Building a Voice of the Associate Research Program Inside a Technology Organization

sounds great thank you so much well I will go ahead and share my screen I would also uh love to be able to um hear where all of y'all are from as well so please in the chat if you can just let me know um where you're from and then we'll go ahead and get started from there I will get started with I am from San Antonio Texas uh born and raised in Texas and excited to just share a little bit more about um what we have been able to develop within the digital workplace experience team I will also add my LinkedIn in the chat for y'all as well looks like we have a pretty good group here from all around so excited to potentially connect with y'all on LinkedIn so um like been mentioned my name is Courtney Rodriguez I have been with Nationwide for uh 16 years 16 in November and for about the past 3 years have been developing uh the voice of the associate research program uh within our digital workplace experience team that was also developed um when I started about three years ago as well so what we would like to start off with is just a little bit of our story so um back in 2020 if we can go back to 2020 and just think through what that felt like and how we were trying navigate the virtual and hybrid World um back in 2020 when I was hired into this role it was really important for us to understand associate technology experiences what that looked like what that felt like what the sentiment was with that um and so back in 20120 we started to really think through what do we need to be able to do that so um we started to do some initial analysis we created an associate digital life cycle we were able to also understand at a high level whole personas and be able to map all Associates um to one of six personas from there in the initial analysis that we gathered in 2020 we were able to determine and prioritize our top three experiences based off of voice of the associate negative sentiment and feedback that we were hearing and back then when we were first starting to develop the program we really didn't know exactly how to do all the things the right way back then um so as you could see our emotional uh Journey from an associate perspective was not so positive they didn't know where to go to to share feedback they didn't know how to do that so as we continue to evolve into 2021 we started to activate on the voice of the associate research program as well as engage um a consulting firm to help us develop a design thinking Playbook so when we think about technology and we think about really trying to focus on a human- centered approach this was new to our technology organization and so we wanted to make sure that we grounded ourselves in really what was design thinking how can we um Embrace that and develop a Playbook that is going to be helpful within the technology organization but also have a partnership with our stakeholders product teams and product owners to ensure that there is that um partnership and that flow um as well with that um we also started to incorporate what we call our candies which is Champions and influencers and I have the pleasure of leading our candy program as well and those are the associates that helped us to validate the feedback that we were hearing that participated in design thinking and continues to participate in design thinking um to make sure that we keep the enduser voice at the center and Forefront of everything that we are doing and everything that we were talking through as it relates to digital workplace technology um continuing to evolve into 2022 we really wanted to make sure that we centered our user insights um into the product development life cycle and what that looks like as well so we started to Think Through the prioritization of the solutions and really thinking through effort and impact and what does that mean and as we are hearing solutions from our end users and our candes we're also Hearing Solutions from the product team from a technical feasibility business constraint perspective and we're really thinking through how much effort is this going to take the product team to implement um and what is the associate impact so really starting to organize the solutions that we were starting to think through and process into Quick hits and high effort high impact which takes a lot of time as many of you probably know but you don't want to dedicate all of your time to high highs because then what about the quick wins and what about showing that consistent evolvement um and improvements along the way that's very important and that is what we also determined as we were kind of talking through and building this out throughout the past couple of years also in 2022 we validated our personas so we validated them very early in 2020 but when we got to 2022 we also realized that things change so rapidly so fast that it's very important that we validate our personas make sure that they are still um hitting the mark making sure we know the needs wants opportunities challenges um and behaviors of our Associates as it aligns to those Persona groups um so we validated that um currently how we organize all of our Associates by personas by job title and then we also are going to be looking deeper into subp personas and kind of what that looks like across um all the personas as well so after going through the initial design thinking sessions engaging our stakeholders product teams end users prioritizing at a very high level these Solutions we were able to initially think through 16 recommendations to improve the associate experience recommendations that were pretty quick hit type of solutions um and 13 are currently um implemented and we're already seeing employee experience improvements along the way that we will also speak to um now in 2023 we currently are continuing to enable our features capabilities and improvements um have that consistent feedback loop with our candies as they are the voice of their organization and we'll talk a little bit more about that later as well and we are um and we do have sustainable improvements that have been implemented about 81% of the solutions that were identified have now been activated and are continuing to show sustainable experience improvements along the way way um and then as you continue to look through our emotional Journey you can see that as we were making these changes and building this within the digital workplace experience team the associate um emotional Journey or the sentiment along the way was starting to improve and we will also share um at a very high level how we started to um measure the associate experience back then so we could be able to see what the Baseline was for the employee experience and how that was improving over time so we'll able to show you through data how we were able to do that and be able to see that consistent Improvement and then the excitement um of where we're at today all right so now we're going to talk very high level um about our strategy and process so what was really important when we were developing the voice of the associate program is to make sure that we are keeping the Associates at the Forefront and I'll probably say that five million more times throughout the presentation we want to make sure that they have access to digital tools and capabilities that are in going to increase their productivity their collaboration cross functionally their creativity um and we also want to make sure that we can get a deep understanding of their associate sentiment um what design features can we Implement quickly that fail fast approach which is very important as well and also just making sure that we can empower the associates to let us know what's going wrong or where we have Improvement opportunities when we first started the program we would hear a lot like what is the point of um sharing my feedback what's going to happen is it just going to go into a black hole is nobody going to look at it and that was the initial perception and and thought um in the beginning um but as we continue to keep the Associates at the Forefront and we continue to show them um what is happening keeping them in the loop and utilizing our candies to also do that they are able to continually see that hope so from a strategy perspective we have two core components the first one is the voice of the associate research support and that will be collecting the feedback insights and Analysis sharing the insights with our stakeholders and product teams and how do we visualize those insights which is Journey mapping and we will also talk through that as well and then the next component is product donor support and so we have product donors within the digital workplace experience team that align Direct to our product teams within digital workplace technology and so they are in um all of the um strategic conversations and in the weeds with our product teams and they're bringing back all of the research needs to myself and another associate from a research um support perspective and they are letting us know and we need to validate what we are hearing from Associates when we need to conduct design thinking sessions or where we need to Journey map um associate for points and experiences to really hone in and identify where we have those opportunities and so we have those listed here um this component is very very critical because it shows um not only to the product teams but also um other stakeholders how we can think a little bit more creatively and differently when you think about associate technology experiences all right so here we talk a little bit more um on the back end from a process perspective so it was really important for us like I mentioned to get some initial digital workplace experien measurements and we'll talk about that in a second it was also important for us to really be able to digest those insights through sentiment analysis Embrace and incorporate research-driven engagements experience map the the entire um life cycle and then of course validate with design thinking and continue to iterate so a few of our inputs so how do how do we gather voice of the associate feedback we have an experience score that we'll talk about in just a bit um and that is our Baseline and consistent way of understanding associate technology experiences we also have a behavior score where we are understanding how Associates are using the technology versus the expected usage of the technology and how can we utilize that information to drive adoption of the technology and the improvements that we have we also have a product driven engagements where the product teams will they have a ton of data on their end um that they uh also gather from NPS scores and satisfaction ratings but also um when they engage research we also have those engagements as well from a ux perspective we have our champion and influencer program we also sometimes are included in Enterprise engagements where we're getting feedback and data and input from others um across the organization from that perspective and then we have post implementation reviews feedback loops and ways of continuing to understand the feedback at any given point from a process how to validate vaa we do conduct both qualitative and quantitative research efforts moderated and unmoderated we try to make sure that we really assess what is the need of the research that we need to conduct and then um create an action plan which we'll talk about in a second and how we can successfully activate that given the many many ways of conducting research after that we will do um pretty in-depth analysis um to understand the sentiment of the feedback we use a tool called quadrix to do that there is some AI components as well in there that really helps us to identify actionable insights next is the insights visualization uh the tool that we use for dynamic Journey mapping is CX Omni we'll share a little bit about that as well well and then of course design thinking the way that we are currently conducting our design thinking sessions is a tool called fig Jam um and we will share a little bit about that a little bit later as well many of the outputs that um our product teams and product owners are finding valuable um are the actionable insights coming out of this entire process future State solutioning product team prioritization and being able to really think clearly about the quick hits and how can how can we Implement those and then product strategies and road maps so those outputs really help the product teams and product owners um determine how to influence what we need to activate um and how that will evolve by embracing the voice of the associate feedback all right so getting a little bit deeper how do we measure the experience through data so I talked a little bit about our experience score survey so the goal of our survey was to track the progress of our Associates digital workplace experience and gauge if the initiatives and projects that we have in flight are impacting The Experience so we have a very brief survey that goes out to all Associates once a year and on within that survey they're able to rate from one to five how they would rate their overall digital workplace experience it then goes deeper into how would you write your experience per product team and then what feedback do you have for us and all of those insights are getting funneled into our qualtrix um dashboard which we will show next um so you can see how we're able to dive deeper into the feedback that we're hearing by keywords and topics and be able to identify the sentiment so uh when we started the survey back in 2021 we had a 177% participation rate which is pretty good when you think about industry standards and our overall digital workplace experience was a 4.0 five as we continue to evolve um the survey which does um change slightly um every year we um were able to start determining those quick hits that I mentioned and starting to engage the Champions and influencers on the work that we were doing and at the end of last year we ended at a 4.11 out of five and a 19% participation rate so word of mouth was um was being very successful and we were starting to see that our candies were speaking more with their organizations about what we are doing within dwe and how they're helping to influence technology adoption with the different efforts that we were doing now currently year to date we are at a 4.16 out of five we have about a it fluctuates depending on the month but 23 to 24% participation rate and that's been pretty solid either 23 or 24 every month and we are sitting at um a little over 5,000 responses so far which is um more than we have have received um in any given year previous to this some of the questions that we continue to think through is are what we are doing positively improving associate digital experiences and if not what can we do to iterate on that and evolve and or bring in the candies sooner to really understand what we can do differently a lot of what we continue to do is focus or refocus energy and time on different efforts to improve the overall experience and then making sure that the associates can see through what we call feedback in action here is what are the themes here is what our Associates are saying about our tools and Technology here is what our product teams are doing engaging the candies in those efforts from a research validation perspective and here is what is coming soon and what Solutions are getting implemented as a result of that as well so um from a deeper dive here we it is very important for us to be able to have data tell the story so a lot of times when we were first Gathering the feedback we were hearing a lot of associate perception or a lot of the feedback that we were getting was more around old experiences many many years ago um so when we were creating the survey it was very important for us to make sure that we uh at the stage very well for our Associates so they knew exactly what was expected within this survey and we can get very in a sense real-time feedback of um their experiences so as that comes in each product owner has their own product specific page to dive deeper into the feedback as it relates to their product team the pages have many different widgets um among those are the open text feedback widgets that um we utilize to categorize the keywords we also have word clouds to show trending we have topic themes to show trending experience score trending uh we also allocate the feedback by our personas so we have highest level digital workplace experience and then it breaks down into the product specific pages so Within These different widgets you're able to utilize AI for sentiment analysis and when you do that it will categorize it in six areas very negative negative mixed neutral positive and very positive then when you think about theme categorization it's very important for us to be able to really align the keywords to the product teams and to the parent topics so when we're using what they call text IQ it is easily able to translate the feedback correctly to the respective product teams as well so we can dive deeper into those particular actionable insights and then uh the last bit of that um of course using the dashboard and using AI is very helpful but it is also extremely important that there is more in-depth analysis that is done on the feedback and on the data and more additional validation that is done from the product owners and or researchers to dive deeper into what is currently um being said from a feedback perspective and being validated with additional Data before we bring it back to overall product teams diving a little bit deeper into text IQ um I wanted to show you just a little bit more about what that looks like so each of the product owners has their own text IQ section where they can create parent topics as well as subtopics to help organize the feedback you can also doubleclick into each topic and subtopic the product owners can see responses tied to the themes and are able to adjust keyword tagging as needed and then quot Trix does allow editing of the feedback so if the sentiment seems to be incorrect you can move it and realign it as needed to the respective product teams as well and so we have some visuals here that kind of show what this looks like from a topic subtopic perspective and how we are trying to organize keywords to those topics and subtopics and then down below you can see um the initial sentiment per topic as well and what that could look like and then the graphs so there's also specific feedback that is listed underneath as well all right going a little bit more into research studies and influencing technology adoption so um part of this research program was to be able to showcase exactly what this looks like for the product teams from intake to handoff so we created this visual to show the research process and timeline as I mentioned this was new digital workplace experience was new to the it Ino organization and it was really important for them to really understand what that process would look like so when we get the initial request in our intake form it triggers an initial action planning meeting for myself and what I typically do is review the initial intake I will create an action planning template to really determine what is a problem statement what are the assumptions if there are assumptions that we need to validate or invalidate what are the overall goals um it also kind of thought thinks through uh we think through the scope what's in scope and out of scope of This research effort what is that timeline how do we want to communicate it Etc so that um kickstarts the planning of that that typically handles within week one to week two of the intake process and the activation then activation will typically start week two and or week three depending on how we want to have the research conducted if we're needing to conduct uh focus groups we typically need at least two weeks to get those invites out to the associates to make sure that they're able to participate or if it is a survey we can activate a bit quicker on that one uh part of the activation is uh making sure that we have a specific approach we are also conducting the analysis and insights as the feedback is coming through and then we create a pretty in-depth research report it may be in a PowerPoint it may be in a word it may be through qual Trix because they create have reports created for you um and so that's uh completed and then from a handoff perspective that will typically hand be happening within week three or week four and we will either have a formalized um meeting with our product teams and stakeholders or it's sent virtually um and giving them time to take take a look over the insights and ask for any um feedback or questions that they have along the way there are are many times where we don't have four weeks to activate on research and so we have to Pivot and a lot of times we can activate pretty quickly with our candies if we need to go to them and validate information pretty quickly for those research efforts it will take about one to two weeks if we have to Pivot quickly and get that uh processed quicker for our product teams we also don't only engage our Champions and influencers there are many times that we do have to go outside of candy group and we are also pulsing the Enterprise so we have PLL surveys that um typically change every month to two months on our digital workplace site or there are more personalized targeted research efforts that we have to activate um as well with others outside of the candies so a little bit more about our candies so we have about 300 Associates that represent just about every um organization across the Enterprise and the candies are the voice of their organization they will typically discuss upcoming changes and capabilities that are going to be coming out of digital workplace technology that are going to impact their peers Andor their organization they will share input and feedback from um their teams and their peers to us and then of course they are among the first to experience new digital tools and capabilities so as we think about all of the different res Arch efforts both qualitative and quantitative our candies are the ones that we will go to to activate on those research efforts and sometimes there are calls to actions where they have to then go to their organization and activate within their organization to get some additional feedback as well high level expectations of our candy program is we do have a monthly broadcast with all of them um it is live they can ask Q&A to the product teams or product owners um as needed as it relates to what's coming soon or the call to actions that are going to happen um within the next month or so they will participate in different polling conversations experiments Pilots anything that we need uh to be able to help validate information and then of course they're going to share everything that they hear and learn in our broadcast with their respective teams and organizations so we partner very closely with our Communications contact and she creates very in-depth collateral materials for our candies so we make it very easy or try our best to make it very easy for them to get this information cascaded across their organizations however they see fit if they'd like to do it in a huddle in a meeting um in an email however they would like to do that we make it very easy for them to be able to do that and make sure that they have what they need to be successful as they are that liaison for their organization so next up is how we are measuring experiences through Journey mapping so I will not read everything here but from a taxonomy perspective it was very very important for us to really understand what are experiences so when we think about what an overall highlevel experience is it's an event or type of Engagement it's the collection of all of the type of engagements that make up the life cycle and we will have examples and I will show you as well um what that will look like but from an experienced perspective these are highest level priorities that we want to improve and or need to improve based off of the data that we have been Gathering throughout the past few years so some examples are I need my technology to work uh I need to understand how to use all the tools available I need new technology that aligns to my evolving job and these experiences do align to our product teams as well and we are utilizing qual tricks to identify sentiment by experience and by Journey as well so we can can really understand what that friction looks like as we think about the prioritization and making sure that we are um focusing on the right items as well then from the experiences you then break it down into Journeys which are specific needs so for example preparing for new technology enhancements submitting requests for new technology or having PC and application related problems you drill down a little bit further to be able to map what those specific Journeys are we then have sub Journey paths so there's specific tasks within a journey that may have friction may not it may be a great experience and that's great um but we will be focusing on those that have friction that we would need to potentially focus on improving then there are different interactions so um you may think about um associate interaction so what are the what's the associate doing as they're going through these stages as they're experiencing the different parts of of their Journey what actions or steps are they taking throughout that process and then we have processes um so we really start to then break down backend processes because of course those processes are impacting associate experiences on um what they experience using their tools and technology and so we try to make sure that we are capturing both to Ure that we um know where the friction really is and what that could potentially look like so here's an example um very very high level our actual life cycle is a lot more detailed than this one um but here's an example of our associate digital life cycle really breaking down the experiences and Journeys and making sure that we keep the associate at the Forefront um and helping their feedback kind of Drive what that prioritization looks like won't really speak too much on this but wanted to kind of show you visually what that looks like as as well so diving deeper into visualizing The Experience through CX Omni so we wanted to be able to Showcase a more specific example of what this looks like for you um so at the um very top of uh anytime we're Journey mapping we have stages and we want to make sure that we can align the experiences to the stage as well so our very first stage is awareness at what point does the associate become aware that is an issue that there is something that they need improved within that particular experience and so we start to then look at the particular stage the journey that we have identified and what that looks like so in this example we have I need my technology to work we have um some of the sub Journeys that we were looking at in prioritizing is I want to use my PC to its Max potential so as we start to look at Dynamic Journey mapping our sub Journeys turn into goals um and what the associate wants to be able to do successfully within their Journey then we move down to moments or customer activities so after we identifi they want to use their PC to its Max potential we then look at I identify an issue with my PC that issue may be funneling within the path so it could be experiencing Network and connectivity issues experiencing PC Hardware equipment issues PC slowness and lagging um Etc and so we then start to break out all of the sub Journey paths that we would then map within each of the journeys as well as we are mapping those and we do that we have done that for all of our experiences um and we'll talk a little bit more about the data behind that as well but um wanted to just give you high level what this could look like and an example or snippet of how to dynamically Journey map in Omni as well within the C exom tool we also wanted to make sure to create a visual of our vaa measurements so the experience score survey and so we wanted to break down um in this particular slide what our overall 2021 Baseline survey was that we talked about earlier what the associate H sentiment is and or was back then in 2021 and um how that continues to evolve in 2022 20 23 and then break down 2023 by the product teams and what those experiences and sentiment looks like by product team so you can see visually uh through CX Omni the emotional sentiment how it slightly starts to improve from a 4.05 to 4.11 and then you can also start to see going into 2023 at a 4.16 that emotional sentiment Etc within the actionable insights um it's been really beneficial to be able to tie and align specific pain points specific research questions technical enablers Etc so in this particular example we're showing highlevel experience score data but as you dive into specific um experiences that we have mapped we have very detailed and robust sections within the actionable insights section as well all right so from a design thinking perspective we wanted to kind of break down how we utilize the design thinking process so I'm sure many of you since many of you our research professionals have a really good idea of design thinking how to incorporate design thinking and really what that does to really Engage The End user in in the entire process for digital workplace experience we primarily focus on the first three sections of design thinking discover Define and id8 after that point it then gets transitioned over to our product teams from the product teams they will then start to they will take all of the feedback data validation Solutions we initially gathered from the end user and then they will start to think through and Implement prototypes and testing some of these Solutions refining those Solutions building it out for implementation and then continuing to measure that along the way so it is absolutely way more of a partnership research takes the first three and then uh the product team takes the rest so from a discover perspective we really try to understand the user um and what uh their feedback is uncovering so we really start to break down what are there pain points as many of you know what are they experiencing we translate those pain points into how might we uh questions and statements and then we start to solution off of that we also want want to make sure that we can define a specific problem and a problem statement cuz we have we learned we we did learn a little bit the hard way that when you don't have a clear problem statement it is really challenging to to narrow in on the pain points that the users are saying because they may be thinking five million pain points all over the board and we are really actually just trying to focus on the problem at hand or that particular problem statement so if there isn't a problem statement that has been defined and identified from a user perspective um it it is very important to make sure you have a clear defined problem statement to be able to then ideate Solutions and think through friction points for that particular problem um then this next part I kind of already talked through it but it is really important to make sure that the ideation phase is including both stakeholders and in users um for us we find it very very valuable to include both both and have that um partnership and that collaboration amongst the two because a lot of times of course the end user doesn't really understand how some of their Solutions aren't feasible and why they're not feasible and so we have the ability to kind of talk through that very high level um before it actually gets transitioned over to our product teams so a little bit more about how our design thinking process has evolved over time so previously mentioned 2021 we created our dwe design thinking Playbook by partnering with a consulting firm to develop what that framework looked like 2021 2022 we actually were conducting six one-hour sessions for the each design thinking project back then we used a tool called storm board for these sessions and then we put all of our Solutions sometimes hundreds into an Excel document and handed that off to the product team in the Excel document it was pretty detailed pretty thorough it had effort and impact it had priority Matrix touch points it has many other things within that document but it wasn't necessarily easy to work with uh when you think about hundreds of rows in an Excel document so as we continued to evolve the process we really started to utilize fig jam and within fig Jam we are able to conduct one one-hour session to complete the process sometimes times two 1hour sessions to complete the process um when you use the one one hour session um framework there is pre-work so what we do is we typically virtually Engage The participants in those design thinking sessions and we have them before our live session starts identify the issues we'll give them a link to our fig Jam board and they start to focus on identifying all of the issues related to our problem statement because by this time that action plan document has been created problem statement has been identified and validated with our stakeholders and product teams Etc so all of that has been completed and this helps us to iterate quickly and evolve faster and be able to trust that the pre-work will get done um before our live session and we're able to handle these a lot quicker than previously and then with the two 1hour sessions we use one session to focus on identifying the issues so maybe they don't have time for pre-work or um there's a particular reason that we want to engage live with the end users and our stakeholders and product teams and so we do that live and then in the second session we're really focusing on ideating on the solutions with the product team and the end users and then from there it gets handed off to the product teams we have seen a lot of success with um the approach for 2023 and will'll continue to evolve because we know that that is important but um flexibility has been kind of the key in developing this program and developing this process and making sure that everybody has that buy in and that value proposition to continue to engage in what we are doing so now as we think through moving the Via forward we wanted to give you some data and insights so I'm sure many of you are um excited potentially to see um what are the D what's the data coming out of all of this stuff that we're doing in the past three years so um from a product team prioritization perspective there have been 283 prioritized solutions that have been implemented into the product roadmap and or strategies and getting implemented across um the organizations we were able to identify 579 actionable insights which were ideas for Innovation pain points improvements and we have those kind of listed to the bottom right as well by doing this entire program this entire process and making sure that we don't miss any steps along the way from a design thinking perspective we have completed 16 total design thinking sessions and those are projects individual projects where we would have um either the one session with the pre-work or the two sessions um together and then we have two sessions currently in progress from a product strategies and roadmap perspective um we have been able to help influence about eight high priority projects that are imp implemented across the Enterprise based off of the feedback and the data that we gather to create the urgency needed to really improve our associate experiences we have mapped 10 um highest level experiences dynamically in the C exom tool both future and current state and then we have mapped seven sub Journeys and have aligned all of those pain points to 2023 objectives to ensure that we are staying on track throughout the years as well and then we have 365 future State solutions from the design thinking sessions and have completed 176 total research studies to date um across all of our product teams within digital workplace technology so now um from A continuing to move the vaa forward we wanted to really highlight our top three digital workplace technology use cases that have been used to measure improvements and utilize sentiment analysis to do so so our first sentiment opportunity was there was no clear way for product owners to visualize sentiment through the experiences when we first started we didn't have the life cycle we didn't have a ton of research or data or design thinking anything like that so one of the projects that we um luckily were able to get included in very very soon was CX Omni So within the CX Omni tool it has been able to help us to measure the emotional sentiment over time and see what projects have influenced improvements along the journey which has been very valuable as you think about needing to see is what we are doing improving the experience and CX Omni helps us to visualize that the next one is uh we used to hear many many times that new Associates received too many packages and didn't have the right technology to do their job and so one of the projects that as a result of the research design thinking the Partnerships was we now have new associate welcome kits that go out to all of our Associates so we partnered with stakeholders and others to successfully Implement um the type of technology that every new hire needs and it's not just technology it's also a welcome kit there's many other cool things that are included in this uh new associate welcome kit but we have uh decreased the number of packages that Associates get when they start and they get one package now with the technology and tools needed to do their job while also filling the warm and fuzzies and the welcoming um joining our organization and then the last one is um right when we started we heard there are too many starting points for technology needs Associates aren't sure where to go to find what they need they search still can't find what they need where do I go for learning versus support they they were very frustrated they abandoned um a lot of their attempts early on in the very beginning because of that and because of all of the research that we were able to validate including design thinking and our candies which were huge a huge huge huge part of why we were able to implement this solution um is we wanted to make sure that there was one Central starting point for all of their technology needs and so we have developed a tool called mych um it is using apis and data sources to ensure that they have a central starting point for their technology needs so it's pulling together all of the different areas into one one area for them and that has uh continued to be very very successful and we continue to iterate and um incorporate features based off of the needs wants and opportunities of our personas and our candies and the end users as well I keep looking at my time so it looks like we have about 10 minutes that concludes uh the presentation of our VOA program I have not been able to look at the chat but I don't think anybody has any questions at this point but we can open it up to anybody who might okay any questions for Courtney just drop those into the chat or Q&A um and while we're waiting for those I had one question for you um all right so obviously today you know increased engagement you know increasing scores like the the impact of the program is kind of a no-brainer it sounds like right you know it today it looks as though this is absolutely having you know great impact on the organization if you were watch back to the early days and obviously you don't have these you know results and data in front of you you know was there friction or any difficulty with with adoption or getting folks kind of on board with with you know jumping into the process or what recommendations would you have for those who are in organizations that may not be so uh engaging when it when it comes to this type of program yeah absolutely so when we first started um the dwe team was also new to the organization so we were coming in first of all I was trying to develop my role this role did not exist either and so came in trying to develop that value proposition that value ad of course everybody knows and user experiences are important but sometimes that's not really enough when you think about bringing something really different really new into a it organization it was really critical that our product owner be those um not just like the liaison but they are the ones that are setting the stage for the product teams they're creating the value proposition with the product teams to um help them kind of trust trust um what we were trying to develop especially because it was new and that was I think for me in my perspective um the key component is our product owners believing in what we are doing and what what we were trying to do and then Translating that successfully to the product teams and then of course as the work product and the deliverables start coming they are then it's just validating so now it's not just trust us it's here is how we can help support you and here is what our users are saying and um as they continue to see that it's kind of like the quick wins for them as well like we're very quick at activating on their research needs or research requests and we make sure that the insights given are are good maybe better than good um so they can take it and quickly activate instead of needing to still figure out what needs to be done as it results to a spreadsheet and that was what we did in the beginning and we quickly realized that's not that's not going to work um and so I think the product owners and and I've heard that other teams other organizations don't do that they don't have product owners aligned to a digital workplace organization that then develop in to a it product team so that is new from what I've heard and it was new for us and that's been successful from an enduser perspective that was also challenging because we didn't really have an Avenue or space for users to share their feedback and so getting their Buy in was also very very critical and the Champions and influencers are the ones that help us to do that so we have I mentioned that feedback and action page so we make sure that we share and Cascade what associates are saying are the pain points and what our product teams are doing to improve it so we have that feedback and action page that gets updated every month um on our digital workplace site but the real like I don't even know the right the real cherry on top I would say is the candies so if you have 300 Associates that believe in what you're doing and they believe in what you're doing because they're doing it with you alongside they're being part of the Technology Solutions then they are the ones that are cascading that to their organization and that then starts to spread throughout the organization and we every month we probably have about 20 to 50 new Candy members because it just keeps getting out there what we're doing and they want to be part of the solutions they want to Pilot our Biometrics and they want to do all the things that are going to help influence like ology adoption but there's many other perks to that too from a value proposition perspective not only I'm looking at time too but um not only are they the voice of their organization they're developing their executive presence because they're having to present this to leaders within the organization they are joining uh different leadership meetings and different conversations to share what's coming and how it's going to impact them and how they are a critical part of the technology adoption and connecting the dots but we also try to make make sure that we have Micro projects in place to evolve the candy program so it would be very unrealistic to think me alone would be the one to successfully lead this program and evolve it it's the candies who are doing that so we have projects that they are leading to evolve the program we have an onboarding project that they're doing we have uh candy lights which which is a program where if you don't have full capacity to participate because this is all voluntary um you can opt into a candy light program as well so I know it's coming up on time but um that's been very very critical and crucial for for us to get that value proposition and the why and with the candies are is there any I guess I mean it sounds like demand is increasing do you you place any kind of caps or or limitations on how many might be able to take part or is there cycling out that that goes on no not yet noted both of those um what we have found is there's about a hundred that are active so we have broken up our candies into groups we have active candies and this is based off of feedback that we got in surveys that we did we have background candies so we have candies who just want to be in the background hear what's happening and just send it to their teams they don't have time for research efforts or Pilots or anything like that um so we have background candies and then we have stakeholder candies who are in it because they they need to just hear what's happening um but they're not either so we break it down into groups and so for us if we know we have about a hundred that are active it doesn't make sense to just force them out if they love being in the program but they can get they can opt out of the program at any time they can rejoin any time and that's been pretty successful so far and I know you're you're leaving the uh the consumer researchers Among Us drooling over 24% participation rate you know one in three advisory council members staying engaged and taking part um these are numbers that that that we only dream of um so that's pretty cool uh this is awesome thank you so much for for for sharing your experiences for for giving us this this detailed rundown um I think we're off to a very good start and we're bumping up against next next presentation so yeah thank you for having me thank you so much uh any other questions come along for Courtney feel free to drop them and we will we will pass them on otherwise job well done and you said this was your first time presenting on on the subject right externally to Nationwide yes good job thank you all right take care thank