Over this summer, we conducted our first comprehensive community survey. Our goal was to understand how the HR.Hackathon Alliance is currently delivering value to the community and what we might want to iterate on to create even greater value and impact. Thanks to everyone who took the time to participate! Missed it? No worries, we will be running these surveys every six months.
In case you need an incentive to participate: Some of our coveted HR.Hackathon Alliance merchandise will be raffled off amongst everyone who completes the survey. This survey’s lucky raffle winner will get their merch in the mail soon!
In the spirit of design thinking, we wanted to share with the community the highlights (and low lights) from this survey as well as our initial thoughts on where to go next:
First, we were curious to learn what value community members derive from the HR.Hackathon Alliance today.
The top 3 value drivers are:
“I have connected with an innovative HR community.”
“I have been inspired to learn more about design thinking.”
“I have gained competence and confidence in applying design thinking to my work.”
Based on these answers it’s no surprise that community members recommend the HR.Hackathon Alliance to their peers as “a great way to network and learn from other HR pros in an intimate setting”.
We could not be more thrilled! These are exactly the goals we set out to meet when we launched the HR.Hackathon Alliance in 2019 and we are so glad to hear that we are delivering on our promise.
Next, we wanted to gain insight into how HR professionals prefer to learn and make connections right now.
The top 5 ways of learning and making connections are:
1. Design Thinking Activities (incl. Hackathons)
2. Learning Circles/Peer Learning
3. Coaching/Mentoring
4. Podcasts
5. Reading (books, blogs, articles)
It comes at no surprise that our community members love to learn through design thinking! We already acted on some of your other preferences and have added a monthly book recommendation and curation of Top 5 Podcasts to our monthly newsletter. You can also find new articles and community-curated resources in our Slack community.
We also wanted to understand what design thinking skills you want to hone and what topics you might want to tackle with the HR.Hackathon Alliance community.
The top design thinking skills are storytelling and prototyping an experience.
And the Top 3 topics to tackle include:
1. Building sustainable ways of flexible working
2. Helping leaders navigate through managing in a hybrid world
3. Building an organizational culture marked by agility and empathy
We were not surprised by the topics that are top of mind – all having to do with the current need to fundamentally re-thinking how work gets done. We will definitely tackle these topics in upcoming HR.Hackathons. In the meantime, you might find this article from our founder insightful where she outlines human-centric tips that address pain points around the hybrid work transformation.
We will continue to innovate our programming to include some of your other learning preferences and will dive deeper into the design thinking skills you would like to hone. Stay tuned!
And lastly, we wanted to better understand what HR professionals and leaders experience as the #1 obstacle standing in the way of bringing design thinking into their HR organization. “I am too busy with my daily tasks,” was the sobering answer most selected.
Let’s break this down a bit: The key is not to perceive design thinking as another to do that you have to add to your already long list. You can start very small by slightly shifting your own behaviors first. Here are a few 1-Minute Exercises anyone can do to get started. You might also learn from other HR leaders who have already brought design thinking to their HR practices and who are featured in our Talent Tales multimedia series.
And like so many things, learning and staying the course with something new is easier to navigate in community. Cheers to the HR.Hackathon Alliance – we are so grateful to all of you for making work more human-centric!