Context

In today's workplace, productivity and psychological safety are critical factors for employee well-being and organizational success. However, the reality is that not every workday is equally productive for employees. Despite this, there is often a lack of acknowledgment of varying productivity levels, and insufficient channels for employees to communicate these issues to management or coworkers. This can lead to feelings of isolation and stigma when employees need support or time off.

Challenge

The Employees may struggle with productivity due to personal or professional challenges, but there are few formal mechanisms in place to address these issues. The absence of a supportive environment can cause employees to hesitate when asking for help or time off, due to fear of judgment or repercussions. This lack of psychological safety and open communication can hinder employees from establishing healthy boundaries and maintaining a balanced work-life dynamic.

Proposal

"The Pod" is a service designed to foster psychological safety in the workplace. It acts as a set of "training wheels" to create opportunities for safety by reducing the stigma associated with requesting support or time off during challenging times. The Pod helps employees assess their productivity styles and formalizes the channels for communicating productivity concerns. Additionally, it promotes organizational policy changes coupled with positive nudging and active listening, which together help transform workplace cultures. By building trust and encouraging empathy, The Pod aims to create more inclusive and supportive workplace environments.

Group Members- Mugdha Attarde,Anwesha Das
Timeline- 2 April-22 July
Role- Led the end-to-end service design process,including user research, ideation, prototyping, and piloting. Developeddetailed service blueprints, value propositions and UI Design of POD
Mentor- John Makepeace

Introduction

Context

Problem+ Discoveries

Service - The POD

Starting Point: Menopause

We started this project by trying to provide support for female bodied persons with menopause. We know that menopause brings various physical and emotional symptoms with stigma and taboo which adversely affects job performance and currently workplaces are very ill -equipped to support this transition.

So all of these(physical and emotional distress) and lack of support- stresses combined with the lack of awareness and understanding on the part of the workplace leads to vicious cycle of loss of productivity and overall bad experience for everyone.This causes a loss of 1.88 billion pounds per year to the UK economy with 1 out of 10 women leaving their jobs due to menopause.

We based our research on :

  • Small organizations
  • Close Knit teams
  • Office based jobs (not client facing)

Our Hypothesis

If
‍we can build flexible workplaces where the default culture is to be transparent & accommodating,
‍then,
‍it would automatically include menopausal women.

So,

How Might We help any and all employees regain a sense of control by enhancing team dynamics to be more transparent, flexible and trusting to enable them to be their most productive.

Painpoints

So our Opportunities are:

To fill the gap between Expectation vs. reality, we need a service that can either:

1.Give agency to employees to define their work capacity : both physically and emotionally, so they feel a sense of control.

This allows for different modes of work, which encourages others to be respectful of boundaries and also makes allowance for different productivity levels.

or,

2. Employ cross-training, to prepare the workplace to ensure smooth functioning even when employees have to be on leave, creating resilient teams.

This leads to decrease in guilt to take time off when required, and creates greater trust, with a knowing that the whole team is equipped to take care of each other whenever required.

we selected opportunity 1.

To illustrate further, we have considered the following scenario in a:

  • Small organizations
  • Close Knit teams
  • Office based jobs (not client facing)

Service Proposition

Service Structure

Demo Section

Onboarding

Service Section

Concept Testing

Risks and Constraints

Value Proposition