Cisco Hybrid Worker Bundle
Research that connected employee experience to business impact, from friction findings to a program that scaled to over 40,000 employees globally.
The Win Turned a US pilot into a globally scaled program by generating 111 research-backed recommendations, 91 of which shipped before the bundle reached 40,000+ employees across 20+ countries.
My Role I co-led UX research for the Hybrid Worker Bundle as part of a continuous discovery practice embedded in an agile cross-functional team. I owned research planning, method selection, participant recruitment, and synthesis across multiple research phases spanning the full bundle experience.
Background Cisco piloted a bundle of devices and services to support employees in hybrid work environments, then used research to decide whether to scale it. The question was not just whether the bundle worked, but whether the experience was ready to reach a global workforce of 80,000+ employees across 20+ countries. Answering that required following the experience across its full arc, from unboxing and setup through daily use and return. Studying any single moment would have missed most of what mattered.
Methods I ran studies across 100+ participants using surveys, in-depth interviews, unboxing studies, heuristic evaluations, PURE analysis, and usability testing. I structured each study to follow the experience across its full arc rather than isolate a single touchpoint.
Impact My findings drove 111 recommendations across the physical package, contents, setup workflow, return process, and communications, 91 of which were adopted before the program scaled from the US to 20+ countries. Employees who received the bundle were 8% more engaged at work than those who did not, a signal strong enough to justify scaling the program to over 40,000 employees globally. The team earned the 2022 TSIA STAR Award for Innovation in Support, Employee Engagement, Experience, and Loyalty.
If you’re interested in learning more about my research on the Hybrid Worker Bundle over the past four years, please contact zmarrich@gmail.com to schedule a detailed review of the case study.
Fletcher Previn, on the art of IT
Unlike a lot of CIOs, you have direct input into creating many of these solutions.
“I look a lot like many of Cisco's customers. But my team gets the benefit of being Customer Zero. We work in close partnership with our product engineering teams. And if it works for us, it will likely work for a lot of customers as well.
I act as the product owner on our IT backlog and prioritize our funnel of work. It’s tremendously rewarding to do this job at a company like Cisco, where we can innovate and help make things better for our people. For example, one of the first initiatives I started when I joined Cisco was creating a best-in-class Hybrid Worker bundle — essentially a secure branch office in a box. This is a highly designed, integrated experience that brings together a lot of different Cisco technology, software, hardware, and services to bridge the gap between in-person and remote in a way that only Cisco can.” Fletcher Previn