Dorothy
Summary
Situation: Dorothy offers DEI-adjacent LGBTQ workshops and has had a difficult time generating new clients through their current approach.
Goal: Create a lead generation tool for employees to fill out and send to their executives when they’re not meeting DEI standards and in turn create new leads for Dorothy to generate new clients.
Process: As a team, we conducted a competitive analysis and secondary research. I interviewed people managers to test our questions for the tool. We all did usability testing with employees.
Result: The lead generation tool we created has 8 yes or no questions and 2 open ended questions on the state of LGBTQ inclusivity in an organization. We found that these 10 questions can derive enough information for executives and Dorothy to know in order to create change. We also found that approaching employee resource groups in an organization is also a great way to generate new clients for Dorothy rather than focusing on just individual employees.
Background
Our client, Dorothy, is trying to generate new clients to begin their 18-month long Q’D certification program. Over the 18 months, Dorothy works with their client to help them create an environment that is truly committed to make their work culture inclusive and healthy. Dorothy has originally approached generating new clients by trying to get into contact with executives. However, this has proven to be a hard task. Talking with Dorothy, they wanted to create a new way to approach this.
Instead of contacting top executives in an organization, they want to try and go in through employees.
We decided on a creation of a lead generation tool similar to a survey that employees could fill out and anonymously send to their executive. This tool would ask yes or no questions on the state of DEI regarding LGBTQ issues within their company.
Defining The Users and Their Goals
Primary Users
Owners and Leaders who want to increase and maintain employee retention and satisfaction and create a financially healthy organization
People Managers who want to increase and maintain employee retention and satisfaction
Employees who want to be a part of a company that recognizes and acts on the needs of their employees
All with a common goal to create a proactive and responsive culture in their work environment
Stakeholders
LGBTQ People who want to feel comfortable being their whole true selves at work and as a result, be a part of an environment that increases productivity, happiness, and profit.
Research
After defining our primary users and their goals, we defined our proposed solution.
Create a tool that empowers users to call-in their workplace when they’re not meeting DEI commitments and company culture. This tool may take the form of 4-8 quantitatively-oriented questions inquiring into the user's experience at their workplace. The results should be sharable in various formats and conditions, potentially including: email, anonymously, multiple recipients, social platforms, petition, etc. Results should be engaging, digestible and inspire action.
Secondary Research and Competitive Analysis
We did a competitive audit and secondary research in order to understand what was already out there and any other context we may need.
We compared 5 competitors.
Out of the 5,
4/5 center LGBTQ in their training
3/5 had a lead generation tool in use- 2 of which were google forms with basic intake questions.
Of these competitors, they were all approaching new clients through higher ups like Dorothy has been. With a lot of competition in the space, it makes sense that Dorothy wants to approach this differently by approaching employees first.
Examples of the google form lead generation tools from the competitors
Experience Map
In order to help guide us and our users through the experience of using this tool, we created an experience map. The map shows the user moods through finding Dorothy and their impact. It also shows the impact it has on employees without Dorothy, showing the impact that this tool and Dorothy’s workshops can have on their clients.
Determining the Questions
The client wanted us to create the questions for the tool ourselves based on the research. From our research, we compiled a vast list of questions featured on competitor surveys and from resources that Dorothy was already using. We started out with almost 50 questions. We were able to narrow them down by sorting them into categories, combining some, and rephrasing others. We narrowed the questions down to 11 and then tested them with potential users.
Interviews
I interviewed people managers to start. Our goals for these interviews were:
to understand how people managers create a proactive and responsive culture in their work environment.
how their company recognizes and acts on the needs of their employees.
They were asked about their experience with DEI training and then our refined list of questions. From these interviews, we learned that our questions were too specific and didn’t seem like a regular employee could answer some of the questions without external resources. We also learned that gaining contacts through employees could work for this tool, but they informed us that contacting employee resource groups or ERGs within an organization could be a great way to make new contacts. We learned that ERGs have sway within their organizations and can bring in ideas for company DEI training.
Based on this information, we broadened our questions and made sure anyone could fill out this form. Throughout the interviews with the people managers, we began work on our prototype based on our research and feedback from interviews.
We narrowed the questions down to 8 yes or no and 2 open ended questions.
Prototype and Usability Testing
After the initial research and interviews, our team began work on the prototype in Figma. After the prototype was functional, we each individually tested it with potential employee users. Our goals for these tests were,
Determine if they feel comfortable answering these questions honestly and sending out their results
Understand if the questions will generate information that will be beneficial for executives and Dorothy to know
The employees gave us feedback around what they felt comfortable sharing, who they would want to share it with, and the usability of the prototype. We learned that most employees could answer these questions and felt comfortable filling them out, but wanted more confidence that their information was going to be kept safe and anonymous and more information around who to send their results to. All of this information helped shape the prototype. We added reassurances around keeping their information safe, allowed them to send it to multiple recipients, and showed them what their information looks like before it’s sent.
Inclusivity Assessment on Dorothy's home screen
Welcome screen for the assessment giving a brief rundown of what it includes
Employee initial questions
Main questions of the tool
Email, 1/4
Email, 2/4
Email, 3/4
Email, 4/4
Where to send the results of the assessment
Thank you page after submitting
Finalized Questions and Explanations
In the end we narrowed down our questions to 8 yes or no and 2 open ended. We believe that these questions will be valuable information for the employee to share and for executives and Dorothy to know.
Yes or No Questions
Has your job ever asked for your pronouns or to self identify as LGBTQ?
This question is so Dorothy knows if the company is actively making a point to learn their employee’s pronouns and status.
Does your organization support LGBTQ organizations, charities, and nonprofits? For example, Pride events.
This questions would be important for gauging how active the organization is in the community outside of the workspace.
Does your company support LGBTQ inclusivity in the daily setting? For example: gender neutral bathrooms, dress code, etc.
This question is an important inclusivity marker for organizations.
Does your company have protocols for how to respond to crises specifically around LGBTQ related topics?
This question provides insight on how a company might handle a crisis specific to the LGBTQ community.
Does your workplace explicitly have written rules that protect LGBTQ people?
This question is important not only for legal reasons, but to make sure the LGBTQ employees feel their needs are being met.
Have you had LGBTQ centered training through your organization?
This question focuses on whether or not the organization’s existing DEI training covers any of these topics.
Do you feel included by other employees and management?
This question is so Dorothy can know how an employee feels within their organization. Organizations can say they are inclusive but it often can be lip service.
Do you feel comfortable sharing your identity at work?
This question assesses the employee’s comfort level holistically. People will generally not come out in an unsafe or unfit environment.
Open ended Questions
Do you feel like your workplace is a psychologically safe environment?
This question wants to know whether the employee would say that they think their workplace is safe, not just in a physical sense, but an emotional one.
How do you imagine your work environment being more inclusive?
This question provides the opportunity for the employee to add any extra information about what they would like to see change in their workplace and be specific as they like
Presentation
With the scope of our project coming to an end, we put together all of our research and design to present. Watch the presentation below!
Next Steps
Manager and Executive Path
We created a manager and executive path at the beginning of the assessment and the flow is not currently set up. This is another avenue to possibly explore for Dorothy. This tool is set up for anyone to use (including managers and executives) through the employee flow, however with more research it may be beneficial for these separate manager and executive paths to exist.
Mobile View
A mobile view was discussed, but was not researched during the span of this project. We believe a mobile view of this tool would be greatly beneficial for Dorothy. This would allow a wider audience to use the tool and in turn create even more leads for Dorothy.
Tone Check
We styled the tool after Dorothy’s brand guide, but we feel that the questions could possibly better fit into Dorothy’s unique tone. This would be another research point to see how users respond to rephrasing some of the questions.
Email Test
While we’re confident in the email we’ve created to send to managers and executives, we recommend it be tested with actual users. It was tested mainly with employees for this project, but we believe it would be a great future research avenue to make sure managers and executives would read and engage with the email.