Case study
Enterprise HR Ecosystem — Designing one experience for many ways of working
One HR ecosystem. Multiple products. One connected employee journey.
- Enterprise UX
- HR Technology
- Workflow Design
- Information Architecture
- Dashboard Design
- Role-based Experiences
- Role
- Head of UX
01
The challenge
HR processes were interconnected, but the experience was fragmented. Different roles had different responsibilities, permissions and information needs.
The platform supported organisations across the employee lifecycle — from talent acquisition and hiring to onboarding, attendance, leave, timesheets, payroll, career development and exit management.
- HR administrators
- Recruiters
- Hiring managers
- Employees
- Managers
- Payroll teams
- Reporting managers
- System administrators
"How might we create a scalable HR ecosystem that makes complex organisational processes easier to understand and manage without creating a different experience for every module?"
02
Product scope
Talent Acquisition & Hiring
Requisitions, openings, candidate management, screening, interviews, submissions and offers.
Employee Lifecycle
Onboarding, employee management, career management, internal mobility and exit.
Workforce Management
Attendance, leave, timesheets, manager approvals and team management.
Compensation & Administration
Payroll, HR administration, employee information, reporting and compliance-related processes.
Employee Experience
Career portal, self-service, dashboards and HR communications.
03
My role
As Head of UX, I was responsible for providing UX direction across the HR ecosystem, with a strong focus on research, understanding business and user needs, validating product experiences and guiding the design team.
My involvement was primarily focused on research, UX strategy, design reviews and product direction, with hands-on product design where required.
- Led UX research and discovery across HR workflows and user groups
- Worked with stakeholders to understand business requirements and user needs
- Analysed complex HR processes and identified UX opportunities
- Defined and reviewed user journeys and workflows
- Established UX direction for multiple HR modules
- Reviewed information architecture and navigation
- Conducted design reviews and provided UX feedback
- Validated interaction patterns and enterprise usability
- Helped prioritise UX improvements
- Collaborated with product managers, developers and business stakeholders
- Contributed to product design and interaction decisions where required
- Ensured consistency across the wider HR ecosystem
04
Research & discovery
The first challenge was understanding how work actually moves through the organisation.
- Recruiter — Find candidates → evaluate → shortlist → interview → submit → offer
- Hiring Manager — Raise requirement → review candidates → interview → select → approve
- Employee — View information → submit request → receive approval → track status
Rather than designing screens independently, I mapped the underlying workflows first.
"The goal was not to redesign every workflow independently, but to create a consistent design language across the ecosystem."
05
Role-based experience
One platform, different experiences.
Recruiter
Manage requisitions, openings, applicants, candidate profiles, shortlists, interviews and submissions.
Recruitment Manager
Recruitment activity, interviews, selected candidates, offers and client/billing-related activities.
HR Administrator
Employee management, user and role administration, HR operations, employee lifecycle, reporting and configuration.
Employee
Attendance, leave, timesheets, personal information, career and HR requests.
"Expose complexity to the people who need it — and hide it from those who don't."
06
Information architecture
Structuring a complex HR ecosystem around how users think.
Rather than defining navigation purely from the existing product structure, we used an online card-sorting activity to understand how users naturally grouped HR-related functions.
07
Design outcome
The work established a more predictable, role-aware and scalable structure across the HR ecosystem. Rather than showing every screen, the case study uses representative journeys to demonstrate the thinking behind the system.
"The system should reflect how people work, not simply how the organisation is structured."
Working on something similarly complex?