Post-pandemic rethink using human centred service designpeople management training programme redesign
The organisational challenge
A large Irish financial services organisation was running a management training programme for close to 800 people managers. The programme had grown incrementally over years and nobody had stepped back to ask whether it was actually developing the management capability the organisation needed. Feedback was inconsistent, engagement was low, and the format hadn't kept pace with how the organisation was working.
The question was not just how to improve the training. It was what management capability the organisation actually needed, and whether the current programme was designed to build it.
What we did
This is service design applied to organisational change - starting with the people living it, and designing the solution around what they told us.
We ran a 10 week research and co-design sprint across three stakeholder groups - content owners, programme sponsors, and participating managers. Sixteen interviews, stakeholder mapping with 19 participants, and two co-design workshops gave us a clear picture of where the programme was falling short and what needed to change.
Critically, we brought managers into the redesign rather than presenting them with a solution. They helped define what good looked like - from how roles were matched to graduates, to how development progress was communicated.
outcome
Ten validated recommendations for the next programme iteration. The redesigned programme ran with 1,200 people managers and delivered measurable improvements in feedback scores across all four evaluation criteria - a minimum 15% uplift.
#The organisation also walked away with a repeatable design process for future programme iteration.