Crafting the future employee experience

On a daily basis more than 1,2 million people travel by train. This is the same amount of people that live in the province of Utrecht. Not so long ago the most important thing for the Dutch Railways was to bring these people to their destination safely and on time. Nowadays the focus has shifted towards being hospitable to these travels. Answering questions, welcome them on board and keep them updated about delays. It’s about being a true public transport guide.


On track within a month

We helped the Dutch Railways to answer questions like: how can we make employees on the stations and trains even more hospitable towards the travelers? Do the employees have time and ‘head space’ to do so? And how can we take the first steps as an organisation?  

From long term vision to sustainable reality

Big questions? For sure. Big project? Definitely not. Together with them we decided to work in short cycles and in co creation sessions, which gave us the opportunity to start off very fast, do experiments and shift tracks if necessary. After only four weeks we crafted a bulletproof story with which we could show how employees would get more time and opportunity to interact with the traveler.  

Fast, pragmatic and at the same time thorough research is essential to break up the long term vision into small concrete steps. By being present at stations and traveling along, we gathered many insights and we came to one important conclusion. Where the business wants to be even more hospitable, the urgency for the employees is on having simpeler and clearer information — which fits the dynamics and commotion during a day.  

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With this conclusion in mind, we were now able to make the vision tangible. Our initial focus widened from only creating User Interfaces of the app for employees, towards also creating the fundamental basis behind it: a framework for the concept. This invisible framework is necessary to let the concept grow into a sustainable reality.

Bringing it to life

The vision on hospitality has changed in four weeks from something ‘between the ears’ into a tangible and concrete concept for a digital product. To give it something extra, we’ve created a mood film together with our partner RAAK. In this short, we’ve put the product in the daily life of a conductor, to show the direct added value it has on their work. It shows how they get more time and space to do what they do best. Furthermore, it helps with their bringing the traveler from A to B. Safe, fast, comfortabel and well informed.



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Xebia Group
Laapersveld 27
1213 VB Hilversum
The Netherlands
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