Slalom Transfer Program

In today's age where remote work is becoming increasingly popular, employees prefer to have an option of moving to a different city while keeping their current job. How can we improve Slalom's internal job portal to help the company retain more employees who look to relocate and either work remotely or from a different Slalom office?

Company

Slalom LLC

Role

Design lead

Year

2017

Overview of Slalom Transfer Program

Slalom operates on a market based model, thereby ensuring they don't make their employees travel. However, there are times when employees have to relocate or shift to a different market.

In such cases, Slalom has a internal portal showcasing openings that are available within other markets. The current design, however, is outdated and was burried deep within the intranet. This creates lack of awareness amongst employees and the company finds it difficult to retain those looking to relocate.

The redesign of the transfer program portal aimed to give a sleek and modern look to the program page, while making it faster and simpler to use.

User research

We had a chat with 30 Slalom employees, including people who have enquired with the HR team about relocating to a different market, in order to understand the existing process from an employee's perspective. We requested these employees to walk us through their process and reflect their experience. The activity helped us uncover two main user issues.

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The primary issue was that most employees were unaware of where to check for relocation opportunities, with only 3 participants mentioning about Slalom's internal job portal.

The primary issue was that most employees were unaware of where to check for relocation opportunities, with only 3 participants mentioning about Slalom's internal job portal.

The primary issue was that most employees were unaware of where to check for relocation opportunities, with only 3 participants mentioning about Slalom's internal job portal.

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Even employees who were aware of the portal were left unimpressed due to its broken experience and outdated design. This also created an impression that the company wasn't too supportive of employees changing market locations.

Even employees who were aware of the portal were left unimpressed due to its broken experience and outdated design. This also created an impression that the company wasn't too supportive of employees changing market locations.

Even employees who were aware of the portal were left unimpressed due to its broken experience and outdated design. This also created an impression that the company wasn't too supportive of employees changing market locations.

The power of Sharepoint

Since this was a high-priority project, we had a timeline of around 3-4 weeks to redesign and build the portal and finally re-introduce it to our employees. We decided to work with existing web parts of Sharepoint since it's free (with Office 365) and also eliminates the need for custom CSS, thereby keeping the project timeline within the assigned timeframe.

Also Sharepoint's website builder components inherit properties of Office's Fabric UI, which gives them a modern look and feel and makes a website look more modern and relevant.

Simple landing experience with improved navigation

While working on the redesign, we identified users would ideally just perform three actions on the portal - learn about the program, search for open positions to apply, and get answers to any questions regarding the transfer program. Using this information, we improved the navigation to just include three items and eliminate the rest.

We also designed a visually refreshing landing page that informs users about what the transfer program is, its benefits, and allows them to quickly jump to open positions across all locations

Bringing all the information to the users

Apart from focusing on the visual improvements we also addressed the problem was information being scattered across multiple pages in the earlier experience. We redesigned the current openings page to include all the details related to the job position.

In the existing design, there was no way for users to know which recruiter is associated with a particular job position, causing users to quit their search. Using the hover cards component of Sharepoint, we now provide users with easy access to recruiter information on the openings page, thereby eliminating a break in user's workflow.

Filtering results to provide quicker search experience

An organization of Slalom's size will have hundreds of internal positions available at all times. Providing users with the ability to filter results based on different parameters will help them have more control over their search process.

Retrospective

Slalom's Talent Acquisition team estimates that almost 30% employees cite relocation as the primary reason for leaving the company, during their exit interviews. Promoting the transfer program and internal openings using this redesigned portal will help the company retain most of these employees, which is huge considering the investment that Slalom makes in its resources.

On a personal level, there were two key learning points in this project:

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Not all stakeholders involved in this project understood user experience and it's importance. Right from explaining them our vision to taking them along the entire UX process helped me learn how to work with cross-team stakeholders.

Not all stakeholders involved in this project understood user experience and it's importance. Right from explaining them our vision to taking them along the entire UX process helped me learn how to work with cross-team stakeholders.

Not all stakeholders involved in this project understood user experience and it's importance. Right from explaining them our vision to taking them along the entire UX process helped me learn how to work with cross-team stakeholders.

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We wanted to build the best possible experience within the given time and our existing resources. This helped me learn that not everything that's desired is needed. It is important to create a balance between expectations and reality.

We wanted to build the best possible experience within the given time and our existing resources. This helped me learn that not everything that's desired is needed. It is important to create a balance between expectations and reality.

We wanted to build the best possible experience within the given time and our existing resources. This helped me learn that not everything that's desired is needed. It is important to create a balance between expectations and reality.

Designed and built in Seattle 🌊 🦆

Designed and built in Seattle 🌊 🦆

Designed and built in Seattle 🌊 🦆