In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Tyler Carroll, Executive Director of Organizational Climate at UChicago Medicine.

Tyler’s current superpower is (or at least she aspires to it) to stay awake for 24 hours to get everything done that needs to be completed – both a work and at home. BAM! I think many of us wish they had that superpower right about now…

Tyler’s career story is marked by progressing in the field of change management across various functions and organizations. She joined UChicago Medicine six years ago leading a team that is responsible for making this purpose-driven healthcare organization an even better place to work.

Tyler was first exposed to human-centered design when she realized that HR communications were very functional and not so much crafted with the user in mind. She realized that the greatest HR programs can be ineffective if the message is lost because it was not tied to the employees’ experiences.

Tyler advocates that employee needs should be identified pro-actively and then solutions co-designed among various HR departments.

UChicago Medicine’s journey towards becoming more human-centered in its people practices started about two years ago with the goal to create more unified communication. The first step was to organize communication around the employee life cycle identifying categories of experiences employees might have. Then, the team embarked on a journey to discover how HR might need to collaborate differently to deliver on these experience categories. They then piloted how that might look like for three experience categories using human-centered design to identify employees pain points and ideate solutions for prioritized opportunities. The plan pre-COVID was to expand the approach to the other experience categories.

When COVID hit, the team pivoted to respond to the urgent needs at hand by building four cross-functional HR task force teams that were charged with supporting employees, either to anticipate their needs or to respond to them. These teams were successful because of their cross-functional makeup and use of design thinking and agile approaches as they tackled the problems at hand.

As the pandemic now turns “from a marathon to an ultra-marathon”, Tyler is starting to see symptoms of physical and emotional exhaustion among UChicago Medicine employees. As a healthcare institution the challenge becomes how to ensure continued safety while showing empathy for the employees who have been through so much.

And now, as the holidays are upon us, Tyler is contemplating how employees will feel about the loss of important traditions.

How might we as organizations support our employees through this time and enlist them to co-create solutions with us?

Want to learn more about UChicago Medicine’s cross functional COVID HR task forces? Watch the entire interview on YouTube or listen to the Podcast.