Upon entering Aegon I was the first in-house Designer. During the almost decade preceding me we worked very closely a partner to help us through providing designers when needed. This allowed Aegon to get used to design as a discipline on a flexible and cost efficient basis, but made it hard for us to grow beyond the operational level. Most DevOps teams in the business units had a UX Designer in the team, this scattered organisation of the capability was one of the major blocking issue’s. Another issue we kept running into is that the external designers could leave whenever they wanted to due to their relation being with our partner, whereas we felt the pain of all the knowledge suddenly leaving and having to deal with the high turn over of people.
I set out on a journey in Aegon to prove the value of Design on a higher level that is inline with the set business goals to create an internal budget for an in-house team. During this period there were several cost-reduction programs active in the organisation that made the business case earlier when looking at the bottom line. But simultaneously proposed the question: “Do we even need designers if we have a Design System?”
I made the decision to approach every UX design position one by one. My personal conviction is that a designer can only achieve its maximum potential if its surroundings are adequately shaped. If we manage to find talent but is placed into a team with a very controlling product owner who does not see the value in his added value it would only lead to frustrations. As a side effect this allowed us to do a bit better with each position filled.
Together with product owners, business information analysts, managers and other influential stakeholders I mapped out how we can most efficiently embed them in our digital service creation processes and what we should expect from them. Together with a solid Business Case this removed most if not all reservations they initially had. As an extra we kept track of how our Design System positively impacted our digital service delivery with a good story on why this can only be possible if we have designers in-house.
As the Design team started growing we were becoming more and more visible. By attending company wide events with strong case studies and popping up in demo’s left and right our story moved through the entire organisation. In less than a year we’ve created a central hub for all things design and were connected to most if not all parts of the organisation.
In an organisation as big as Aegon there are always some locations where its hard to make a business case for an in-house designer. To make sure we could still support and build our influence I’ve set up a internship program together with HR. Each quarter we’d do presentations at the PI Planning events and ask around for challenging idea’s. I’d then propose these to potential interns to see if they were interested and motivated to pick them up at this big scary angry corporate.
We’ve had up to 3 interns each year who all made a significant contribution and impact on our organisation. From supporting our design and research activities up to creating new innovative idea’s improving our service delivery.
Finding talent was the first step. The second step is keeping the talent in. One thing that defines talent for me is enthusiasm for self development. Not working somewhere to work, but working some where to pursue a better self each day.
To help our designers on this I set up a few different consistent rituals:
These rituals all had certain boundaries to make them efficient and focused; enabling a safe space for all involved.
