Barclays

Designing for 92,000+ colleagues in 40 countries

The project

Barclays embarked on a global digital transformation of its HR ecosystem - a monumental effort to modernize how over 92,000 colleagues access, understand, and act on information about their work and wellbeing.

From managing holiday pay to navigating parental leave, pensions, and retirement, employees relied on a fragmented network of legacy systems and millions of outdated pages.

The vision was clear: create a unified, human-centred HR experience that empowered every Barclays colleague - no matter their location, role, or language.

My role

As Head of UX and Design, I led the design strategy, team operations, and user experience delivery across this transformation.

Working directly with the Global Head of HR and her leadership team, I was responsible for:

  • Defining the end-to-end UX vision and design process
  • Building and managing multi-disciplinary teams of researchers, UX and UI designers, and front-end developers
  • Establishing design and development standards for accessibility, scalability, and localisation
  • Overseeing collaboration between internal departments, third-party consultancies, and technology partners to streamline delivery and ensure design consistency
  • Hands on design direction and execution using tools like Sketch, Figma and After Effects.

The challenge

Barclays’ HR systems had grown organically over decades. Information was scattered across thousands of legacy sites, documents, and PDFs, with inconsistent tone, outdated content, and limited discoverability.

Key challenges included:

  • Scale: Millions of web pages and documents across 40 languages
  • Complexity: Diverse policies and processes across regions and business units
  • Frustration: User pain, time-consuming journeys for employees seeking basic HR support
  • Consistency: Decentralised ownership and varying design standards.

Our approach

We began by grounding every design decision in user research and insight.

Discovery

We conducted extensive interviews, surveys, and workshops across global offices to map employee journeys, pain points, and needs.

We also partnered with HR specialists and internal communications teams to understand compliance requirements, regional variations, departmental workflows and key business priorities.

 

 

Defining the Experience Vision

“Empower every Barclays colleague to easily find trusted answers and support - anywhere, anytime, on any device.”

This vision guided our design principles around clarity, accessibility, and inclusivity.

Information Architecture & Content Strategy

We consolidated millions of legacy documents into a single, intuitive information architecture.

A new taxonomy and search strategy allowed employees to find answers in seconds, not minutes.

Content was rewritten for clarity and localised into 40 languages, ensuring global accessibility and compliance.

Machine Learning and AI

To achieve this huge task we used machine learning and AI to analyse millions of HR documents, identify duplicates and near-duplicates, and automatically merge files exceeding a defined similarity threshold.

Using AI again we translated every document into multiple languages.

 

 

Design & Prototyping

Our design team created a flexible component-based design system, ensuring scalability and consistent experiences across HR services.

We prototyped key journeys — such as requesting leave, accessing benefits, or submitting HR queries — and iterated based on user testing sessions across multiple regions.

Build & Launch

The build was complex, with multiple departments involved and numerous development teams working in silos.

After extensive coordination, we identified an internal Barclays team responsible for all customer-facing content for both Barclays and Barclaycard. They had already built a robust system using Adobe Experience Manager Platform.

We determined that consolidating the project within this established team, already managing millions of documents securely inside the organisation, was the smartest path forward for the global internal HR portal.

From there, we built a strong partnership and delivered content in the formats and structures they defined.

Outcomes and impact

The transformation not only modernised HR delivery but also reshaped how Barclays’ employees experience the organisation - with human-centred design at its core.

  • 92,000+ colleagues gained seamless access to HR information and services
  • Millions of pages consolidated into a single, searchable system
  • Content translated into 40 languages for true global inclusivity
  • First iteration delivered in 6 months, setting a new benchmark for digital delivery speed
  • Improved collaboration between HR, Technology, and Communications teams