Hybrid Culture Re-Design
Research • Ideation • Workshop Facilitation
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Overview
How we applied our design methodology to assess and improve our way of working together at Volkswagen Software Development Centre Lisbon.
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Client
Volkswagen Software Development Centre Lisbon (SDC:LX)
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Role
Project Lead
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Timeline
6 Month Project
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Methods
Surveys
Stakeholder and user interviews
Affinity mapping
Problem framing workshop
Ideation workshop
The challenge.
With the move from an office based culture to a hybrid model post the COVID-19 pandemic, the leadership team at Volkswagen SDC Lisbon (SDC:LX) wanted to assess how this change in the way we work impacted the team and our much-loved office culture. So they called in the design team to help unpack this, by asking us to lead a research project to investigate the current working model and advise on a way forward.
The research goal.
With this brief in hand, the design team went to the drawing board and decided we needed a plan to help steer our research efforts in the right direction.
We defined an overarching research goal to help guide our efforts:
“To empathise and understand the team's perspective on how we work, what’s working well, and what are some of the challenges people are experiencing. In hand with this, we also want to talk to business stakeholders about current challenges the SDC:LX is facing and how we're perceived by the business.”
In addition to this, we also had some questions in mind that we were looking to answer:
“How is the hybrid model working for us?”
“Is the flat hierarchy structure working for us?”
“Are our methodologies still working for us?”
“What are the recurring challenges that we face on a day-to-day basis?”
“How is the relationship with our business stakeholders?”
Research phase 1 : survey.
At the SDC:LX we follow the double-diamond design framework, and for this project we decided to apply the same framework, but focus on the Discovery and Framing phases for this specific challenge (See image of our process above).
We kicked-off the project by interviewing our stakeholders in the aim of understanding the business objectives and goals for the project.
Next, we sent out a survey to the team to understand how the hybrid working model impacted them individually, their team, and their motivation levels. The response rate was overwhelmingly positive from the team, with 93% of team members answering the survey.
Some of the insights we found from the survey:
80% of team members are proud of the work they're doing and the impact they have
70% prefer the hybrid working model currently in place
67% believe having a flat hierarchy is best
64% are happy working fixed hours; Meanwhile 51% would like more flexibility in the hours they work everyday
51% feel they have good career opportunities at the SDC:LX; While 31% are unclear on what career opportunities are available to them
Research phase 2 : interviews.
Next, we conducted in-person interviews with team members to unpack what we learnt in the survey and to clarify any grey areas in the results. For example, we really wanted to dig into the differing survey responses with regards to flexibility in working hours.
We spoke to a total of 12 team members who represented different profiles within the team in order to have a diverse range of opinion and perspective. We were very careful to document the responses as anonymous to ensure participants would feel comfortable to share their thoughts and feelings on the matter.
In hand with this, we conducted interviews with the leadership team and our business stakeholders to understand their perspective. We spoke to a total of 10 business stakeholders, from the office directors, to head of people, to our product owners. This helped us get a clear view of the whole picture from both sides of the table.
Research analysis.
We then moved into the analysis phase: where we reviewed the research findings with a fine tooth comb and refined them according to what we knew to be business critical key themes. The means in which we did this was in the form of an affinity map, where we mapped the survey results together with the interview findings to see if any patterns emerged.
The key themes we discovered in our research could be summarised into 3 high-level topics:
People and culture:
Office culture; Flat hierarchy and leadership; Career path; Hiring and retention
Business relationship:
Interaction with Product Owners; Purpose and impact within the organisation; Methodology; New products
Ways of working:
Hybrid working model; Flexibility; Collaboration; Tooling and bureaucracy
We took these findings and presented them to the whole team to get their feedback on the results before moving into a problem framing workshop.
Framing workshop.
In the problem framing and prioritisation workshop, we gathered half the team together to review the research findings and prioritise the challenges that we wanted to tackle in the ideation phase.
We reviewed and voted on the most important topics we wanted to tackle, and managed to narrow the 14 challenges down to 5 business critical challenges:
Hiring and retention
Career path
Tooling and bureaucracy
Purpose and impact within the organisation
Hybrid working model
At the end of the workshop, we took these 5 key challenges and reframed them into detailed How Might We statements which we planned to take into the ideation phase.
“How Might We” statements.
How Might We… help people feel more connected in a hybrid working mode?
How Might We… optimise the office for hybrid work so that people feel focussed and productive?
How Might We… create a stronger feedback culture which helps people to grow
in their career?
How Might We… make people feel they have the psychological safety to openly communicate when things aren't going well?
Ideation workshop.
The goal we had in mind for the second workshop was to brainstorm and generate many ideas to help find solutions to the top challenges we faced at the SDC:LX. We briefed the participants on brainstorming best practices and asked them to brainstorm ideas to help solve the How Might We’s we had formulated.
From these HMW’s the team managed to generate a whopping 250+ ideas!
At the end of the workshop we organised and clustered the many ideas into key topics, which could be taken into different initiatives to help improve and grow the SDC:LX. Finally, we asked team members to volunteer on initiatives that they’d like to get involved in, to help drive and deliver solutions for each initiative.
An example of some of the 250+ ideas generated in the workshop.
The result.
Some of the initiatives that we born out of this project were:
Regular get togethers to build connection
Cater for people working from home to get connected with others
Frequent feedback and 1-on-1 meetings with managers
Regular measurement of team well-being
Better people recognition
Clear career path and tracking of career progression
Improved office infrastructure for hybrid meetings
Improved onboarding experience for new joiners
These are just some of the many initiatives that we implemented at the SDC:LX to improve our way of working together, with plans to keep iterating and learning from these endeavours!