Product in Practice: How Passion.io Applies Continuous Discovery to the Employee Experience

This Product in Practice profile follows Eva Spexard, Head of Operations and People at Passion.io, who applies continuous discovery habits to the employee experience rather than to a product. She treats employees as customers of a subscription-like experience, inspired by Jessica Zwaan's book and by the company's company-wide reading of Continuous Discovery Habits. Her team runs weekly customer interviews, uses opportunity solution trees, and tests small changes before committing to large initiatives. The story matters because it shows discovery principles transferring cleanly to internal functions like HR, where teams often assume they already know what their 'customers' need.

01Key takeaways

• Treat internal employees as customers and map their journey the way you would a product's user journey.
• Run a steady cadence of customer interviews, such as one per week, and open booking to anyone who wants to be heard.
• Check whether a proposed tool solves the real problem; in this case, the issue was a context switch, not the review software.
• Test cheap, reversible solutions like a Slack command or a four-hour monthly block before launching large programs.
• Adapt discovery practices to your context rather than following the book exactly.
• Set clear expectations that interviews gather insight and do not guarantee that requested features will be built.

02Key sections

Reframing People work as a product

Eva views recruiting as acquisition and the employee experience as a subscription that needs ongoing customer success. This framing, reinforced by Built for People, shapes how her team approaches retention and engagement.

Company-wide adoption of discovery

The CEO's enthusiasm for the book led to a company reading deadline, a comprehension quiz that also collected takeaways, and encouragement to conduct interviews and build opportunity solution trees.

A repeatable interview habit

The team targets one interview per week, sourced from a tracking sheet and an open booking link in Notion, using JTBD-style and assumption-testing questions adapted from the product team.

Opportunities and small experiments

Interviews surfaced unclear role expectations, lack of protected learning time, and a 360 review process that was really a context-switching problem. Each led to lightweight tests, such as Level-Up Fridays, a mentorship pilot, and a Slack-based feedback command, rather than a costly new tool.

Results and lessons

Eva reports strong engagement results and shares lessons on adapting the method to context, resisting assumptions, and managing expectations when employees request features.

03From the post

“If you’ve been reading Product Talk for a while, you probably already know that the majority of the stories we share in the Product in Practice series focus on how product teams are adopting continuous discovery habits in their work. The details vary, but we generally speak with members”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.