Harnessing Worker's Voice
This is a live project with Aspen Institute on harnessing the power of the worker's voice. Exploring the gaps between the executive class and the workers, trying to co-create and be inclusive.
executives | unions | voice gap | The Great Resignation/Reshuffle
My Role
Strategist, Researcher
Team Management
Targets
Workers, Executives
Organizations, Unions
Timeline
4 months
January - May, 2022
Coach
Miguel Padro
Aspen Institute
The Challenge
Is there a voice gap?
How can we identify and address it?
Over the last 40 years, many channels that connected executives to workers on the frontlines of US business have disappeared. Gallup polls show that only 30% of US employees strongly agree that their opinions count at work. According to MIT research, workers desire substantially more say and influence.
Meanwhile, companies struggle to attract talent while they lose current employees in "the great resignation".
The Insights
Hover over to know more
Fun &
Leisure
Fun and leisure can be part of the meaningful inefficiencies through which people can open up and share in a safe space and manner
Middle
Managers
Middle managers are the key to establishing a smooth functioning of an organization. They bridge the differences and understand the needs of all levels
Identifying
Connectedness
Identifying the individual's connections and relations helps the team to tailor the experience and a better outcome
The Solution
Mind the Gap
Gamifying the Stakeholder Engagement
This game is designed as a pilot run for Aspen to reach out to its community to engage and re-engage in addressing various challenges between executives, managers, and workers at various levels.
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The Approach
As a team, we used the double diamond approach to tackle this challenge. There were multiple touch points in this challenge and each individual had a different inclination. Based on our interests, we formed research groups to answer some of the pressing questions we had as individuals and as research teams.
Desk Research
As defined by Aspen Institute, Worker Voice is “the ability of a company’s employee base to have their needs heard by their employer, and ultimately have an impact on business decision-making.”
For employers, Worker Voice contributes to Business Intelligence in the form of more innovation, increased productivity, and organizational improvement. This is because Workers are often closest to the needs of a company’s customers and the business's realities, and therefore are invaluable sources of knowledge and leadership.
On the other hand, for Workers, the ability to share their authentic voice results in increased job satisfaction, a
strengthened sense of meaning, and more opportunities for professional development.
We were able to reach out to various stakeholders including Convening Experts, Employee Experience Consultants, Organizational Consultants, Civic Engagement and Social Justice Leaders, Transformation Facilitators and other Executive Coaches. Also, while consulting with 25+ subject matter experts we gathered their experience and some answers to our research.
Primary Research
We conducted multiple rounds of interviews with different types of workers and the middle management. The focus was to understand the kind of people did, their motivations, fears, and challenges.
Through these interviews, we spoke to workers from organizations such as Zappos, Trader Joe’s, Wix, Amazon, The New School, private construction workplaces, and government organizations. The team conducted these interviews both online and offline—at times shadowing colleagues and references, and at other instances interviewing workers in a guerrilla setup.
Through our desk research and primary interviews with organizational and community experts, we were able to identify the broad actors who would fall under our immediate consideration. Workers | Managers | Executives
The gap between the Workers and the Executives always existed and Managers were identified as a new dimension to this challenge. Managers are the delicate piece of this challenge who has to cater to both sides of the spectrum.
Each of these stakeholders has different roles to play with varying responsibilities and affordances.
Personas
There are multiple actors or stakeholders involved when we look at the challenge at a macro level. These actors are connected and related on various fronts and there are other factors that influence the relationship between each of those actors. The visual illustration on the following page represents the relationship and relevance with each other connected in a multi-dimensional way. Although this is only a basic representation of the relationship, it has helped us to understand and consider various elements which can have an impact.
Ecosystem Map
The Discovery
To transition from research into design, we held a workshop to identify the most salient insights, form “HOW MIGHT WE” questions, and begin ideation.
We began by unpacking the scope of the problem by using a technique similar to a World Cafe. We shared ideas in small groups, synthesized them, then shared out with the broader group. We identified the following themes as large contributing factors: trust, culture, infrastructure, conditions, policy, mental models, and historical context.
We unpacked the ask from our client so that we can identify ways to meet their needs and create internal alignment. We aligned on whom we are solving for, what their goals are, who the end-user is, and a variety of approaches.
The Interventions
Mind the Gap is a digital board game that allows teams/groups to practice Participatory Decision-Making so that they:
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Learn to see all workers as assets, not liabilities; and
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Generate ideas on how to mitigate Voice Gaps.
What is Participatory Decision-Making (PDM)?
It is the approach of giving opportunities to employees to provide input into decision-making related to work matters or organizational issues.
This game is designed for Aspen to reach out to its community to engage and re-engage for addressing various challenges.
Here is what it can look like
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Game is introduced to orgs in Aspen’s sphere of influence
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Aspen convenes playing teams with 5 members
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Aspen hosts games with interested parties (2 host roles; ETD: 1 hour via Zoom & Miro)
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Aspen holds a post-game retrospective with playing team
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Aspen updates ‘Idea Bank’ of ways to harness Worker Voice and mitigate Voice Gaps
Concept development
As we explored the ideas, we came across an exciting voyage story of Ernst Shackleton. This inspired us on how leaders can be more resonant and inclusive.
That said, we decided to use this as the inspiration for the game narrative, largely due to how inspiring their survival story was and how exemplary Shackleton’s leadership was in the context of that time.
In doing so, we carved out actual scenarios that happened during their expedition and strategically designed the game narratives to test out team dynamics under those circumstances. The decisions to be made in the game pattern real-life workplace scenarios.
The Prototyping and Testings
We created multiple concepts for the board design, game narrative, totems, and retrospection sessions while we keep our client, Aspen in consideration. Their involvement, approach, offers and other aspects of the roadmap were also in play.
The Game reflection
Sailboat Retrospective is a technique for envisioning the task at hand. Here, we have slightly modified and adapted it to the game narrative.
This helps the players in the game to come back to reality and to acknowledge certain factors (like wind and sun) which are helping them to progress towards the goal (Island) as a team (sailboat) and other factors which are holding them back (anchors). Also helps the teams to preempt risks (rocks) and can help them plan for it considering all these factors.
It is a great way to share the voices from different perspectives and address issues as a team and sail successfully towards the realized goal.
Future Roadmap
As this game evolves further, we envision its growth as an evolution. For a game of this stature to evolve, it must therefore be modular, be inclusive to different types of players, and hence must be relatable.
To test this, we plan to initially show this idea to Aspen Institute to receive some feedback to incorporate into our design. From this round of feedback, we hope to conduct field tests with other corporations to identify changes to:
The Narrative | The Prompts | The Game Mechanics
