It wasn’t always sunshine…
When I took over leading the UX organization at Sun Life, I knew we had our work cut out for us.
Sun Life had embarked on a large-scale digital transformation, with design expected to play a key role in helping re-orient the broader organization around customer experience and outcomes. We were being asked to double the size of the team to support this new direction. Great news, right?
Not so fast. The UX team had grown steadily since being established in 2012 and had attracted some great talent. However, under-investment in the foundational practice had created a perfect storm of issues that needed to be addressed before we could think about scaling further.
- Lowest engagement scores across the digital organization
- Lack of career paths for XD professionals led to over-levelling and inconsistent talent evaluation
- No support for junior designers meant we had to hire established talent…which we couldn’t afford
- High reliance on contract resources (40% of the team)
- Attrition as high as 60% YoY on some teams
So how could we retain the people we had, attract top talent in a challenging job market, and build a better design culture all at the same time?
Evolving the UX Practice at Sun Life
We focused on building a strong design practice by investing in people, process, and culture. This included:
- Establishing clear career paths and competency frameworks for all XD roles
- Launching a DesignOps function to streamline onboarding and professional development
- Reducing reliance on contract resources and investing in junior talent
- Creating a culture of mentorship, feedback, and shared ownership
- Aligning design with business outcomes and experience measurement
Investing in people and practice pays off
By focusing on building a strong design practice, we were able to boost internal engagement scores by +20 to 30 points across multiple dimensions.
In just two years we were able to go from the least engaged group within the digital Product team to having the highest engagement scores in our entire organization:
Most importantly, we completely changed the designer experience at Sun Life. Whereas previously new designers struggled due to lack of leadership and process, we had created an environment where both new and experienced XD professionals could thrive.
But don’t take it from me…