Case Study
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Together we grow: a smart ecosystem for employee growth
Within a couple of years, Thoughtworks went from rough apps (or no solutions at all) to an intelligent ecosystem of digital products for learning, growth, and performance – achieving a great user experience and delivering enormous business value.
I was Head of Design for the talent business unit, leading a team of 5 designers, 3 product managers, and 15+ engineers across Europe and Asia to enhance the experience of 10,500+ employees.
This was a hybrid role, as I mixed hands-on skills for strategic priorities, acted as the liaison between design, product, and business, and even played the role of product manager at times, implementing best practices and being the roadmap owner.
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The Work
Multi-year investment in products and processes for employee growth.
Co-design of solutions with employees to support their growth.
The Process
Framework that supported a culture of product and stakeholder trust.
A high-performing team that is effective and professionally fulfilled.
The Results
Attrition decreased by 3%, and operations were reduced by 5 days.
Increase of employee NPS, and potential revenue generation of 3%.
The War for Talent
Thoughtworks is a premium professional services firm that provides technically excellent consultants for its clients. Professional services orgs rely, for revenue generation, almost exclusively on the service that its employees provide to clients. This is different from a product org – that gets its revenue from products or subscriptions – and, with that in mind, employee satisfaction, employee upskilling, low attrition, and headcount growth are at the heart of business success.
A strong competitive market for tech talent, which was also known as 'The Talent Wars' (not sure there was a Star Wars pun intended) due to several reasons, including aggressive business growth plans for tech companies, and that later transformed into 'The Great Resignation' and it led to an industry hiring crisis was the first trigger to get this work started.
As a direct response to the crisis, a change management program was started, and insights were collected via interviews, research of internal forums, focus groups, and surveys. The result was a strong negative sentiment among employees:
53%
expressed uncertainty about expectations of their roles.
37%
felt that projects were not aligned with their skills and growth plans.
39%
did not give or receive feedback over the past year.
Defining the problem
Lack of structure
Back in the day, employee growth was based on peer learning and self-driven action: you could ask to work with a certain tech stack, and it was possible to match your interests with business needs.
You were just an email away from getting coaching from Rebecca or Martin themselves. It was easy when the firm was smaller: when I joined in 2014, there were around 2,000 employees globally.
New working model
When I left the company, we were designing for 10,500+ employees and future-proofing it for a lot more, including new employees coming from acquired companies.
An IPO in 2021 added the need for mandatory compliance training for 100% of employees across the business – and, out of the blue, COVID-19 hit hard, changing how work used to be.
Risks were too high
Employees not knowing what to do, talent teams overwhelmed. This was all aggravated by remote work, now pushing people to work online, with no colleagues sitting next to each other helping figure things out.
Changes became critical as the consequences were too high. We had a strong business case on why we needed to invest in internal products.
Building a product, then 2, 3, 4 ...
We scaled this product suite with a lot of cross-collaboration to make sure we had a proper digital experience for learning, growth experience, skills mapping, and performance. This happened over 5 years, and a lot happened during this time. This information led to the foundation for the creation of these products:
Pathways
The growth app allows employees to assess skills and competencies, get feedback on their growth, understand possible growth paths, and plan their future.
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This connects to the staffing app (last item of image above) to support connecting the right people to the right staffing opportunities.
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86% of employee adoption in 2023.
Campus
Learning system made for the 70:20:10 model – 70% of learning on-the-job during your activities, 20% as social/peer learning and 10% as formal training.
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Partnering with the L&D CoE, I led from concept to MVP, to launch, and further into employee engagement and the addition of new features.
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82% of employee adoption in 2023.
Summit
The performance system that supported clarity over what is expected from an employee, supporting them through a model of partners during their journey.
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Performance and compensation processes are complex, so we worked with SMEs as part of the team to get value delivered quickly.
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97% of employee adoption in 2023.
Dashboards
For each of the products mentioned before, we partnered with the Talent Analytics Org to have a business dashboard. This was partnered with product data.
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This was a key value delivered, as insights of employee experience were missing before, and we were then able to provide.
Most of the apps had a lot of complexity so that these digital tokens also reflected the culture of growth that Thoughtworks prides itself. So at times, we had a dedicated designer working on user flows with SMEs.
These pages are from Summit, the app used for the performance journey. Employees would set expectations, participate in frequent check-ins with their performance partners, and finally, get to a final review of their cycle.
Transforming into an ecosystem
The scaling of features on each of the products, then the integration of these products with foundational systems (e.g., Workday, Udemy), and among each other, such as to allow the matching of employees to professional service opportunities (staffing).
Lastly, the implementation of business dashboards took this work to the next level by generating easy-to-consume insights – a proper ecosystem of talent with the vision:
The Grow ecosystem provides an efficient digital product experience that is delightful, accessible, and personalized, supporting the scalability of the business by enabling employees to continue growing into industry leaders.
Me Now, Me Next
To get to an integrated employee digital experience, service design played a huge role. Possibilities and paths that employees could take were mapped on customer journeys, giving visibility to the pain points and the opportunities of this process.
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We named the process of growing at Thoughtworks 'Me Now, Me Next'. Simplifying the understanding of where they were (skills, strengths, and gaps) and where they wanted to go (plans, goals, and support required).
Defining the framework
Let's be honest: organizing a team working towards the same goal but across different continents and time zones was no easy task. It can't be understated how many early meetings (or should I say 'middle of the night' meetings) I had to attend to make this work while in Brazil, before moving to Germany.
This was a start-up inside of a giant tech company. Before I joined this team, priorities were being defined by listening to 'the loudest complainer'. Other regional leaders were going directly to team members to ask them to get their priorities in place. This created a mad environment that was ineffective for product development and quite harmful to the team image in front of stakeholders.
So my first decision was to structure the team and build a strong prioritization process, defining a framework that would put users first. It was worth it; we were able to come up with a great work model, mixing agile, lean, human-centered design, and JTBD.
1. Request collection ➜
Feedback from users, feedback from talent teams, tech debt, innovation ideas, competitors solutions: it was all mapped in the same place, described and accessible to every Talent team across the globe.
2. Prioritization ➜
Quarterly, we would prioritize what was the most valuable to be worked on next. This prioritization was based on a set of criteria on top of user goals and the hypotheses that needed validation.
3. Roadmap ➜
Quarterly, I would run a meeting with stakeholders to make sure we were all aligned on the roadmap and to give visibility to the value already delivered, new blockers, or needs for pivot.
4. 'One-pager' ➜
Before getting to draft and try solutions, we made sure everyone understood the problem, its context, and the user value to be delivered. This increased delivery quality and raised satisfaction.
5. Co-design workshops ➜
We partnered with collaborators: members of the talent teams, employees that gave feedback on a feature, and so on. Co-designing with users always leads to better solutions.
6. Design critique ➜
For every piece of work, we would have rounds of design critique where all designers would present together with tech leads and product managers to get early feedback.
7. User feedback ➜
Weekly rounds of user feedback for any newly added or upcoming features. Designers would run prototypes directly from Figma to test with users and get usability and general insights.
8. Internal marketing ➜
Employees were vocal about changes in the organization, so important information had to be accessible and open for feedback. We participated in regional and global forums to guarantee the visibility of our process and roadmap.
9. Launch ➜
I believe in continuous delivery, so every launch meant we now had new learnings to implement next. We took advantage of a/b testing for that. The work is never over, but each step leads to a greater result.
Good design is good business
We all knew this work was needed. This was an ever-growing problem since the company started scaling in the 2010s, but there was a lack of urgency to getting this started. Being part of a global team and closer to the C-Level, understanding the global business strategy, was an amazing experience for me, and it reinforced one of my core beliefs: good design is good business.
Some of the measures of success that were celebrated and directly tied to this work:
The experience of employees (NPS) increased in a year
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Before: new hires and current employees needed urgently a better support structure to grow and plan their future.
With automated operations, 5 days a year were saved
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Before: talent teams were overworked trying to provide support and needed more data and automation.
The ability for revenue generation grew by 3%
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Before: the business required a shorter 'time to market' to have employees ready for professional services.
Decrease of employee turnover, less 3% attrition
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Before: no visibility of performance and skills gaps led to uncertain forecast (e.g., learning, recruiting).
Future-proofing
Looking back, it seems easy to describe the work of building this suite of products (it was not). Many people were involved in different phases of the work, a lot of investment was made, and the results were clear. We then had products that would interact with each other, generate business value, and deliver a much better employee experience.
But it was all too transactional... just like the experience of work itself became transactional during COVID-19 – because no one had the energy to spend more time in front of a computer for, let's, say, another meeting.. ops, a team building session –, the use of these applications was turning into 'another task' on the infinite list of tasks that tech workers had in their plates. Also, we were starting to see the reflection of Gen Z first joining the labour market – and the changes to behaviour, attention span, and interests were changing in a real fast pace.
From transaction to conversation
Until then, we had already explored new formats of micro-interactions across the whole workflow (e.g., a reminder to share your interest in a certain technology by updating your skills on Pathways, raising your chances to be staffed in a project that used that tech stack).
Chatbots were also explored as options in the past (e.g., learning recommendations and short learning sessions).
But in 2022, ChatGPT and other LLMs were starting to become a huge trend, and we were thrilled to decide what would come next for this product suite.
How might we?
How might we deliver a single entry place for the employee growth experience without making it feel like another task on their plate? Our bet became clear: we decided to build a mobile app that would deliver a single entry place for everything grow-related. Employees were getting back to the office, people were then commuting again, and mobile returned as high-priority. So mobile-first it was.
To explain the abilities of this app, I will take Susie as an example.
Susie is a staff engineer in Hong Kong. She wants to develop her capabilities in emerging technologies. For that, she has to upskill in Python and be staffed in a project that uses this technology.
With so much data now available and integrated, we were then able to deliver to her (or any employee) a tailored experience:
Learning
Recommend micro-learning lessons that can be completed in minutes or longer online training and courses for her to get upskilled.
Coaching
Suggest a trainer or mentor in her timezone that could be there to help her grow on this new skill set.
Performance
Support the alignment with her performance partner that this is the growth path she wants to follow in the next year.
Staffing
Match her with roles that use this tech stack or create flags that would allow staffing managers to know her interests.
Growth
Map her gaps and create a plan for 3, 6, or 12 months, allowing her to have a clear picture of how to become her 'me next'.
and more...
We were also able to add delightful micro-interactions, such as localization according to her home office: hi, ciao, 你好, hallo!
This was the first step towards future-proofing this product suite. It was also the last piece of work in which I participated, as I decided to take a career break for personal reasons, and for that, I had to leave Thoughtworks and helped find the replacement to fill my shoes.
Role(s)
#1 The product leader
Being the talent business unit leaders' right hand to get the investment for the creation and maintenance of this ecosystem. Acting as the liaison between different functions to determine priorities and get value delivered.
#2 The strategist
Directed the strategy, structure, and success metrics for the initiatives, bringing my team to collaborate with stakeholders to review progress, prioritize, and refine solutions. Researching on innovation to support the future 10 years of the company.
#3 The designer
I am a designer at heart, and even when I had too many bureaucratic tasks, such as dealing with a budget, I would try to have some hands-on design activity on my plate, like a user interview, design review, or some ux writing.
#4 The manager
Co-managed these distributed product teams with Tong, my colleague from China, focused on delivery. We owned stakeholder relationships, vendor management, team structure and staffing of designers, product managers, and engineers, as well as performance assessments.
#5 The thought leader
By embedding agile rituals, design and product best practices, we got to delivery quality, better forecasting, and better work. I wrote internal and external articles and was always open to participating in activities that would lead to a better understanding of the work we were doing.
#6 The facilitator
Company-wide workshops and masterclasses on high-performing teams, growth, feedback culture, design best practices, product management, user research, prioritization, and delegation. These sessions were always a high point of my day: facilitation energizes me.
#7 The mentor
Mentored leaders and many designers from Brazil, North America, India, China, Spain, and Singapore. From associate developers to principal designers, my goal is always to support the person's growth and help them deliver impactful work.
#8 The team member
At the end of the day, we are all colleagues. I believe in leadership by collaboration, and therefore, unless in a serious situation, which has been the exception in my experience, I would not push a hierarchical approach and work as a peer.
Challenges
Challenge #1: Innovation x debt
Talent had a lean and underinvested structure for many years. And when you have so much debt, it gets hard to balance innovation and the debt of fixing known problems. We organized the teams in a structure where there was always innovation at the core of the work but considering space for customer support (we did not have a dedicated team) and paying tech debt.
Challenge #2: Design system
Thoughtworks was in the process of brand redesign at the time, so the development of a design system was blocked. The reality was that all products were delivered with different levels of design maturity in terms of interaction and visual design. We mindfully created components across products to make sure of minimum rework later.
Challenge #3: Customer support
With help from tech operations, we implemented a customer support structure with a rotation of team members on call to make sure there was no delay for critical errors and bugs. Urgent requests were dealt with immediately, and a review of all other requests happened every week to make sure users were being heard.
Learnings
Learning #1: Iteration, iteration, and more iteration
I led this work by aligning business and product, bringing the users to the center of the work, and identifying the most important criteria for prioritization. With that, making sure there was clarity on how to reach our team for new features or to fix problems became an easier task. This process was iterated numerous times, receiving strong positive feedback and being adopted by other business units.
Learning #2: Roadmap and visibility of the future
The roadmap is commonly not a designer responsibility, but as this was a leadership position and I had the 'pre-consent' to change this process, I led this work. I created it using a tool that allowed interactive visualization of the past, present, and (possible) future. This roadmap was maintained by the product managers and me. It was also integrated with the feature request system and all other insights from user research, making it easy to a) visualize all the debt, b) demonstrate progress, and c) have a complete view for prioritization.
Learning #3: Launch and internal marketing
Each launch taught us a bit more about what worked and what did not. We were able to hire a comms specialist to partner with us to drive multi-channel marketing campaigns. Depending on the product or feature, we took different launch approaches: a) all users, b) demographic, c) user maturity, and d) role or position, among other approaches.
Learning #4: Experimentation and curiosity
The teams that were building this suite of products worked as a sandbox for experimentation. We were growing the engineering teams while we delivered internal tooling and increased business value. By being open to experimenting with new ways to build products at Thoughtworks, we tested, tried, and implemented processes and methods that were later broadly adopted by other business units.
Team (& thanks)
I grew so much as a designer, as a leader, and as a person during these years. My role transformed many times, just like this ecosystem. And there were so many people involved in this work through the years. Some of them were especially important to me:
Ana (Head of Tech Operations), Aifei (Tech Lead), Andrea (Lead Product Designer), Archana (Head of Learning), Gaya (Client Principal), Jose (Pricipal Product Designer), Keqian (Product Manager), Natalia (Comms), Ricardo (Head of Performance), Ruth (Co-Head of Talent Development), Sara (Director of Strategy for Tech Operations), Lilian (Co-Head of Talent Development), Tong (Delivery Manager), Xuan (Product Designer) and Yilun (Product Manager). Big thanks to senior leaders Joanna (Chief Talent Officer) and Chad (Chief Strategy Officer), who were behind all the investments made.
© 2025 Samantha Rosa
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