Ps Alpha - GS | Portfolio

Goldman Sachs

Jan 2023 - Feb 2023

Discovery of PS Alpha,
a Talent Management Solution

In this case study, you'll see how I transformed a Talent Profile Management tool and created an engaging experience for managing risks through data-driven insights and a dynamic dashboard for Goldman Sachs.

Imagine a company where talented employees drive growth and success. Their development often lies in the guidance they receive from their supervisors. How is their performance tracked? What keeps them motivated? How do they communicate their needs for promotions, onsite opportunities, and career growth? Without the right support, these talented individuals might seek opportunities elsewhere, leading to potential business loss.

This responsibility falls heavily on leadership, especially supervisors. They need an effective tool to manage performance and mitigate risks. This is where PS Alpha will come in, an umbrella platform streamlining tasks and helping supervisors and other stakeholders maximize their potential. To achieve this, there is a critical need to redesign the individual talent profile tool and create a new risk management tool, providing a unified, user-friendly experience for supervisors, reviewers, and account leads.

My Role

As a UX/UI Designer, I played a key role in shaping PS Alpha, closely collaborating with both business and technology teams to make a significant impact from the start.

What was established during the initial briefing?

PS Alpha is a Talent Management platform by Publicis Sapient, which would servie as an umbrella for multiple solutions. Initially, it will feature two products:

1. the Individual Talent Profile (ITP)

2. Risk Management tools.

The current Individual Talent Profile (ITP) tool has a severely low adoption rate with significant no. of fallouts during main task which is profile assessments. Supervisors face challenges with manual tracking, low engagement with the ITP tool, and offline coordination for rejected requests.

Individual Talent Profile Assessment

Individual talent profile tool is an existing product in use by Goldman Sachs currently. Individual talent profile is used by supervisors to assess growth as well as performance of their supervisee. The performance report is also called the talent profile and it further goes through a review process which can be accessible to account leads as well.

ITP Flow

ITP goes to

reviewer for approval

Supervisor submits ITP of their supervisee

Reviewer approves or rejects the received ITP

Rejected ITPs are resubmitted till approved

Risk Registration

Risk Management tool is a new solution which needs to be designed and integrated into PS alpha. Supervisors can use the tool for risk assessment of their supervisees and account leads can keep a track of the the attrition rate as well as risk trends.

Current Risk Tracking

Staying updated on the supervisees' needs is an important aspect of management. The needs could be counted as risks which would require attention and maybe an urgent action.

Supervisors maintain Excel sheets to register risk factors for each supervisee. These sheets are updated monthly but often go overlooked, leading to delayed actions on high-severity risks. This delay negatively impacts supervisee performance and sometimes results in attrition. When a supervisee quits, it contributes to the company's overall attrition rate, directly affecting business.

Supervisor's Excel template of Risk tracker

*Attrition is the departure of employees from the organization for any reason (voluntary or involuntary), including resignation, termination, death or retirement.

Our 3 key personas

Supervisor

- Engineering Lead

Finds it difficult to manage ITPs for supervisees due to the absence of a centralized, craft-focused dashboard.

Lacks visibility into profile statuses and risk indicators(such as type of work, on-site opportunities, and eligibility for promotions), making it hard to drive team growth and ensure timely career development actions.

Reviewer

- Engineering Account Lead

Struggles with managing ITP requests from multiple supervisors due to the absence of a centralized view. Faces inefficiencies from manual tracking, lack of alerts for aging profiles, and offline feedback communication. This makes timely approvals and feedback challenging.

Account Lead

- Program Account Lead

Needs a unified view of ITP progress across the account to collaborate effectively with supervisors.

Currently lacks exception tracking, timely alerts, and access beyond the web—making it difficult to maintain a holistic view of risks, promotions, and attrition across all levels.

Heuristics on the existing version

Assessments

ITP Assessment Form

Insights

I identified an opportunity on the landing page to transform the empty state into a personalized snapshot. The snapshot could be tailored to each persona, while redesigning the existing flow.

Unintuitive Navigation and User Journey

The tool has an unintuitive and confusing user journey which has contributed to it's limited utilization by the supervisors.
Navigation is complex and vague and there was no clarity on the current status of the user.

Information Architecture Issues

Information is scattered and similar terms have been used for different tabs.
There is no consistency in the interface, as both vertical and horizontal tabs have been used with no visual heirarchy.

Lack of Error Handling and User Control

Without confirmations or error checks, users are more prone to mistakes during ITP registration, leading to increased friction and frustration.
User donot have any control over slips and mistakes throughout the flow

High Cognitive Load

The ITP assessment form presents an overwhelming, multi-step process with unclear progression, excessive textual content, and multiple interactive behaviors crowded into a single screen.

Market Evaluation

After analysing flows, current tools, and problem areas, research was crucial to leverage the insights. Without direct competitors, I looked at various products to find common features and unique selling points of industry leaders. The market evaluation ranged from SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle Talent & Risk Management, and Lattice, to Keka, Omnigo, and Trakstar's performance management. Key insights showed that assessments mainly looked at skills, potential, performance, and possible issues.

The products aimed to cut down on offline work by putting everything on the platform. Focusing on individual performance, team progress, and project data was very valuable.

Insights from the Stakeholder Interview

- There are a total of 3 personas to cater to: Supervisor, Reviewer & Account Lead

- ITP tool can primarily focus on the Engineering capability.

- Each capability(Sales, product, & more) requires a personalised approach to assess supervisee performance

- A templatized approach is required while designing so that the tool can easily adapt to other capabilities later in future

- Reporting is done for 3 different levels: Portfolio, Project & Account

Eg. AMD is one portfolio which has 7 projects under it currently: Asset Management Division (AMD) Digital Engineering, GSAM Sales, etc

- One point interaction for multiple taskflows & overview at one glance

"Today, If a supervisor has 15 supervisees under him. Then it becomes really difficult to go through each and every detail. Rather if a supervisor can have some consolidated data, it will give him a good picture "

"In case a supervisee has moved across supervisors. There's no automated way of having historic data available. There are a lot of manual efforts that need to be put to reach out to earlier supervisor. Collate that feedback."

Pain Points

- No track/reminder for aging pending profiles

- Manual tracking & registering ITP in time is a hectic task especially for the supervisors with 8+ supervisees.

- Maintaining risks of individuals is difficult on excels and high severity risks easily get overlooked

- Existing ITP tool lacks usability. There is low engagement of the stakeholders on the tool & most tasks are completed on mail.

- The supervisor needs to submit multiple assessments. Lengthy forms are difficult to understand & are time consuming.

- Hassle of offline coordination for rejected ITPs

Goals

- 360 view: Holistic view of the risk, promotion, attrition related to each individual at each career stage level & data-level

- Simplified, automated and fast ITP submission & Risk registration

- Regular on-time tracking & submission of performance & Risks

- Capture feedback to connect and accelerate ITP process

- Reduced Attrition rate with regular risk registration and in-time mitigation

The Concept

After several discussions on the structure of the main product as well as the global navigation, the Dashboard concept seemed to be the best way to have one point of interaction. All workflows can be directed from dashboard of two separate modules: ITP & Risk

Hereby setting persona of 'Supervisor' as the primary focus for better understanding of the design decisions.

Task Flow

Supervisor wants to start a complete a pending ITP

Supervisor wants to resubmit an ITP that has been rejected by the reviewer.

Supervisor wants to register a risk

How did I break down data across levels

One main dashboard where users can start from different places. Depending on where they start, they see the main Supervisee ITP/Risk list but with different filters already set. The information architecture of the product is covered in 4 levels starting with selection of one of the tools in PS alpha as L1.

Flow 1: Supervisor ITP

Key Requirements of Dashboard

High level KPIs and track ITP progress
Current and historical rating trends
ITP status breakdown by Career stage

Features & Functions

Create, Update & View ITP
View list of ITPs of respective supervisees
Configure(Customise & Group) Listing & multi-select Filters for Project, Portfolio, Status & career stage
ITP Details of each supervisee: Basic Details, ITP, Risk & History
Supervisee Performance: Graph ratings with top 3 Performers which will help the supervisor to have an idea of his best supervisees and add to the recall value. Days left for next cycle to start
Quarter status or something on similar lines to induce the thought 'I need to manage time to finish ITPs faster'. Positive message/nudge for successful process completion.
Alert for sections that require attentions or action.
Click through on any KPIs to see pre-filtered detailed view

High fidelity Explorations

Dashboard

Configure: Customise

Supervisee: ITP

Supervisee: ITP History

ITP Listing

Configure: Group

Supervisee: Supervisee Details