Service design principles for organizational well-being: Improving the employee experience through design thinking

The aim of this paper is to link Service Design to organizational well-being and propose a set of design principles that can be adopted by both designers and managers responsible for the design of organizational services that aim at improving employees' well-being. Through a qualitative study, we conducted a cross-context analysis of well-being initiatives developed in three companies operating in different industries. By applying a science-based design perspective approach, we were able to derive a set of seven design principles. We highlight the importance of including these principles in the process of designing services in organizational contexts using Design Thinking, in particular services oriented to employees’ well-being, as well as considering their application in broader contexts in which services may play a crucial role.

[1]  Michael G. Pratt,et al.  4 The Physical Environment in Organizations , 2007 .

[2]  Karen A. Jehn,et al.  Understanding the physical environment of work and employee behavior: An affective events perspective , 2014 .

[3]  Marlys K. Christianson,et al.  Happiness, Health, or Relationships? Managerial Practices and Employee Well-Being Tradeoffs , 2007 .

[4]  James K. Harter,et al.  The economics of Wellbeing , 2010 .

[5]  J. Sturges,et al.  Crafting a balance between work and home , 2012 .

[6]  G. George,et al.  Managing by Design , 2015 .

[7]  Tom Postmes,et al.  The relative benefits of green versus lean office space: three field experiments. , 2014, Journal of experimental psychology. Applied.

[8]  Seth A. Kaplan,et al.  Is “feeling good” good enough? Differentiating discrete positive emotions at work , 2015 .

[9]  T. A. Wright,et al.  Putting your best “face” forward: The role of emotion‐based well‐being in organizational research , 2014 .

[10]  R. Dodge,et al.  The challenge of defining wellbeing , 2012 .

[11]  Jon Kolko,et al.  Abductive Thinking and Sensemaking: The Drivers of Design Synthesis , 2010, Design Issues.

[12]  Jarrod M. Haar,et al.  Outcomes of work–life balance on job satisfaction, life satisfaction and mental health: a study across seven cultures , 2014 .

[13]  Jaap Paauwe,et al.  Employee Well‐Being and the HRM - Organizational Performance Relationship: A Review of Quantitative Studies , 2012 .

[14]  J. Aken.  Management Research as a Design Science: Articulating the Research Products of Mode 2 Knowledge Production in Management , 2005 .

[15]  A. Georges L. Romme,et al.  Special Issue: Organizational Design: Construction Principles and Design Rules in the Case of Circular Design , 2006, Organ. Sci..

[16]  R. Florida.  The Rise of the Creative Class , 2002 .

[17]  T. M. Amabile.  The social psychology of creativity: A componential conceptualization. , 1983 .

[18]  Stefan Holmlid,et al.  Service Design Research : Yesterday, today and tomorrow , 2010 .

[19]  H. Simon,et al.  The sciences of the artificial (3rd ed.) , 1996 .

[20]  Georges Romme,et al.  Reinventing the future: adding design science to the repertoire of organization and management studies , 2009 .