From Order Takers to Product Thinkers

How Prudential HR IT Reimagined Employee Experience as a Product

At Prudential Financial, the HR IT team plays a critical role: managing the technology that supports the company’s people, their benefits, systems, and daily HR experience.

But at one point, something felt off.

The team wasn’t failing. They were delivering projects. Completing tasks. Checking boxes.

And yet, they weren’t creating incremental value.

Leadership began asking a deeper question:

What if HR IT stopped thinking in terms of projects… and started thinking in terms of products?

The Real Problem: Work Was Getting Done, But Value Wasn’t Being Created

Before the shift, HR IT operated like many internal technology teams do.

• Teams focused on initiatives and task lists.
• Success was measured by how much work was completed.
• Delivery dates were frequently missed on high-priority efforts.
• Employees (their internal customers) were frustrated by slow, outdated systems.
• IT staff were overworked and unfocused.
• Stakeholders were dissatisfied with the pace of change.

The team had unintentionally become order takers.

Requests came in. Work was processed. Tickets were closed.

But innovation was rare.

One major misconception stood in the way:

“Agile doesn’t work in HR.”

There was also a belief that HR IT didn’t really have customers, just internal stakeholders.

And goals? They were framed around outputs:

• Projects completed
• Tasks delivered
• Timelines met

Not outcomes:

• Employee experience improved
• Value created
• Friction reduced

If nothing changed, the risk was clear: slow delivery, burned-out teams, frustrated employees, and HR systems that lagged behind the modern workplace.

The Turning Point: Seeing Employees as Customers

The shift began when HR IT heard about transformation efforts happening elsewhere in the organization and decided it was time to rethink their own approach.

The breakthrough didn’t start with complex frameworks or technical jargon.

It started with something much simpler.

During training sessions, teams participated in hands-on exercises, building a fantasy community park, designing paper airplanes, collaborating in creative challenges.

At first glance, these exercises seemed elementary.

But they revealed something profound.

When teams were asked to build with a “customer” in mind, their thinking changed. They began asking:

• Who is this for?
• What problem are we solving?
• How will we know if it works?
• What does value actually look like?

For many, it was the first time they viewed their work through the lens of employee experience.

That was the moment alignment clicked.

Breaking the Paradigm

Prudential HR IT was relatively new to agile ways of working. Not everyone was a technologist. Few had formal product management experience.

So the approach had to meet them where they were.

Instead of introducing heavy technical language, the transformation focused on simple, relatable examples. The goal wasn’t to teach theory — it was to shift mindset.

The team had to internalize a few core beliefs: Innovation can happen anywhere, including HR.

• Internal teams have customers.
• Services and systems can (and should) be treated as products.
• Success isn’t measured by how much you deliver, but by the value you create.

Once that shift began, the conversation changed.

HR IT was no longer just processing requests. They were designing experiences.

They began thinking about:

• Employee journeys
• Friction points in benefits management
• Modern, intuitive systems
• Prioritization based on impact, not urgency alone

The metric of success evolved from “How much work did we finish?” to “How much value did we create?”

What Product Transformation Really Means

This story isn’t about implementing a new tool.

It’s about changing how a team sees its work.

Product transformation, especially in internal functions like HR, is about moving from reactive execution to intentional value creation.

It’s about empowering teams to:

• Think creatively
• Prioritize outcomes
• Collaborate with purpose
• See stakeholders as customers
• Design better experiences

For Prudential HR IT, that shift meant reimagining how they serve employees, not as a support function, but as a product organization shaping the future of work inside the company.

And when internal teams start thinking like product teams, the ripple effects go far beyond IT.