Re-imagining the KLM employee experience









TL;DR

Ensuring seamless, people-centric solutions at every touchpoint



About

KLM, the world’s oldest airline, has a legacy of innovation in the skies—but behind the scenes, employees struggled with clunky, decades-old systems and cumbersome processes.

What started as a project to equip frontline employees—pilots, cabin crew, and ground personnel—with iPads for real-time access to critical information quickly evolved into something much bigger: reimagining the entire employee experience.

Over the past decade, I’ve led vision streams across nearly every facet of the employee journey—Careers, Onboarding, Learning & Development, Performance, Engagement, and more.

The culmination was the Employee Experience North Star—a strategy designed to ensure we listen to employees at the moments that matter, using their insights to shape solutions that truly enhance their work lives. Because at the heart of every great airline isn’t just its aircraft—it’s its people. And they deserve an experience as seamless and empowering as the journeys we create for our passengers.








Highlights

☑️ Led the “Employee Listening Team” to interview 500+ employees to gather insights into their needs and pain points.

☑️ Facilitated 20+ design sprints, from Careers, Onboarding, Learning & Development, Performance, Engagement, and more. 

☑️ Developed a new approach to performance management development based on mastery, autonomy and purpose.

☑️ Upgraded the KLM jobs website to attract a new generation of talent, supported by a NLP processing to find matches.

☑️ Shifted focus to a learning organization with a personalized learning platform (based on skills, interests, and goals.)

☑️ Re-designed the front-page of the organization “MyKLM” with customizable widgets and an improved search function.

☑️ Led the proof of concept for the first internal AI-powered conversational bot “Harrie” to assist with self-service tooling.





Contribution

Role
Lead Strategic & Service Designer

Skills
User Research & Insights
Journey Mapping
Workshop & Design Sprint Facilitation
Strategic Foresight
Organizational Alignment

Deliverables
Interview Toolkit
Research Report
Employee Journey Maps
North Star Vision
Validated Prototypes
Technology Roadmap (2020-2035)
Service Design Architecture

Tools
Sketch & Figma
Keynote
Miro




Design thinking studio with 10+ years of experience collaborating with corporates, startups and non profits. Specialized in human-centered design, facilitation, and strategic service design.



Amsterdam, Netherlands
LinkedIn
masha.parinova@gmail.com
CV_Masha_Parinova_2025.pdf