Advancing Employee Experience at EY:
Leading Design to Transform Workplace Ecosystems

EY is a collection of around 160 country-based member firms that are a part of the larger global entity which employs well over 400,000 people. The member firms are made up of partners (those with ownership stake in the firm) and the employees who work for those partners. Every year, each firm must pay the global entity for back-office support (things like Finance, HR, IT, Real Estate, etc.) based on each firms total employment count. These fees that the countries pay cover the cost of building, maintaining, and growing the capabilities offered to the firms. This model provides cost efficiencies and enables seamless data and information sharing across borders. However, the complexity of this structure often leads to challenges in delivering a consistent and effective employee experience.

In May of 2019, I was hired onto the Global End User Technology Experience team as a Lead Experience Design consultant. This small 3-member team had one purpose; to serve as consultants for other global teams to highlight their projects and programs impact on the broader employee experience. My initial project was the Support Experience Transformation project (or SxT for short). The goal of this project was to reimagine our existing set of technology focused support experiences with a focus on making the experiences more effective in resolution and less frequently needed.

To ground the project in a deep understanding of user needs, I employed a rigorous, human-centered design approach. Collaborating with stakeholders across knowledge management, support operations, technology and infrastructure teams, vendor management, as well as key country leadership teams, and, utilizing a structured framework, I analyzed the employee journey across five key stages: Accessing Support, User Identification and Initial Contact, Working the issue / Servicing the Request, Providing Status Updates, and Interaction Completion.

Highlighting the SxT Journey

There are five primary stages within the Support journey. They are as follows:

The high-level journey of an employee interacting with Tech Support.

To kick off discovery, I led a comprehensive touchpoint audit, collaborating closely with stakeholders, service owners, and country leadership teams across regions. Through a series of workshops, we mapped the high level view of the support ecosystem, capturing critical interactions and surfacing unique regional nuances. Over the course of 3-4 weeks, this process helped establish a shared understanding of the end-to-end experience and resulted in a prioritized roadmap of touchpoints to explore in greater depth.

Key views from two different workshops, plus an example of a digitized experience map.

With a clear view of the support ecosystem and a prioritized list of touchpoints to analyze, we moved into a series of deep-dive sessions in an effort to created detailed experience maps of each critical series of interactions. Again, I facilitated workshops with employees, stakeholders, service owners, and select country leaders to uncover the full landscape of roles, systems, and dependencies shaping each experience. These sessions provided a comprehensive view of the current-state journeys employees navigated when seeking support. Once finalized, the journeys were digitized in Figma and shared in Miro, making them easy to reference and refine. To enrich these narratives, we layered in analytics and telemetry data, bringing to life not only the steps, but the impact of each journey on the overall employee experience. Due to scheduling conflicts with summer travels, this process took longer than planned, totaling to about 9 weeks from start to finish.

As I was mapping each touchpoint in detail, several areas emerged that warranted deeper exploration to fully understand the root causes of pain points and identify opportunities for potential improvement. To uncover these insights, I conducted a range of in-person research activities, including:

• Contextual Inquiry - Embedding myself as a support agent in two different call centers, I was able to gain firsthand empathy for employee frustrations and uncover operational barriers agents faced int heir interactions with employees.
• Passive and Active Observation - I shadowed employees and support agents while visiting several different in-person help-desk sites around the world to capture live support interactions in real-world contexts and to help discern the differences and preferences of different employees and partners.
• Employee Intercepts and Interviews - I had the chance to speak directly with employees after they had engaged support teams to gather honest feedback and perspectives.

This mixed-method approach revealed both systemic challenges and near-term opportunities-informing not only our long-term vision, but also actionable improvements we could begin addressing right away.

Visual artifacts from the various research exercises conducted, including support agent workstations and participant identification from global workshops.

Coming out of the research, we surfaced 7 critical themes that impacted the overall Support Experiences:

The further research also revealed that countries opting for lower tiers of support often generated higher overall costs for the global organization due to extended interaction times. These countries frequently served as offshore support hubs for primary markets, meaning their inefficiencies and increased downtime had a cascading impact on the performance of countries that invested in higher-tier support. This misalignment in the support model was not only counterproductive but also disrupted service delivery on a global scale.

All these findings informed actionable recommendations, from streamlining authentication processes to consolidating knowledge management practices. I worked with a key group of stakeholders to begin circulating these findings and worked to gain consensus around redefining support experiences.

Over the course of an week-long series of workshops and strategy sessions, I coordinated workshops with key stakeholders, select country leaders, and specific service owners to align on a unified vision for the future support experience. Together, we defined experience goals, aligned on high-level success measures, and initiated the vendor selection process.

Visual of Vision Statement Slide from SxT Overview Deck.

Together as a unified team, we completed the following activities:

• Created a clear and aligned vision statement for the program, with agreed-upon success metrics to guide progress
• Compiled a robust set of experience requirements to inform RFI and RFP submissions
• Conducted experience audit readouts with potential partners to evaluate alignment with employee needs
• Held listening workshops and collaborative vendor evaluations, leading to a narrowed list of qualified partners
• Conducted preliminary co-design sessions to explore solution concepts with the shortlisted vendors

By the end of the week, we had a shared strategic direction, clearly defined design principles, and a prioritized list of vendor partners ready to move forward into deeper collaboration.

High Level Strategy And Metrics Slide

Table of Contents for SxT Experience Requirements

As the SxT program entered the RFP phase and two other critical initiatives sought employee experience design support, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a global shutdown of our offices. Prior to the pandemic, most employees operated in a hybrid working model, splitting their time between the office, client sites, and working remotely. However, the sudden shift to a fully remote workforce exposed significant gaps in our back-office infrastructure. Key systems, such as timesheets and resource management platforms, were inaccessible without VPN or physical office access, and our VPN architecture was not designed to accommodate the entire global workforce working from home.

Simultaneously, our corporate security team accelerated the rollout of Microsoft Teams to ensure compliance with stringent data security policies, safeguarding the firm against social engineering attacks that had become increasingly prevalent. This transition, initially planned as a two-year phased implementation, was fast-tracked under extraordinary circumstances, releasing to the global footprint in 72 hours, adding another layer of complexity to an already challenging situation.

Within hours of the work-from-home mandate being issued, IT support lines were overwhelmed with calls from employees unable to access critical systems, and the VPN infrastructure quickly became overloaded. This brought work across the organization to a standstill, prompting immediate action. Leveraging the mapped experiences our team had previously developed, we collaborated with the infrastructure teams to identify the most frequently used applications and services for each line of business. This allowed us to prioritize which tools needed to be made publicly accessible.

We partnered with application owners to implement secure single sign-on solutions for third-party, business-critical applications, ensuring employees could access these tools without relying on the VPN. We collaborated with InfoSec to implement two-factor authentication solutions, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), to maintain the security of remote access. While this introduced additional steps for employees accessing mission-critical systems, it provided a necessary layer of protection, ensuring secure access without compromising the integrity of sensitive data and systems. Simultaneously, we collaborated with operations teams and country managers to design targeted communications that reduced help desk volumes by addressing employee concerns preemptively.

MFA Setup screen

To further alleviate pressure on support teams, we designed and deployed temporary COVID-19 portals, providing employees with self-help resources to resolve the most common issues independently. In addition, we partnered with Talent and HR teams to build temporary portals that ensured remote access to hiring management systems and employee benefits. Working with local HR teams, we surfaced vital benefits such as grief counseling and childcare credits in select countries where such services were offered. We helped to enable remote onboarding for new hires by collaborating with regional asset management teams to streamline the equipment delivery processes. This included implementing solutions to ensure laptops, previously only distributed in-office, could be securely and efficiently shipped directly to new employees' remote locations. This ensured a seamless start to their EY journey.

The AssistMe Portal, developed in 48 hours in response to increased demand to the support desks post COVID shutdown.

Our recommendations to country leadership and in-office experience teams included strategies for optimizing work-from-home setups, such as providing monitors, speakerphones, headsets, and ergonomic office equipment. We also developed best practices to help employees transition to an entirely remote work environment effectively. Through this coordinated effort, we successfully addressed the immediate challenges of the abrupt shift to remote work while laying the groundwork for a more resilient and employee-centric digital workplace.

This unplanned work also served as a catalyst for increased collaboration with other key departments. As the initial urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic subsided and remote work became the norm, we successfully transitioned from crisis management to a more regular cadence as it related to ongoing programs and projects. This shift allowed us to refocus on long-term initiatives, streamline operations, and integrate our support seamlessly into the organization's evolving business-as-usual environment.

Our increased exposure during the crisis work had new teams become aware of the value and expertise we offered; they began working to integrate us into their existing projects and programs. The resulting surge in demand necessitated scaling my team to ensure we could continue to deliver high-quality support and strategic guidance across the organization.

As demand for our services was growing rapidly, I worked with my leadership and my partners within our org to help develop a scalable research and design organization, with my primary focus being to lead the design function. I split my design team into four key areas of focus for the business units we supported:

I was challenged with prioritizing reducing operating costs while diversifying our workforce. What began as a team of three East Coast-based designers evolved into a 12-person globally distributed design team spanning the US, UK, and Poland, with plans for further expansion into Central/South America and the Far East. To streamline collaboration and improve efficiency, I standardized our toolsets, transitioning from disparate platforms to Figma for blueprinting and prototyping and Miro for workshops and idea sharing.

Each team was led by a dedicated Design Lead, supported by one to two Senior Designers, a UX Researcher, and a Data Scientist, ensuring a well-rounded, multidisciplinary approach. The Design Lead was accountable for guiding the team's direction, upholding quality control on deliverables, and maintaining alignment across roles. To keep efforts on track and connected to broader program goals, a Project Manager was embedded within each team to oversee timelines, manage resourcing, and provide regular progress updates at the program level.

Each team developed a comprehensive repository of experience maps tailored to their focus areas. These scalable maps ranged from high-level journey overviews to detailed service blueprints, offering valuable insights across varying levels of granularity. In collaboration with our research and data science partners, we integrated insights and findings into these maps, enabling the creation of detailed experience audits for key processes. These audits provided annual insights into potential investment areas and informed strategies for growth within each sector.

Much of the teams' work focused on proof-of-concept testing, allowing us to assess the potential impact on employees and evaluate the cost of delivering outcomes at scale. These insights were instrumental in determining whether initiatives should proceed, be paused, or discontinued, ensuring a data-driven approach to decision-making and resource allocation.

While actively engaged with each team's work (typically conducting quality checks on deliverables and occasionally serving as a backup resource during paid-leave situations), I also managed a broader set of responsibilities, including:

• Establishing and overseeing design operations processes.
• Implementing work tracking systems to provide leadership and clients with visibility into resourcing needs, team progress, and project timelines.
• Fostering a positive design culture by promoting initiatives like workshares and peer reviews.
• Hiring and managing global design talent, including conducting individual performance reviews during our three annual review cycles.
• Developing thought leadership and position papers on emerging technologies, including, but not limited, to:
  • helping country leadership teams better understand the right roles for chatbots in the workplace;
  • differentiating between notifications, nudges, and alerts to minimize "noise;"
  • and exploring how AI tools such as ChatGPT, Microsoft CoPilot, and IBM Watson could enhance internal employee experiences.
• Collaborating with design partners across the global organization to contribute to the development of EY's global design system and design language, EY Fabric, ensuring alignment and consistency across all design initiatives, not just the ones on which my team was assigned.

I also continued to serve as a trusted advisor to country leaders and service owners, providing strategic guidance on experience design and transformation efforts. Additionally, I was brought into client-facing conversations and engagements alongside EY teams to share insights from the SxT program and contribute thought leadership around the future of technology support and the evolving landscape of employee experience.

During the remainder of my time at EY, I led my cross-functional teams through a series of high-impact initiatives aimed at reimagining the global employee experience. Our work applied service design principles to drive measurable, lasting change across the organization, thus shaping how employees interacted with critical services and systems worldwide. Each initiative contributed to our broader mission of transforming the employee experience landscape at EY, delivering outcomes that improved operational efficiency, engagement, and satisfaction. The following highlights showcase the breadth and depth of our efforts across key areas of focus.

Technology Support

We continued to guide the detailed design efforts of the SxT program. My team began detailed design work by using the findings from the discovery efforts to drive the creation of high-level journey flows for key touchpoints. We then moved into detailed experience mapping and concept design. Working closely with InfoSec, we modeled information exchange and translated early ideas into storyboards for employee and agent feedback. That work then informed the creation of interactive prototypes, which were further validated with employees and agents before any integration work began. This iterative approach enabled cross-functional teams to move quickly, test early (and often), and confidently implement solutions tailored to EY's complex operating environment.

Concept Sketch of EY Support System used in initial concept testing

The New EY Support Design System Interface Sample Screens

We launched the first SxT experiences in the UK and Ireland in late 2022 as intentional pilot markets. These early deployments provided critical, real-world feedback from employees, agents, and partners, helping us identify integration challenges and surface usability issues that only emerge through hands-on implementation. By analyzing live telemetry and gathering direct user input, we were able to refine and evolve the experience before broader deployment in 2023. This phased approach helped de-risk the program, accelerate future rollouts, and avoid the complexity and risk of an immediate global launch.

We made measurable progress toward our goal of automating 80% of support interactions by 2025, reaching 39% automation in June 2024. We also launched five proactive experiences designed to address common issues before they occurred, which helped to reduce employee wait times by an average of two minutes. Our first contact resolution (FCR) rate improved to 89%, driven by better routing, smarter tools, and improved workflows and the introduction of hyper-personalized support experiences that gave agents real-time insights and context. This also resulted in a 67% increase in employee-reported trust in support and a 33% rise in agent satisfaction. Together, these enhancements significantly improved the quality of support and helped drive a 42-point increase in internal Net Promoter Score (NPS) and a 17-point gain in CSAT.

Talent/HR

We enabled remote onboarding for EY employees and contractors, streamlining the process to reduce onboarding time by over 35% and increasing successful completions within desired timeframes from 67% to nearly 90%. By helping to define the employee profile and automating much of its creation, we made it easier to align talent with the right roles, freeing employees to focus on their clients rather than administrative tasks.

Sample of EY Employee Profile

Additionally, we developed and tested a successful proof of concept demonstrating how we could reduce HR support contacts by 60% while delivering relevant, contextual experiences throughout the employee journey. This approach not only improved efficiency but also maintained an impressive Net Promoter Score (NPS) above 75, underscoring the value of our efforts.

Screenshots of the AI-Driven HR Support PoC

In-Office Experiences

We facilitated a seamless transition from multiple meeting platforms to Teams, minimizing employee frustration and ensuring the change was as smooth as possible. By streamlining the meeting booking process, we reduced the time required by over 80%, focusing on surfacing only the essential elements for most meetings. We also established standards for remote work and collaborated with country firms to ensure employees received the appropriate equipment for optimal work-from-home setups tailored to their unique situations. Additionally, we partnered with country leadership teams to develop and implement successful return-to-office strategies and collaborated with real estate teams in select regions to design and test 'office of the future' environments, creating spaces that support modern ways of working.

In-Office Experience Design artifacts showing the meeting room experience journey, room displays, quiet zones, collaborative spaces, and focus areas designed for the future workplace.

In early 2024, EY announced a leadership transition with the appointment of a new CEO. As part of this transition, the incoming CEO sought to align future initiatives with her forthcoming corporate strategy. This resulted in a temporary pause on transformative employee experience projects, allowing leadership to realign priorities and chart a new direction under the updated vision. Additionally, the new CEO emphasized a shift in focus from global initiatives to regionally tailored executions, signaling a strategic pivot in how projects would be approached moving forward. These changes meant that many of our efforts were placed on an indefinite hold, with the expectation of resuming at the earliest in late Q3 2024 once the organizational priorities were fully established.

From leading the Support Experience Transformation (SxT) program to scaling a globally distributed design team, I focused on driving meaningful change by putting employees at the center of every initiative. Every project and program not only improved immediate pain points, but also established a foundation for long-term innovation and operational excellence. Across our work, we stived to deliver tangible outcomes that directly impacted employees and the business. Beyond solving immediate challenges, we worked to enhance key employee touchpoints across various domains.

Our team's evolution was a key highlight of my tenure. Starting as a small, regionally based group, we grew into a 12-person global design team, equipped with unified tools and a strong design culture. This growth enabled us to scale our impact across EY's operations, from service blueprinting and experience audits to pioneering the integration of AI tools and chatbots to improve employee interactions. These efforts not only solved immediate needs but also laid the groundwork for future advancements.

Ultimately, my work at EY exemplified how experience design can serve as a strategic driver of organizational success. By addressing complex challenges with a focus on empathy, collaboration, and innovation, we improved employee satisfaction, increased operational efficiency, and delivered solutions aligned with the firm's global ambitions. The legacy of these projects and the team we built continues to shape how EY supports its employees worldwide, empowering them to focus on delivering exceptional client outcomes.