Humanizing Organizations - The Pathway to Growth

Human-centered design approaches in organizations have emerged since the rise of service design and design thinking. The subsequent application and adoption of these methods into daily practices have been observed to be challenging, but the reason for this is not clear. Often organizations have not been built based on human-centered design principles. Moreover, the organizational context, in which these design-oriented approaches are introduced, contradicts current operating models. How does the organization overcome these fundamental barriers and create a more humanistic environment for applying human-centered design? Built on previous research, we developed a workshop methodology to enhance human-centered design principles in organizations. Here, we draw attention to the boundary between the human relations inside (employees) and outside (customers) organizations. The paper presents the foundations, methodology, and preliminary results as well as future avenues for humanizing organizations.