Background
PTG Linens Service is a commercial laundromat that services other local businesses such as hotels and restaurants in the area. They were recently bought by a new owners who were interested in using this laundromat as an opportunity to do social good. We had the pleasure of working with PTG Linen Service, a commercial laundromat situated in San Leandro, with the goal of investing employee empowerment, entrepreneurship, and innovation as a means of growing PTG's business.
Team Members
Aaron Mckenzie, Sylvia Nguyen Dang, Irene Ti
Faculty:
Marc O'Brien, Sarah Harrison, Peter Coughlan, Saran Green, Laura Weiss, Kristian Simsarian
Time Frame
2 months
About the Client
PTG Linen Services is a commercial laundromat that has been servicing its community for a long time. They were recently purchased by a new collective ownership, who has a background and interest in social good.
The new ownership purchased the laundromat with the intention of creating social good with it. They were very intrigued by the idea of using the laundromat to create an employee incubator, which would focus on creating career mobility in a career path that has little to no growth opportunity.
We quickly discovered that there are two other key stakeholders and no alignment between the three.
Solution Overview
In these 8 months, we delved deep into this space and tackled various areas of opportunities by facilitating a workshop, defining values, refining the brand based on these values, prototyped a decision making framework--which all lead to various points of impact including business growth as well as employee empowerment.
Research
The new owners of the laundromat were excited to explore how we could potentially use the laundromat for social good—for example create a path of mobility for the workers. We decided to take a step back and dive into the problem space first before coming up with any solutions.
To get a better understanding of the space, we set out to interview the employees at PTG. In total, we spoke with 16 employees, ranging from equity partners to general managers to the ground level employees (i.e. washers, folders, drivers).
Most of the ground level employees spoke mostly Spanish but we were lucky enough that one of our teammates, Sylvia, spoke Spanish and the office manager, Joanna, was also bilingual and was happy to help translate.
After speaking with the employees and management, we realized that that many factors were at play and we derived three main insights.
Communication Gap & Misalignment
The new owners were in love with this idea of employee incubator and were really focused on building something similar.
Meanwhile the employees who worked the ground floor wished there was a way to streamline their work and management was focused on growing the business. Nobody was on the same page.
The current system was a top down hierarchy that was very stable but also rigid in nature.
Inconsistent Feedback Loop
This misalignment was caused by the fact that there was little and no consistent form of feedback going from employees to management to leadership.
PTG was actually missing out on valuable opportunities to improve or streamline their work but couldn’t because of this lack of communication. Important information gets stuck because there is no effective way to share it.
Systems, not Instances
Even though we as the designers loved this idea of an employee incubator and were just as excited as the new owners were, we understood that so much of the necessary groundwork did not exist.
This is when we realized that we needed to create a system that empowers and not instances of empowerment.
There was a misalignment of goals and a lack of a common language throughout the organization and in order to create a system that empowers, we first needed to make sure that everyone was on the same page.
The Workshop
In order to build the groundwork for any other potential design projects, we must first create alignment. We hosted a workshop with the intention of bringing everyone from all levels of PTG as a way of creating alignment but unfortunately, it was also the busiest season and they could not spare any of the ground level workers.
In this workshop, we defined PTG's values and also prototyped a decision making framework called Idea to Action, which leverages design thinking as a way of creating more opportunities for participation from ground level employees.
Together as a group, we identified goals and areas of opportunity PTG would like to work on and mapped out a plan on how to work towards that goal.
We got an opportunity to test our framework and this framework helped us to identify the challenge, the people needed as well as resources needed and also encouraged PTG Linen Services to think beyond of just more capital and more in terms of people.
The biggest outcome of this workshop was the shift in the perspective of employee involvement. In the beginning, the CEO, was concerned about how employee participation may affect productivity and morale (in the cases where promises were thought to be made but not delivered).
But as an outcome of the workshop, he was beginning to consider to bring more ground levels employees into the decision making process; thereby, inverting that top-down, triangular hierarchy that was preventing PTG from becoming a more flexible but still stable organization.
We also got the greenlight from leadership to start co-designing and testing with the ground employees, something that has never been done before.
““I can see how getting [ground employees] involved [in decision making] could be helpful””
The workshop proved the value of knowledge sharing between all levels of employees and involving them in the decision making process.
During the workshop, we looked at areas of opportunity for growth and leadership wanted to focus on improving their customer service. From this discussion, we realized that we need to figure out a way to streamline communication between drivers, the office manager, and the general manager regarding pickups and deliveries.
We wanted to co-design and involve the ground employees in the design process as much as possible so we decided to bring Joanna, the office manager, into our discussion as she plays a vital role in linking the employees with management.
We were focused on creating a space for Joanna to lead us through her challenge areas, prototype, and test with other employees. Joanna did a quick prototyping session with one of the drivers who provided valuable background context about how PTG receives deliveries. We were able to scrap one of our sketches immediately.
This was actually very exciting as the valuable input from someone who worked on the ground floor saved us many days of work by simply knowing that it would not work.
We went back to the drawing board with the feedback we received and started tinkering with free online resources and materials PTG already had to create a low-budget QR code tracking system. This would allow the manager and employees to effectively track deliveries in real time.
“[Sonders] want to work with us because we care. Because we touch everything and make sure the quality is good—there is a human aspect to our work.”
Our goal for the workshop was to create alignment by centering on common language and focus on areas of opportunities. We wanted PTG Linens to verbalize the values they were already practicing as a way of not only communicating it with their employees but also any potential clients.
An opportunity soon came after we did the workshop. Sonders, a rental company focused on combining the best of hotels and apartments came to take a tour of the PTG Linens facility. They were impressed not only by the quality of work but also by the values PTG stood for.
Seeing the list of values hanging on the wall where all levels of employees could easily see helped secure a brand new contract with Sonders. By verbalizing their values, PTG was able to effectively and quickly communicate with their clients who they are as a company.
Our Learnings & Reflection
We were incredibly lucky to have an opportunity to work with PTG Linens Services. When we were first brought in, we were very excited about potentially creating career mobility for employees who have limited or no mobility. However, we soon realized that more groundwork must be done first before anything else can happen. Here are some of our learnings in this journey.
System Change Takes Time
We first came into this space very excited about all of the changes we were going to make but we soon realized the scope of the task we were trying to undertake.
System change takes time because it is about shifting perspectives, creating trust within communities, and encouraging behavioral change. All of this cannot be accomplished overnight without compromising on something else.
Trust the Process
Trusting the process meant being patient and this is incredibly important when working with communities in which you are an outsider, Even though we were itching to start working, we took a step back from the situation and asked ourselves is this what the system really needed and who were we designing for,
Inward Reflection for Outward Success
When we first embarked on this journey, we took the time to map out a charter-like document for our team that detailed our ideal outcomes, goals, and wants for this project. We also did emotion check-in multiple times throughout the course of this project and this common language really helped us cultivate trust and success with this project.