Live Employee Roster Case Study

Live Employee Roster

📝 Employee rosters tell financial firms who they’re allowed to sell to and share sensitive information with.

❌ Buy side firms used Excel sheets to share employee rosters which is not secure, error-prone, and manually maintained.

💡 This presented the opportunity to replace an outdated, manual process with a secure and always-up-to-date workflow.

Constraints

- Built on top of an existing employee roster feature.
- Expectations for security, access control, and branding.
- MVP scope focused on solving core user needs first.

Timeline & Methods

- March to June 2025 (4 months).
- User research, interviews, wireframing, prototyping, interaction design, visual design, iterative feedback, design QA.

Role & Scope

- Solo Product Designer, owning the end to end design process and partnering closely with product and engineering.
- Weekly feedback sessions from the Lead Product Designer.

User Interviews

I interviewed buy side admins at hedge funds and sell side salespeople to understand how employee rosters were created, shared, and consumed. While both sides depended on the same data, they experienced the workflow very differently.

Findings

💼 Buy Side Admins

- Received 15+ requests for the roster each week which created constant interruptions and operational drag.

- Excel based rosters increased the risk of sharing outdated employee information.

- A branded and professional roster was critical to maintaining firm credibility.

🏛️ Sell Side Teams

- Roster formats varied widely across firms, making updating internal data slow and error prone.

- Tracking changes across multiple versions often took days.

- Outdated information directly impacted sales outreach and relationships.

⭐ Key Insight

Both sides needed a single, reliable source of truth, but had different priorities around control, access, and usability.

Design Challenge

How might I create a secure, real time roster that reduces admin workload without adding friction for the sell side?

User Needs Statements

🎯 A buy side admin needs a way to...

- Share an employee roster in order to ensure their sell side contacts always have the most up to date information.

- View and revoke access to a roster in order to keep the roster secure.

🎯 A sell side salesperson needs a way to...

- Quickly see changes in the roster in order to avoid manual reconciliation and save time.

- Easily access the employee roster in order to reduce the cognitive load of having to remember another log in and password.

User Flow

I presented a user flow to the product trio to align on key screens, user workflows, and minimum required functionality.

💼 Buy Side

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🏛️ Sell Side

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Our Decision

We chose the shareable webpage approach because it addressed

✅ Reducing admin workload

✅ Improving security

✅ Standardizing how rosters are received

✅ Remaining feasible within MVP constraints

Feedback Sessions

I validated the shareable webpage through iterative feedback sessions with both buy side admins and sell side users, using their input to refine the designs before finalizing the MVP.

Iteration #1

✏️ Feedback

- Sell side users needed quick context on who covered which sectors.

💡 Solution

- Added a sector coverage column, leveraging existing employee profile data without increasing admin effort.

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Iteration #2

✏️ Feedback

- Sell side users wanted confidence they were viewing the most up to date roster.

💡 Solution

- Introduced clear “Live Roster” labeling with a red live indicator to signal real time accuracy at a glance.

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Iteration #3

✏️ Feedback

- Buy side users needed flexibility to share different roster versions based on entitlements.

💡 Solution

- Added a “Duplicate and Edit” workflow to quickly create controlled variations without rebuilding rosters from scratch.

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What we Shipped

The final solution is a secure, live webpage that buy side admins can share via a unique link. This gives the sell side real time access to accurate, standardized employee information without repeated requests or manual distribution.

✅ Security by design.

- Buy side admins can manage, monitor, and revoke roster access at any time through centralized access controls.

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✅ Changes are easy to track

- Updates to the roster are clearly highlighted so sell side teams can quickly identify what’s changed since their last visit.

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🗎 Operational efficiency

100% of our users reported a reduction in roster distribution requests.

🔒 Security & control

100% of ours users reported increased security compared to their previous roster.

🕖 Time saved

Sell side users reported 3-4 days of time saved by highlighting roster changes.

Sirius Design System