Agile Chennai 2022 Dopamine Shots in a Hybrid World Mahadevan Periaswamy Principal Coach, Sabre Rajsekhar Janaswamy Principal, Sabre

1. Travel Tales -
Dopamine Shots for
the hybrid world

2. Who are we?
Rajsekhar Janaswamy
Two decades in IT, multiple roles across product and service organizations,
currently focus on enabling high performance
Mahadevan Periaswamy
2+ decades IT, spanning both product and services in various roles.
Current interests include Agile Program Management, Agile-Lean Consulting/
coaching, Leadership and Gamification

3. Business Agility is on every
CEO’s mind
Today there are numerous challenges (both
External and Internal) preventing Business Agility
more than ever before!

4. Biggest Internal
Challenge today - Talent
• Hybrid workforce
• Great Resignation & Quiet
Quitting
• Budgets Constraints
• Engaging new hires

5. Questions on
every
employer’s mind
• Motivate our employees in a sustained way
• Keep our workforce engaged to address
innovative problems

6. What is our
session about?
Approach to evolve
strategies to address these
challenges

7. Companies build Products by focusing on customers and their
experience

8. Our Premise is….
Use tenets of Product
Management to build an
experience for employees

9. • Consider the company as
your Product
• Treat Employee as your
USER
• Create a curated
experience to engage
Employees

10. The Sweet Spot of Enhanced Experience
USER
EMPLOYEE
PRODUCT
ORGANIZATION
ENHANCED
EXPERIENCE
INDIVIDUAL ENVIRONMENT

11. Enhanced Experience
leads to Dopamine - a
neurotransmitter made in
your brain
• Movement
• Memory
• Pleasurable reward and
motivation
• Behavior and cognition
• Attention
• Sleep and arousal
• Mood

12. The Fogg Behavior Model
Why Not use this for your Employees?
Three elements must converge at the same moment for a
behavior to occur: Motivation, Ability, and a Trigger.
Individual

13. Let’s
understand
this model a
bit
User

14. Behaviors change
based on triggers,
ability and motivation
User

15. What Triggers should we give?
Successful
Triggers
Increase Reduce
Sensation Pleasure Pain
Belonging Social acceptance Social Rejection
Anticipation Hope Fear

16. The HEART
framework for UX in
products
Environment
heart-metrics-author-version (googleusercontent.com)

17. Let's understand HEART
Happiness
Measure
Subjective
aspects of user
experience
Engagement
User’s level of
involvement
with a product
through
behavioral
proxies
Adoption
Track how many
new users start
using a product
during a given
time period
Retention
Track users from
a given time
period who are
still present in
some later time
period
Task Success
Behavioral
metrics of user
experience

18. Let’s introduce the HEART Framework
• Goal
• a statement of what you’d
like your product to achieve
in that area of HEART.
• Signal
• signs you can look for to show
you whether you’re on track
to achieve your goal
• Metrics
• to objectively measure each
signal
Environment

19. HEART Examples from real life products

20. Dopamine Effect for
Employees
Design the Dopamine Shot with BJ Fogg
behavior theory and monitor effectiveness with
HEART framework

21. Lets try and apply this - first let us understand the employee
journey
Recruitment
& Onboarding
orientation and
initial training
Role and Job
Execution
Ongoing learning and
development,
ongoing
engagement,
Community
involvement,
environmental
support
Alignment
Communication,
rewards and
recognition
Retention
Individual Growth,
Performance
Management,
Compensation, Role
advancement
Exit
Retirement,
termination,
resignation

22. Segmentation
When volumes are huge, identifying relevant
cohorts matter
Individual
Subjective Objective

23. How will the Fogg + HEART Framework look
like for Employees?
Identify
Employe
e
Journey
Stage
Identify
Cohort
Describe
Challenge
Statement
Define
Goal
Ask
“How
Might
We?”
Identify
Signals
and
Metrics
Inspect
and
Adapt

24. An Example

25. Let's look at an Example
Employee Journey
stage
• Engagement and
Retention
Identify Cohort
• Top Talent with 5
to 8 years of
experience
Challenge/
Aspiration
Statement
• To reduce or stop
voluntary exits of
top talent
Define Goal
• We aspire to
prevent
voluntary
attrition to
below 2%

26. How might we?
Successful
Triggers
Increase Reduce Ideation Outcome
Sensation Pleasure Pain • Recognition
Belonging
Social
acceptance
Social Rejection
• Change within the
organization
• Ownership
Anticipation Hope Fear
• Reducing negative triggers
• Learning opportunities

27. Idea Goal Signal Metric
Recognition Leadership
Recognition
Evidences of
Recognition
mechanisms to create
social acceptance &
enhance pleasure
• # of times in the quarter leaders give out formal and
informal recognition
• Peer Recognition opportunities used
• Creating visibility across the organization
Learning
Opportunities
Ensuring
Skillset are
relevant to
evolving
needs
Evidences of Grooming
top performers by
giving them additional
learning opportunities
• Nominations for advanced technical, leadership
training, and conferences
• # of on-demand learning opportunities used
Certification programs
• Mentoring support & Leadership interaction
opportunities
• Challenging / Customer-facing opportunities
From Ideas to HEART Framework

28. Idea Goal Signal Metric
Change within
the
organization
Retention through
job rotation
Evidences of
preference given to
existing employees
in IJP’s
• # of Top Performers interviewed for new roles in
the organization
Reducing
Negative
Triggers
Ensure we have
Hygiene factors to
prevent discontent
Evidences of
managing negative
triggers by keeping
two-way
communication
flowing
• Frequency of check-ins with leadership
• # of 1-1 with reporting managers
• Frequency of HR BP check-ins
• # of Wellness, Health, and Family supports
extended
• Frequency of Career path discussions
• Safe Feedback opportunities
• Participation/ownership levels in organization
events
From Ideas to HEART Framework

29. So, what are we saying? – Call for Action
1. Organization = PRODUCT and
Employees = USERS
2. Leverage HEART and BJ FOGG Theory
in tandem
3. This is not just an HR exercise

30. Q&A