Design Thinking at Arena Industries: Designing an Employee Wellness Approach

This document is one of three available case-based simulations used as the basis for a multisession course on design thinking. The course emphasizes deep user understanding, iteration, and a focus on the possibilities as a way to enhance value creation for stakeholders. Please refer to the course teaching guide to view the additional essential pedagogical tools available to the course instructor—including of video content and posters that summarize ethnographic interview findings for each simulation scenario. Students are asked to read a short introduction to a company's business and operating philosophies and then to play the role of a consultant charged with recommending to the company's leaders how best to improve employee wellness. Excerpt UVA-S-0240 Rev. Feb. 20, 2017 Design Thinking at Arena Industries: Designing an Employee Wellness Approach Founded in 1955 by Roger Rodriguez, a steel salesman who saw a market for custom-processed steel products, Arena Industries (Arena) was a leader in the metal-processing field and had annual revenues of approximately $ 2.5billion. The company, which was based in Cleveland, Ohio, operated 82 facilities in 11countries and had more than 10,000 employees. A leading diversified-metals processor, Arena produced manufactured pressure cylinders for global energy markets, heavy mobile equipment, and recreational uses such as scuba diving and camping, in addition to other customized steel products. In 2000, the company became listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It was consistently awarded honors such as “one of America's best big companies” (Forbes) and “best performing stocks” (Money magazine) and was recognized for its world-class safety system. Arena had also been named one of Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For four times in the past decade. It operated according to its “Arena Philosophy,” which was based on the Golden Rule and read, in part: “We treat our customers, employees, investors, and suppliers as we would like to be treated.” The philosophy emphasized that people were Arena's most important asset. It went on to assert that Arena believed that people responded to recognition, the opportunity to grow, and fair compensation, and that such compensation should be directly related to job performance. The organization utilized incentives, including profit sharing and the like, as widely as possible. . . .