HR and design: collaboration for tomorrow's solutions?

Collaborating well for tomorrow's solutions

At first glance, the logical link between Human Resources Management and design is not obvious. However, they both have the same objective: to meet, listen and understand humans in order to successfully complete a project.

Whether you are a designer or HR manager, exchange, discussion, understanding and objectivity are essential qualities. And even if the two professions may encounter differences, we are nevertheless entitled to wonder if HR was not using design thinking methods long before designers made it an indisputable trend.

Listening, understanding, objectivity

People are at the heart of these two jobs. First, for the designer, meeting users is essential.

Indeed, during what is called the observation phase, the designer will be able to discuss with the “target” users in order to best identify their problems and their needs and thus design the most appropriate solution. This observation phase is a fundamental pillar of design thinking.

On the other hand, the aim of HR is to recruit future talent and manage staff for a better working environment within your company. As for the designer, listening, discussion and objectivity are essential points if you want to successfully complete the project. For example, the HR function must recruit and place a team on an intrapreunarial project.

She will first identify this project, understand the challenges and determine the appropriate profiles to meet the conditions for success.

It is then that she will enter a recruitment phase, often through interviews. The purpose of this interview is to find out if the interviewee corresponds to the desired profile, and to be certain of this, HR must listen, understand the interlocutor and be objective, that is to say to leave aside his preconceived ideas to be in the most accurate vision for the project.

Now let's look at how a designer does it. There will be a problem to solve and therefore have to create a project to respond to this problem. He will first identify the problem and the issues and analyze them. Following his analyses, he will determine the people concerned, affected or interested in this problem. These are called personas.

The persona is the typical user of a project. This is how the designer will go into the observation phase to meet these personas and refine their profile through conversations. It will proceed in the same way as HR: in listening, understanding and objectivity.

The resource and the need

The main purpose of the HR function is to create the link between the need and the resource. In other words, its mission is to place the human resources necessary for the needs of the company.

As for the designer, one of the strengths that characterizes this profession is to start from real need rather than being inspired by fashions/latest trends.

The service designer is a creator of paths who must appropriate the universe of all stakeholders. The main purpose of the service designer is to design an ecosystem, he will have to connect different actors (engineers, graphic designers, developers, architects, etc...) and manage them to carry out the solution successfully.

Finally, HR and design have a common objective: that of solving a problem by combining the skills of different actors.

Well-being at work

One of the other main missions of HR is the well-being of teams at work.

There is no longer any need to prove that if a company's employees feel good at their workplace, they will show goodwill, be more productive and the daily atmosphere will be less burdensome, which will necessarily have a positive impact on the result.

We can notice that the work environment is becoming more and more important within companies with, for example, the creation of open spaces, which are more and more widespread, and leisure activities made available (gardens, table football, sofas, etc.).

Placing well-being at work as a priority is also a major asset for start-ups and innovation professions. They know how to reinvent the way we work, just like HR, which will do its best to satisfy the working environment of its employees.

Design and HR are not necessarily seen as similar sectors, but the fact of being focused on people, creating a solution based on a need and providing added value through the work environment places these two functions on the same level, although with different methods, but common goals. Now we believe that designers and HR must cooperate to find the solutions of tomorrow.