Case Studies

The Challenge

A national foundation launched a sweeping restructuring of seniority levels and job descriptions across every job family. The initial ask was a simple training on how to use the new documents.

Discovery & Needs Analysis

Closer investigation revealed the real stakes: these changes signaled a redistribution of salaries and promotion pathways that directly affected mid-level employees who’d been expecting advancement. Recognizing that a standard training rollout risked triggering resistance and disengagement, I redefined the project scope to address the deeper challenge: helping employees genuinely understand and accept the new structure.

Design Decisions

I proposed a three-module approach: separate sessions for managers/leadership, the wider organization, and the most impacted unit.

The leadership module built managers’ change-leadership skills, framing the “why,” handling pushback and reinforcing key messages. The goal was positioning managers as active champions rather than passive recipients.

For the organization-wide session, I designed a gamified experience using role-play and real-work scenarios, with deliberate psychological distancing to help participants engage with a change carrying real personal stakes. Participants acted as HR consultants evaluating 21 calibrated candidate profiles, mixed across job families to reduce bias and prevent premature self-review. Every deliverable, from facilitator guide to candidate profiles, was validated through multiple rounds of interviews with HR and team members, with facilitator notes equipping trainers to navigate emotional flashpoints in real time. Throughout, I balanced ideal instructional design against real organizational constraints, adapting scope and structure while protecting core learning goals.

Evaluation

I recommended a Kirkpatrick Level 1 evaluation to capture immediate participant reaction, while a more profound impact was to be revealed in the upcoming midyear conversations. A follow-up call with HR revealed that while in-session reactions were overwhelmingly positive, some employees left with unresolved questions they hadn’t felt comfortable raising, and not all managers were prepared to answer those questions. This gap validated a risk I’d flagged early on: the manager-first session I’d originally recommended, later deprioritized due to time constraints, would likely have addressed exactly this shortfall.

Key Takeaway

This engagement demonstrates more than end-to-end instructional design practice. It reflects the ability to rapidly read an organizational context, navigate the human dynamics of change and deliver theoretically grounded, evidence-based work under real constraints. This project shows what it looks like to bring both instructional design skill and change management awareness to client work: from digging into the real scope of the problem during the needs analysis, to designing for emotional safety alongside learning goals, to thinking through what happens when certain recommendations get deprioritized.