Greyspace

Photo by Ronan Furuta

The World Economic Forum
Designing new everyday practices that build a greater sense of Belonging

THE BRIEF

How can a global organisation build a greater sense of Belonging?

To achieve this, we developed a yearlong process that engaged employees to co-create better working practices and policies. Collectively, they diagnosed present-day barriers to Belonging, envisioned alternatives to overcome those barriers and developed tools to design for belonging across interpersonal, organizational, and systemic scales.

Our process allowed individuals and regions to bring their own practice and understanding whilst building a shared vision. This work is in partnership with storyteller, racial justice educator and organizer Virgina Cumberbatch.

OUR EXPERTISE

– Leadership Development
– Collective Visioning
– Design Opportunities
– Strategic Recommendations
– Organizational Vision

First a shared understanding of Belonging must be surfaced from the entire organisation
Our design-led approach allows people to focus on concrete actions that can be taken next
Building new practices let people take on new roles and responsibilities

THE OUTPUTS

18 strategic recommendations tailored to different local and cultural needs that included hiring and retention, elevating diverse expertise, new storytelling and programming, equitable leadership

17 design opportunities that frame concrete actions for teams to begin implementing and experimenting with

6 cohorts onboarded across the 3 regions of North America, Europe, and Asia followed our multi-module design for belonging program

The final output included ideas, research quotes, present-day needs analysis, and a future vision for each design opportunity.

THE IMPACTS

This project set the foundation for building equitable practices and policies in the everyday work of The Forum. Leadership and teams across The Forum are working directly on the challenges they have the most influence on and designing concepts and experiments they can start immediately.