In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Kelli Koschmann, VP of People at Sittercity.
Kelli’s creative superpower is keeping an open mind through the lens of empathy.
Kelli discovered design thinking by attending HR.Hackathon Chicago hosted by the HR.Hackathon Alliance, a community of HR rebels that believe in the power of design thinking to tackle our most pressing workplace challenges.
Kelli leveraged the practice of ideation facilitation that she learned at the hackathons to impact change inside Sittercity.
The area that Kelli has used the hackathon format for most has been the inclusion and diversity space. She has developed a process where once the results are collected from the company’s inclusion survey, she picks one theme as a starting point for exploration.
The first topic the Sittercity team tackled was addressing the survey item “I can voice a contrary opinion without fear of negative consequences” which received much lower scores from female employees. In an organization comprised of 60% women that stood out as something that needed to be addressed.
The way Sittercity started to tackle the challenge was by bringing together employees to ideate solutions facilitated by the company’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion team. The employees then selected the idea of creating a “community contract” as the one they wanted to prototype.
Community contracts are now widely used across the company and every meeting starts with revisiting the norm which helps employees reflect on their own behavior during meetings and aids in holding each other accountable.
The impact after implementing the idea was powerful: The company saw a 10 point increase in their next Inclusion survey.
Speed to implementation is another benefit. Kelli estimates that it takes approximately three weeks from the time the survey data is received to the final prototype.
Sittercity has also used this process to develop talent. Employees who raise their hands to become hackathon facilitators receive training, gain visibility, and benefit from experiential development by facilitating the sessions.
The benefits of applying design thinking extend to Human Resources, especially when you – like Kelli - are a HR Department of One because the method turns all employees into your program co-creators.
And these are Kelli’s tips for how to get started using design thinking in Human Resources:
Attend a HR.Hackathon Event
This will introduce you to design thinking and provide you with a format for how to facilitate your own sessions.
Start with a Small Group
This will help build your own confidence with the method.
Create a Safe Space
This is especially important when tackling sensitive topics.
Want to find out what Sittercity TEDx is? Watch the entire interview on YouTube or listen to the Podcast.