ON THIS PAGE ARE MULTIPLE PROJECTS. PLEASE SCROLL DOWN
- MIND YOUR GAPS PROJECT ON COVID LIFE - TWO PROJECTS
- IMPLEMENTATION OF BETTER METHODS FOR REMOTE ONBOARDING AND REMOTE WORK
- BETTER VOTER, CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE DURING THE VOTING SEASON
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MIND YOUR GAPS PROJECT ON COVID LIFE - A CX and LX Project
DURING THESE PANDEMIC TIMES, HOW CAN WE MAKE OUR CURRENT LIFE EXPERIENCES BETTER? |
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The goal was to understand the ways in which our current life experiences could be made better. What are the resources that we already have and information we have access to? What do we still need? My intent was to pick one or two initiatives to work on as sub-projects from the resulting findings. Conducted in March/ April 2020.
METHODS AND TOOLS User Research: Surveys were sent to 100 people sent and have 62 respondents from the Dallas area and some parts of the US and International. Interviewed about 15 people in depth from different professions like doctors, housewives, engineers, political candidates running for office, small business people and new hires who joined work remotely Received responses Social Media crawl on Next Door App, LinkedIn, Quora and Reddit Collaboration on Zoom and WhatsApp |
Covid Summary Report.
Click image to open pdf
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WITH THE RESULTS, I TOOK UP THESE TWO SUB-PROJECTS
(1) Implementation of better methods for remote onboarding and remote work
(2) Better voter, candidate experience during the voting season
(1) Implementation of better methods for remote onboarding and remote work
(2) Better voter, candidate experience during the voting season
PROJECT 1
IMPLEMENTATION OF BETTER METHODS FOR REMOTE ONBOARDING AND REMOTE WORK
RESEARCH
Surveyed New hires on LinkedIn regarding Remote Onboarding and got detailed responses from them on email, a separate survey to all professionals. I received some great responses.
My questions to new hires and employers
Who recently has gotten hired in Covid times and gone through a Virtual Onboarding process? Please share your experiences with me starting from your experience as a candidate to getting hired and then getting onboarded. What has been like overall other than the onboarding itself? Positives and Negatives. I am doing some work in that area and would love to hear from you! If you are the employer/HR person, please also share what your experience has been like with new hires.
My questions on Linked In
Would like to hear from those of you who have made the shift to working remotely from home. Let's learn from each other! What are your good and challenging experiences? What new practices are you adopting?
- How has your working style changed? Not so much? Drastic?
- What is working for you and what are the challenges?
- What methods are you adopting towards managing your team effectively?
- What are you doing now that you had not done before?
- What new tools are you using that you like?
- How has it changed your work-life balance?
- What will you keep doing once we get to the state of a new normal and what will you discard?
- If you have always been working remote, what practices would you recommend?
Thank you!! Look forward to the exchange.
In addition, I interviewed two young people who had recently been hired. They voiced that starting a new job during the pandemic has been difficult - they feel very disconnected and its harder to figure things out without meeting people and learning the ropes. They were watching videos as part of the orientation and it felt strange. People were trying to be very helpful but when you know they are busy you hesitate to call them.
RESULT AND OUTPUT: Based on what I heard from different people both new hires and the experienced, I wrote two units
- Best practices for Remote New Hire Onboarding so young new hires do not feel off the radar
- Best practices for remote work in terms of communication, collaboration and presentation all, regardless of level of experience.
I added these two units to an Onboarding Handbook which I had already written, I consider this a valuable resource for organizations of all sizes.
IMPLEMENTATION OF BETTER METHODS FOR REMOTE ONBOARDING AND REMOTE WORK
RESEARCH
Surveyed New hires on LinkedIn regarding Remote Onboarding and got detailed responses from them on email, a separate survey to all professionals. I received some great responses.
My questions to new hires and employers
Who recently has gotten hired in Covid times and gone through a Virtual Onboarding process? Please share your experiences with me starting from your experience as a candidate to getting hired and then getting onboarded. What has been like overall other than the onboarding itself? Positives and Negatives. I am doing some work in that area and would love to hear from you! If you are the employer/HR person, please also share what your experience has been like with new hires.
My questions on Linked In
Would like to hear from those of you who have made the shift to working remotely from home. Let's learn from each other! What are your good and challenging experiences? What new practices are you adopting?
- How has your working style changed? Not so much? Drastic?
- What is working for you and what are the challenges?
- What methods are you adopting towards managing your team effectively?
- What are you doing now that you had not done before?
- What new tools are you using that you like?
- How has it changed your work-life balance?
- What will you keep doing once we get to the state of a new normal and what will you discard?
- If you have always been working remote, what practices would you recommend?
Thank you!! Look forward to the exchange.
In addition, I interviewed two young people who had recently been hired. They voiced that starting a new job during the pandemic has been difficult - they feel very disconnected and its harder to figure things out without meeting people and learning the ropes. They were watching videos as part of the orientation and it felt strange. People were trying to be very helpful but when you know they are busy you hesitate to call them.
RESULT AND OUTPUT: Based on what I heard from different people both new hires and the experienced, I wrote two units
- Best practices for Remote New Hire Onboarding so young new hires do not feel off the radar
- Best practices for remote work in terms of communication, collaboration and presentation all, regardless of level of experience.
I added these two units to an Onboarding Handbook which I had already written, I consider this a valuable resource for organizations of all sizes.
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Presentation and Hands on session for Remote Working
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PROJECT 2
BETTER VOTER, CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE DURING THE VOTING SEASON 2020 was our most significant or news making elections of our times in America. Earlier in March all volunteers for political candidates and the candidates themselves had done the usual door knocking exercise to ask people to vote for them, held in-house events, food events, town halls and so on, mostly, all face-to-face meetings. Other than using social media to promote the event, no one was holding the event itself on a call. People as it is are tired of hearing from candidates in multiple ways but some have the ability to at least make a sincere pitch if they see people in person. Now the candidate were in a dilemma on how they were going to reach voters. Also, voters, closer to election time wanted to ask certain questions and some at least would attend one event and get to hear the answers. How could they participate now? Since I was quite active as a volunteers and I had recently done a course on Service Design, I decided to take this project up and see if I could come up with any innovative methods of interaction. |
Assumptions and Questions I had to start with
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How did using innovative Tools and Methods turn out to be?
ASSUMPTION: Tech savvy community members
The Power of WhatsApp:
Since some communities like our are quite connected on Whatsapp, I next created a group of 30 people and also added our Precinct chair on it. So now people felt very engaged and were always asking questions, sharing news and making contact. I also added two candidates next and the interaction went up several notches. This was even better than knocking on doors an event hosted at home! People were less inhibited about expressing anything in written form. They were more engaged due to its more personal feel! I also created a pdf document with important dates, information on voting locations, how to register, how to vote by mail, about candidates etc, I would update it and share periodically. See document above.
The use of Google Forms to collect questions and comments before a Zoom call:
I set up a community Zoom call for the candidates so that they would have a forum to speak to voters. But rather than make it just a Zoom call where the candidate gave their spiel, I decided to make it more focused on topics that people were interested most in. And keep it engaging. So I first sent out a request on Google Forms with topics to find out which were of highest priorities to most users. I also requested them to send back any questions they had for the candidate. The candidate then had to keep their agenda to speak about what interested the attendees. This made it very interesting. Google forms provided good Analysis charts and Event Feedback. Again, because people felt their voice was being heard they responded to post call feedback.
RESULT: All in all both Whatsapp and Google Forms-Zoom interaction proved to be a great success for tech-savvy community members and their political candidate to engage with each other.
FUTURE: We have to find other innovations to reach those who are not tech savvy and who are dependent on in-person or phone interactions or design products that they don't throw away and take time to engage with. We cannot spend useless time on methods like phone or message banking which have a low hit rate or is downright annoying.
ASSUMPTION: Tech savvy community members
The Power of WhatsApp:
Since some communities like our are quite connected on Whatsapp, I next created a group of 30 people and also added our Precinct chair on it. So now people felt very engaged and were always asking questions, sharing news and making contact. I also added two candidates next and the interaction went up several notches. This was even better than knocking on doors an event hosted at home! People were less inhibited about expressing anything in written form. They were more engaged due to its more personal feel! I also created a pdf document with important dates, information on voting locations, how to register, how to vote by mail, about candidates etc, I would update it and share periodically. See document above.
The use of Google Forms to collect questions and comments before a Zoom call:
I set up a community Zoom call for the candidates so that they would have a forum to speak to voters. But rather than make it just a Zoom call where the candidate gave their spiel, I decided to make it more focused on topics that people were interested most in. And keep it engaging. So I first sent out a request on Google Forms with topics to find out which were of highest priorities to most users. I also requested them to send back any questions they had for the candidate. The candidate then had to keep their agenda to speak about what interested the attendees. This made it very interesting. Google forms provided good Analysis charts and Event Feedback. Again, because people felt their voice was being heard they responded to post call feedback.
RESULT: All in all both Whatsapp and Google Forms-Zoom interaction proved to be a great success for tech-savvy community members and their political candidate to engage with each other.
FUTURE: We have to find other innovations to reach those who are not tech savvy and who are dependent on in-person or phone interactions or design products that they don't throw away and take time to engage with. We cannot spend useless time on methods like phone or message banking which have a low hit rate or is downright annoying.