Deluxe Recognition System

Project Overview

Deluxe leadership desired to provide employees an outlet to recognize one or more employees from across the Financial Services department for doing something that exemplifies one or more of their core values. Employees were ambivalent to individual, team and company-wide goals unless these goals directly affected their annual merit wage increase. In addition, many previous employees stated on their exit interviews that communication between different departments was stifled and strained. The lack of a recognition program coupled with difficult interdepartmental communication presented an opportunity to address this issue directly at Deluxe Corporation. 

SOlution

The primary recommendation was to implement a company-wide recognition program based upon the achievement of individual, team and company-wide goals. The design strategy encompassed building a social network-like web application where employees could recognize individuals on their project team, or other project teams. The recognitions were based on the companies core values: Teamwork, Honesty & Respect, Recognition & Celebration, Inventiveness, Value Customers, and Execute.

My Role: User Research, User Flows, UI Design, Wireframes, Prototyping

Tools: Sketch, Craft, InVision

Discovery & collaboration

The project team and departmental leadership gathered to create high-level requirements for the MVP communication to employees and production.

1. Objectives  

• To develop individual, team and company-wide goals as a basis for increasing motivation.

• To implement a program that recognizes Deluxe employees for their hard work and attainment of individual, team and company-wide goals.

• To increase interdepartmental communication through the usage of a recognition program.

• To develop a web application platform to organize and publish individual, team and company wide goal attainment and rewards associated with attaining those goals.

 2. Target Audiences

• All of Deluxe’s employees.

 3. Key Messages 

• The purpose of the employee recognition system is to increase employee morale and increase positive interdepartmental communication.

• The recognition program is to provide employees with monetary and non-monetary rewards for their achievement of individual, team and company-wide goals.

• The web application provides a platform to record and monitor recognition among individuals, team and company-wide.

4. Select our communication methods

• Formal company training

• Recognition web application platform

• Internal email and memo

• One-on-One sessions between manager and direct report

User flows

Based on discussions with the project team, I created user flows for the employee and manager paths respectively for the MVP product launch.

Employee Recognition Flow

The user would log in to the internal web site and follow a series of modal steps to choose whom they would like to recognize, which value(s) and any details about what that employee accomplished. Upon submission the recognized email would receive an email notification, as well as their direct report.

Manager Notification & View Flow

A manager would receive a notification email when a direct report had been notified and be directed to their Team page upon authentication. At the discretion of the manager, they would choose whose recognition was most worthy to highlight at the next company town hall, and if a monetary reward should be presented as well.

Wireframes

A progression of key screens in low fidelity wireframe form were presented, and modified, before proceeding into the final UI design stage. These iterations were based on feedback received from department leadership, employee feedback and the project team.

Employee flow

Manager Flow

UI mockups

Having accumulated a good amount of project knowledge, I had a very clear vision for the product we needed to create to solve the problems we identified. I took to Sketch and started creating higher fidelity versions of the app. 

There are some screenshots of the redesign below. 

Internal analysis of Deluxe Corporation   

After the company-wide release of the MVP, I proposed a larger implementation plan once all features and phases were completed in future iterations. The recognition program and web application would be implemented in three phases; introduction, utilization, and reassessment. The introduction phase of the program and application implementation would require employees to attend an online training session reviewing the recognition program and application.  All employees would be required to attend this formal training session to learn about the program and provide feedback for fine-tuning. The utilization phase of the implementation would allow employees to test out the recognition program, discover strengths and weaknesses, and gain comfortability with the web application. The reassessment phase is the final phase of implementation, where the program directors would take employee feedback and implement into the program. Once the reassessment phase was complete, the recognition program and application could become fully operable within the company culture.