In this Talent Tales episode, talent.imperative Founder Nicole Dessain had the honor to interview Halima McWilliams, People Operations and Culture Leader at Corgan.

Halima’s creative superpower is being strategically creative - connecting the dots with an out of the box approach.

Halima describes herself as a “family reunion aficionado” making family tradition and legacy particularly important to her. She aims to create that same level of connection and belonging in the workplace.

Halima first discovered design thinking by participating in a talent.imperative workshop featuring the Arity Design Sprint case. She started to become curious about human-centered design and how it might get applied in the workplace. Halima particularly values the experience mapping and storyboarding methods due to their visual and actionable nature.

She also thinks that HR can benefit from the iterative aspect of the design thinking practice. That’s what drew her to participate in HR.Hackathon Alliance’s #HRvsVirus Hackathon earlier this year. Her global team designed a Return to Work App.

Halima has applied design thinking to her HR work at Corgan, for example in re-imagining the firm’s onboarding program. She envisioned an experience where new hires felt that the company was expecting them and made them feel welcomed. The initial program was designed for an in-office experience but after COVID hit, it was quickly adjusted to a virtual program extending to their summer interns. The pivot was seamlessly made because of the agile approach the team took with the initial design.

The entire program was championed by an Executive Sponsor from the business to ensure leadership support for the project. Thankfully, as a design and architecture firm, Corgan already embraces human-centered design in their business practices which enabled the adoption of the practice in HR.

Halima also wanted to use this project as an introduction for her team to the design thinking mindset so future program design would start with a How Might We… question. Since this initial experiment, Halima has seen more co-creation among the team and renewed appreciation for what others might bring to the table.

Halima’s most recent application of design thinking is in re-imagining the firm’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategy starting with employee listening sessions. After these, Halima plans to activate design thinking methods to invite everyone to get involved in generating innovative solutions that address areas of inequality.

Halima’s tip for getting started with design thinking in Human Resources is to simply dive in and experience the method by applying it to a small initiative first. She believes that design thinking is a game changer for Human Resources, and that everyone should give it a try. We won’t argue with that!

Want to learn more about applying design thinking to creating a culture of Belonging? Watch the entire interview on YouTube or listen to the Podcast.