Transforming the way store employees report absences
Background
Methods: qualitative research, interviewing, affinity mapping, process mapping and workshops
Timeline: 2 months
Tools: Dovetail & Mural
When a store employee can’t make their shift they usually let their manager know by calling the store and speaking with the manager, sometimes referred to as a call-in. This process has many pain points and not all stores have the same process for calling in. This project focuses on the discovery and workshop phases.
Project Goal
Take the manual call-in process and add those capabilities for Sage, a virtual assistant, to handle call-ins.
Store research
Our design team wanted to take an in-depth look at this process and talk with employees, managers and HR leaders at Kroger stores.
I led the effort to plan and organize the store research and findings. I used Dovetail to organize the research documents and findings, which makes this research accessible to other product teams in the organization.
What we want to learn:
Understand employee needs and pain points related to calling in.
Understand how managers fill the now empty shift.
See if there are any key differences in how call-ins are done across stores.
In-person interviews
Our team pulled together and we ended up interviewing a total of 18 participants, which included Store employees, mangers and HR leaders. I spoke with 11 employees.
Affinity map created in Dovetail.
Moving research forward
I think one of the biggest wins for the team was being able to conduct research on call-ins before the workshops kicked off with the business and 3rd party stakeholders. This is something that the team had not been able to do before a project workshop for Sage. And the research was something that I advocated for.
Workshops & stakeholder alignment
During the project kick-off workshops, we had a section of the Mural board where we were able to present our findings and share research we had done looking at and existing product within the company.
From my previous experience on other projects I wanted to include a process map of what the current state looks like for call ins and compare that to the future state of call ins.
Current state
With all of the data from the interviews I mapped out what the current process looks like when an employee calls into work and is not able to make their shift.
Future state
This is a high-level future state map I made after the main workshop activities concluded which summarized the more details process maps from the call-in use cases.
I worked collaboratively with the business and development team to fill in missing pieces and this map also helped highlight process gaps for the new call-in process.
What does success look like?
One of my favorite activities that the design team was able to do during the workshops is have the business and development team list out what does success in this project look like for them and what are the key KPIs to focus on. These are items that can be used to measure the success of the project.
Learnings & outcomes
What was most surprising for me that came from the research was how different the process is for call-ins among stores. What I would have done differently for this project is include the business team more in the planning phase of the research and have a formal read out of our findings for call-ins.
My involvement with this project was mostly in the discovery and workshop phases.