem, not the problem itself.

For example, suppose a team has difficulty moving to remote work. In that case, design thinking encourages thinking about increasing employee engagement or moving to a compromise workplace, such as a hybrid work environment.

You can use design thinking in different aspects of HR. For example, you can apply it to recruiting to improve the candidate’s experience. Design thinking allows you to understand how your ideal candidate’s journey for a job looks and what candidates use to evaluate and compare companies and opportunities. So first, design thinking provides insights into what people want and need their experiences, and the touchpoints that allow HR to create a better candidate journey.

Another application of design thinking in HR is onboarding. To put design thinking into action here, you can leverage various tools. For instance, an empathy map can help you identify moments that matter in the hiring journey and assess potential roadblocks or detractors and opportunities to make a great impression.

Design thinking in L&D opens the possibility of understanding and implementing solutions that align closely with your employees’ needs. An essential element of design thinking is involving the audience (employees or job candidates) through co-design workshops.

Using design thinking, you can innovate and continuously improve your workforce planning process with the help of talent market data. Instead of relying on theoretical research or historical experience, you can use real-time feedback gathered from your target audience to adjust, refine, and improve your hiring methods.