Work : UNICEF

UNICEF

User (Staff) Research, Service + Systems Analysis, Design Thinking for Program + Policy

Key tasks: scoping/advisement to senior management on human-centered design + research approaches, strategy, extensive qualitative and quantitative research with staff from 193 countries, journey and process mapping, heavy recruitment, analysis, report writing, presentations and coaching on systems and design thinking

UNICEF staff in the field with displaced community

UNICEF staff in the field with displaced persons

Summary

This project was the most extensive user research engagement I’ve undertaken—perhaps more accurately categorized as a human-centered design research engagement as digital components were few. I surveyed over 4,000 staff from 193 countries and received a ~30% response rate, and conductued over 100 interviews, workshops, and focus groups with participants in multiple time zones. I was responsible for designing and facilitating all research, as well as for the analysis of the complex and varied findings of staff experiences of the Mobility program.

Mobility is a policy and program that had gone somewhat dormant at UNICEF (as well as at other United Nations agencies), though it was applicable to its approximately 4,000 International Professional (IP) staff. It follows a UN-wide guideline requiring IP staff to rotate to different duty stations, preferably in a different region of the world, every 2-5 years, depending on their Tour of Duty. The program was difficult to strictly follow for various reasons, and could require serious sacrifices in career, personal life, and even well-being, as many duty stations are situated in emergency regions where conflict or natural disaster has struck. Some IP staff at UNICEF take considerable risks for their work (and receive danger pay and other entitlements) while leaving families behind in relative safety, while others work in comfortable cosmopolitan cities. One goal of the Mobility policy was to ensure that the burden of the most personally challenging duty stations was not always carried by the same staff members.

Though the Human Resources team had facilitated the Mobility program for several years by the time they hired me as a human-centered design consultant in 2019, it had been challenging for them to be sure of what was going well for staff, and what was not, because of the far reach of this program and wide range of situations staff around the world experienced. The team wanted to hear about these firsthand from staff members, rather than only through local HR reps. So this project was mainly an investigation, via quantitative and qualitative research, into IP staff's experiences and perceptions of the program, with the hopeful goal of improving communications, process, and policy so that the frequent disruptive job transitions, then required for staff to fulfill requirements of the Mobility policy, could go more smoothly.

This project helped me gain experience in a deliberative debate style of focus group, requiring tact and diplomacy for the challenging and often sensitive subject matter and frictions that naturally arise over the course of discussions. It also helped me gain experience using systems thinking as an analysis tool (along with design thinking), as the optimal movement of so many staff in a complex way through such a large and diverse organization was undoubtedly a systems challenge.

Note: there is no confidentiality policy for any of the materials I created, but as they are sensitive in nature, please delete any downloads after review.

Click the image or arrows below to browse through this project's samples.

Key Objectives, Team + Challenge

KEY OBJECTIVES: Use quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to get a better understanding of staff experiences of Mobility, and then help begin the process of ideation to improve the process/service, communications, and policy.

CORE TEAM: two HR Mobility facilitators, Director of Mobility, HR assistant.

CHALLENGE: This project was unique to most of my recent experience in two ways: digital components comprised very little of the problem (or solution), and the challenge was loosely defined at the beginning of the project. The exact nature of the problem had to be discovered and defined through many conversations with staff around the world, all experiencing the program and policy from a different perspective.

Rationale

One of my first steps was to ask senior HR stakeholders why the Mobility program existed. The five points of rationale shown here provided a crucial context for staff conversations on their experiences.

My Process

Showing my process for the project.

Project Plan

Showing a project plan I provided for the team. Because this research was a necessarily collaborative effort with the Mobility team, and global travel would be required, it was important to make sure roles, deliverables, and timelines were clear.

Stakeholder Findings excerpt

Showing an excerpt from my first step, stakeholder interviews with DHR (Department of HR, the central HR unit for UNICEF worldwide and my primary point of contact). This excerpt is an example of a working document, as stakeholder interview documentation often is—showing where my team members had questions or comments.

UNICEF's visualization of Mobility

This Mobility exercise timeline visualization was created by DHR and distributed to staff. Though visually appealing, I learned through staff conversations that many felt it was misleading.

Mobility Process + Service Map

The rotation exercise was a service facilitated by DHR and a cornerstone of the Mobility program. I mapped their process in detail in this diagram to have a better understanding of how servicing staff for Mobility worked internally, and incorporated comments on problematic points of the process from the point of view of the Regional Chiefs of HR I interviewed.

Survey excerpt

Our first outreach to the large body of ~4,000 IP staff was a survey. We received a response rate at over 30%, and many more staff indicated interest in participating in focus groups than we had anticipated. This image shows just one question response; see the link below for the full survey response dashboard.

Recruitment Matrix

Recruitment and qualitative research planning was quite complex, with staff in multiple time zones wanting to participate, while we needed to ensure a representative mix of experiences. This matrix was crucial in working through these segmentation details.

Unexpected Findings

Before we conducted research with staff, DHR had expected to hear much more about details of relocation and the managed rotation exercise process and service. Instead, most staff wanted to discuss broader HR issues and about the policy itself.

Conflicting Mental Models

Mobility is a complex policy and process, and some communications and implied directives conflicted with how DHR wanted staff to understand the policy and program. I wrote out the conflicting mental models that emerged as part of the discussions and analysis with staff, which helped DHR focus on providing better communications and directives.

Excerpt from survey analysis

The regional overview pie graph shows the tremendous geographic diversity represented. Fortunately, response rates by region were highly congruent with the number of staff actually in those regions.

Cohort Analysis

One type of analysis I performed was by cohort. Gender was an obvious one, as Mobility was reported to be slightly more disruptive to women's lives and careers than men's.

Thematic Analysis

Showing coding of themes in staff survey comments. Due to the very high number of written comments we received and focus groups/interviews we did, some quantitative analysis of the qualitative data of comments (mostly key terms) could be done too, such as counting the number of times staff mentioned a phrase or word.

Systems Analysis

The Mobility policy is a classic systems challenge: how do you move a large number of staff through the organizational process most effectively and equitably? I created a stock and flow diagram to help visually illuminate the process, where the problems were occurring, and outcomes, based on approximation (however, noting this diagram would be more effective if actual numeric data was integrated).