Total Rewards & Benefits Portal

Total Rewards & Benefits Portal

Research-Driven Strategy Pivot

Project Type → Employee Benefits Portal Redesign

Client → The Heritage Group

Industry → HR Tech, Employee Experience

Stakeholders → HR Business Partners, IT, MarComm

Role → UX & Front-End Lead, Information Architecture

Duration → Multi-phase (2023 – Present)

Overview

BACKGROUND

What began as a gamified concept evolved into a complete overhaul of the benefits portal. I redesigned the experience into a structured, searchable hub consolidating content, fixing navigation, and introducing governance practices that made updates sustainable.

The result: a content-rich portal that saved us $40,000 in printing costs and became our employees go-to resource.

BUSINESS CONTEXT

Underutilized Benefits: The Heritage Group was investing heavily in employee benefits, but many went underutilized. Awareness was low, and employees often struggled to understand what was available to them.

High HR Dependency: The portal functioned more as an HR resource directory than a true employee tool.

MY ROLE

Defining the Direction: Shifted leadership’s focus from gamification to a guidance-driven, content-rich hub aligned with employee needs.

Information Architecture & Governance: Redesigned the IA by merging and restructuring sections, while setting up a content governance intake process with Total Rewards Business Partners.

Front-End Development: Built reusable web components (tabs, collapsibles, interactive cards) in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to overcome CMS constraints.

Searchability: Integrated Bing Custom Search to replace the broken default search and make benefits easily findable.

Cross-Functional Alignment: Partnered with HR, IT, and MarComm to ensure the portal served employees while staying maintainable for stakeholders.

Iteration & Stewardship: Guided the portal’s growth across versions (1 to 10), embedding governance for long-term scalability.

The Messy Middle

This wasn’t a neat design sprint. It was a series of pragmatic moves: working around a rigid CMS, aligning stakeholders across six portals, and building governance as we went. Each step brought the portal closer to what employees needed: a clear, structured, and searchable hub.

Vision Shift through Research

Leadership wanted to use gamification to push wellness benefits. However, in interviews, we heard a different problem. “I didn't know that benefit existed.”

We discovered real issue wasn’t motivation, it was clarity. I proposed that we needed to shift the focus to making benefits easy to find.

Overcoming CMS Constraints

Replacing the CMS wasn’t an option. The platform only supported rigid, static layouts, which meant the portal risked becoming a dumping ground for PDFs.

I built custom components like collapsibles, and cards using HTML, CSS & Javascript to create interactions the CMS couldn’t support.

Aligning Stakeholders to Simplify Information Architecture

The company was maintaining six different portals across holding companies. Yet 98% of the content was the same.

5/6 had exact same content, but one company needed a variation.

I proposed a gateway page where employees could select their company. That reduced six portals to two.

On the backend, I managed both versions with JavaScript so it was effectively one codebase.

At the same time, I worked with HR stakeholders to replace static PDFs with a structured, category-based layout. For example, we folded the New Hire tab into Benefits and merged Learning into Work Perks.

Restoring Search

Employees needed search, but the CMS didn’t have it. I implemented Bing Custom Search as a quick fix.

Read more here: Making Search Work Under Constraint

Building Governance that Sticks

Before, content updates were scattered. Requests came through emails, chats, or hallway conversations, and no one was sure who owned what. I set up a intake form linked to an Airtable catalog. Every request had an owner, a status, and a history in one place.

Turning FAQs into Change Management

Every major change triggered questions. The Oracle-to-Workday rollout, pay schedule changes, and annual benefits updates all flooded HR with queries. I repositioned the FAQs page as the single source of truth during transitions.

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