The Mountain Resort Company

An international resort company wanted to take a more sophisticated approach to their employee experience. Employee engagement was extremely high at the time of hire yet dropped significantly within the first three months post-hire. Employees of all disciplines consistently reported a mismatch between their expectations for the job and the day-to-day realities of their roles. We were engaged by the Human Resources team to imagine new, innovative ways of seeing their employees with the goal of embedding an employee-centric mindset across the organization.

Business Challenge

  • Employee engagement dropped significantly within the first 3 months of hire.

  • Mismatch of expectations around job duties resulting in high turnover.

  • HR team struggled to keep pace with updating career resources and onboarding materials due to the rate of growth and expansion in the business.

Approach

Contextual insights with employees & cross-functional collaboration

We brought together senior leaders and frontline team members from cross-functional teams to gain a more clear picture of the current state of the employee experience. The group – which consisted of diverse disciplines, experience, and tenure – identified the key stages, needs, goals, and pain points of employees as they plan their careers and navigate the organization. Our approach was thorough and iterative. We leveraged existing employee insights, conducted extensive contextual observations and interviews with representative employees. This contextual research deeply informed a series of interactive design thinking workshops. This co-creation approach lead to the development of custom employee value propositions, an Employee Experience Toolkit, and a Blueprint to guide HR in Talent Development for years to come.

Outcomes

Established tools to create, curate, and cultivate the employee experience mindset; Aligned role expectations and job duty clarity

  • Developed research-based, role-specific employee value propositions

  • Created an Employee Experience Toolkit for the annual HR Planning process

  • Launched the Employee Experience Blueprint to aid in Talent Development

  • Organization developed clear categories of employee segments based on their intrinsic motivators and career goals

  • HR and Leadership teams now had common language, approaches and standards to drive a consistent employee experience during pre-hire, onboarding and through career development

  • Better tools, process and outcomes to actualize the employee-centric value and mindset of the organization