Case Study: Building Insights Capability · Nike & ServiceNow · 2019-2025
Human Resources had no structured way to gather qualitative feedback from employees. I built the capability from scratch, twice.
THE SITUATION
Large enterprises like Nike and ServiceNow usually have mature employee voice programs that survey employees annually. They excel at identifying what's working well, what isn't, and what shifts year over year, but they leave a gap in understanding true sentiment and root causes of issues. At Nike, I stood up Employee Experience Insiders, a qualitative panel that generated insights informing decisions for 75,000+ employees. Years later at ServiceNow, when the need resurfaced I repeated the model and again provided HR leaders and product teams with actionable, data-driven insights needed to move their work forward with precision.
One sentence. Business-level problem. What would go wrong if this wasn't solved?
MY APPROACH
Focus on the human voices. Data science teams took care of the quantitative. I complemented that with equal vigor by building a repeatable qualitative insight infrastructure that reduced dependency on HRBP-gated access, accelerated research cycles, and created reusable employee intelligence for product and program decisions.
INSIGHTS AND FACTORS
- Employees want to be heard. They want their input to make a difference, otherwise they'll stop responding. With Experience Insiders, employees felt like they belonged to something that improved how they and their co-workers experience the workplace.
- A known panel improved our ability to make connections purely anonymous data couldn't. It also enabled us to understand how changes over time affected the same people. When necessary, we could cross-check with data from random stratified samples.
- At Nike and ServiceNow, a major speed bottleneck was employee access. Employee contact at times had to route through HRBPs as gatekeepers. Panelists who'd opted in directly could be reached without that approval step, and that single change was a major win.
2–3 bullets. What did you understand that wasn't obvious?
My Specific Contribution
At Nike, the team I managed built and operated Experience Insiders end to end, recruitment, confidentiality, governance, study design, and closing the loop by reporting outcomes to participants. At ServiceNow, as a team of one, I built the entire system myself, including the use of low code/no code toolsets to build the digital touch points.
| Before |
What I Built |
Annual snapshot survey
one-time, anonymous |
Standing, known panel
recruited, screened, longitudinal |
No way to close the loop
respondents never heard back |
Confidential from stakeholders
findings reported back to participants |
HRBP-gated access (ServiceNow)
approval required per request |
Opt-in, direct access
panelists reachable without the gate |
700+
Volunteers recruited and screened across 25 countries for Nike's Experience Insiders panel
30+ / yr
Studies run on the standing panel annually, without rebuilding recruitment each time
75%
Cut in time-to-insight at ServiceNow's EX Insiders, driven mainly by removing the HRBP access gate