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A Guide to Employee Journey Mapping

• 08 Dec 2022

A business is only as strong as its employees—a sentiment that’s top of mind for human resources professionals and people managers amid mass resignations.

As the so-called “Great Resignation” has employees leaving jobs at chart-topping rates , you not only need to retain existing employees but compete with other organizations for top talent.

One way to proactively identify areas for improvement and create value for existing and prospective staff members is through employee journey mapping. Here’s a primer on what it is and how to leverage it to create value.

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What Is Employee Journey Mapping?

Employee journey mapping is the process of visualizing the employee experience from hire to exit. Its goal is to determine areas for improvement and opportunities for value creation so you can retain and attract stellar employees and motivate them to do their best work.

Benefits of the employee journey mapping process include:

• Visualizing each employee’s experience at your company
• Illuminating holes or areas for improvement in your current employee experience
• Enabling more accurate job descriptions
• Informing budget allocation for initiatives that boost retention and engagement

Each of these helps increase employee satisfaction—thus increasing their motivation and quality of work —and your company’s competitive edge in the talent search.

To understand how to use the employee journey map to create value for employees, first explore the basics of value creation.

The Basics of Value Creation

In the online course Business Strategy , Harvard Business School Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee explains how to create value using a tool called the value stick.

The value stick has four components:

• Willingness to pay (WTP) : The maximum amount a customer is willing to pay for a company's goods or services
• Price : The actual price of the goods or services
• Cost : The cost of the raw materials required to produce the goods or services, or employee compensation
• Willingness to sell (WTS) : The lowest amount suppliers are willing to receive for raw materials, or the minimum employees are willing to earn for their work

There are two ways to gain a competitive edge and attract the best talent: Offer higher compensation (raise the employee’s cost) or make the job more attractive (lower the employee’s WTS).

Lowering an employee’s WTS means they’re willing to accept less compensation. To do this, you need to make the job more attractive and create value.

Value creation not only pays off in terms of employee retention; it can impact the customer experience, too.

“In many services businesses, there’s a strong link between WTS and WTP,” Oberholzer-Gee says in Business Strategy . “By lowering WTS—by making work more attractive—we increase employee engagement, and this then leads to better customer experiences.”

Here are five steps to leverage employee journey mapping to create value.

Related: A Beginner’s Guide to Value-Based Strategy

How to Leverage Employee Journey Mapping to Create Value: 5 Steps

1. define and select employee type.

The first step in the employee journey mapping process is defining employee types, or personas, and selecting which to map first.

If your organization has many roles, you should map a journey for each persona; for example, an “entry-level data analyst” or a “new-hire mid-level marketing manager.”

Some parts of the process will be the same for all employees; others will vary based on job function and level.

2. Map the Employee Journey

The next task is documenting the selected persona’s journey throughout their time at your organization. This can be done in a list format or by drawing a timeline and mapping the journey visually.

This step requires thorough brainstorming to account for as many aspects of the persona’s experience as possible.

It can be helpful to think of the persona’s experience in stages. Use the following example, and tweak it to fit your organization:

• Hiring stage: From job posting to signed offer letter
• Onboarding stage: From day one to ramped up and fully acclimated
• Development stage: Developing skills while performing daily responsibilities
• Progression stage: Opportunities to advance their career within the company
• Offboarding stage: From resignation letter to exit interview

Some organizations operate on a strict schedule for role progression. If this applies to yours, use time as map markers instead of process stages. For instance:

• Before the first day
• One year in
• Two years in
• Eventual offboarding

After defining map markers, list each persona’s planned experience for each stage. This may seem daunting, given the number of factors that influence the employee experience. To make it easier, start by listing processes already in place.

For instance, under the “onboarding stage,” you could list:

• Receive a laptop and a company ID card
• Gain access to email, the project management system, and necessary accounts
• Go on an office tour
• Attend mandatory training

Next, list any added social or culture-building aspects of the experience, such as:

• Receive a company-branded T-shirt and a water bottle on the first day
• Get treated to lunch by the manager and team during the first week
• Attend meet-and-greets with senior leadership and members of each team

More in-depth journey maps include a list of resources needed to make each line item possible—for instance, the platform to conduct onboarding training or a budget for lunches with new hires.

While not every interaction can be documented, each step of the employee journey is important to their overall experience at your company and, ultimately, whether you retain them.

During this process, you may realize there are holes in the journey maps for some roles; for instance, if you don’t currently have practices in place for the development or progression stages. Note these so you can use them in step four when identifying value-creation opportunities.

3. Factor in Employee Feedback

Gathering employee feedback is a general best practice, but it can also play a useful role in assessing current employee journey maps.

There are many options for gathering feedback, including anonymous surveys, private interviews, and physical or virtual suggestion boxes. Other valuable sources of insight include exit interviews with people who leave your company and online reviews from current or former employees on sites like Indeed and Glassdoor .

Map employee feedback to the specific stage or time frame it applies to and notice patterns that emerge. Which stages have the most positive or negative feedback? Are there any general sentiments that could be addressed in a specific stage?

For example, perhaps you observe that employees commonly note in their exit interviews that their job description didn’t match up with their day-to-day tasks. In such cases, you can map that feedback to the hiring stage and use it to create job listings that more accurately reflect roles’ responsibilities.

4. Identify Value Creation Opportunities

Once you’ve mapped the persona’s journey and tracked feedback to each stage, identify areas for value creation. Remember that the two ways to create value for employees are increasing compensation (raising their cost) or making the job more attractive (decreasing their WTS).

Opportunities for value creation can include:

• Holes in the employee journey: Are you providing enough support during the onboarding process? Are professional development opportunities available? Is there a pathway for career advancement within your company for each role?
• Feedback about specific benefits: Benefits can include typical perks (such as vacation time and wellness budgets) or intangibles (like an increased sense of control or flexibility of work location or schedule).

5. Revise the Journey Map

Once you’ve identified opportunities to create value, prioritize and apply them. This can be a long process requiring budget allocation and organization-wide shifts.

Once changes have been implemented, revise the journey maps to include new elements. After you’ve gone through the process once, you can periodically reassess and update the journey maps to adapt to employees’ changing needs and values.

Creating Value for Employees

Creating a competitive employee experience is vital to any business strategy . Without strong, satisfied employees, no organization can reach its goals.

Armed with knowledge of the value stick and the employee journey mapping framework, you can create meaningful value for your employees and attract new ones.

If you’re interested in diving deeper into value creation, consider taking Oberholzer-Gee’s course, Business Strategy . It’ll equip you with a broader picture of how to factor the employee experience into your overall business strategy to create value for your customers, firm, employees, and suppliers to achieve success.

Want to learn more about how to create value for employees? Explore Business Strategy , one of our online strategy courses , to gain the skills to create organizational value. Not sure which course is the right fit? Download our free flowchart .

About the Author

Employee journey mapping: everything you need to know

The experience that your employees have in your organization has a direct impact on your business. The better the experience that you offer at each touchpoint in the employee journey, the more likely they are to become happy, engaged and productive members of your team. And given the recent shift in employee expectations and the increasing demand for improved working environments, the employee experience has never been so important. In fact, according to a 2021 report by Isolved, 92% of HR leaders said that employee experience is now a top priority for them .

The first step in improving your employee experience is understanding the entire employee lifecycle. And this is where employee journey mapping becomes a vital resource to have in your HR toolbelt. An employee journey map can help you better understand the experience your workforce has at each stage of their time at your company. That way, you can identify what you need to improve in order to offer the best possible experience. This, in turn, will help you attract and retain loyal, engaged and productive talent in your business.

Table of Contents

What is the employee journey?  

The employee journey, also known as the employee lifecycle , covers every touchpoint that an employee has with your company . The journey begins when a candidate applies for a position with your company and ends when an employee leaves their job. The primary stages of the journey relate to attraction, recruitment, onboarding, retention, development and separation.  

Notable experiences within the earlier stages of the employee journey include an employee’s first job interview, their first day at work, and their first performance review. When an employee has a good experience at each of these initial touchpoints, it sets them up to have a positive overall experience at your company. And this is the first step in making a good impression so that a new employee is motivated to become an engaged and productive member of your workforce. 

What is employee journey mapping?  

Employee journey mapping is the process of creating a defined timeline that covers each stage of the employee lifecycle. The aim is to identify the ‘ moments that matter ’ for employees so that you can improve each touchpoint and offer the best possible employee experience. That way, you can build an engaged, loyal and productive workforce.

The most important aspect to consider when you map your employee journey is the perspectives of employees at each stage of their lifecycle. 

How many applicants accept your invites to interviews? What percentage of candidates accept your job offers? How do new employees feel about your onboarding processes? Do employees feel they are being offered enough training and development opportunities? Do they get valuable feedback from their performance reviews? What are your retention levels like?

In terms of separation, at which stage of the employee journey do leavers tend to become disengaged? Why do employees leave your company? What would they improve about your employee experience? Are they happy with your organization’s management style?

You can find answers to these questions by collecting feedback at each touchpoint of the journey . For example, during onboarding and performance reviews, by sharing employee satisfaction and engagement surveys, and by conducting exit interviews. You can also find valuable feedback from sites like Glassdoor where ex-employees are more likely to be honest about their experience with you and what they would change.

What are the benefits of employee journey mapping? 

There are a number of reasons why it’s important to map the employee journey:

• The biggest benefit is that it provides you with a visual representation of the employee lifecycle that helps you understand how your staff experience every interaction they have with your organization. This provides you with the insights you need in order to improve each touchpoint in your model so that you can offer the best possible experience to employees. And this is vital because the better the experience that employees have with you, the more likely they are to remain at your company and become productive and engaged members of staff .
• By gathering the right employee feedback at every stage of their lifecycle you can identify at which points employees feel engaged and disengaged . In other words, you can determine what you’re doing well, and what you need to improve in terms of your internal processes. You can also collect valuable information to help you define the experience that you can offer, helping you create job descriptions that give candidates a clear understanding of what their role involves . 
• The feedback you collect from employee satisfaction surveys and performance reviews can help you design learning and development strategies that encourage your employees to build on their skills and realize their full potential.
• Above all, by implementing measures to improve your overall experience, you can improve your reputation as an employer and attract the talent you need to build a loyal and driven workforce . 

What steps are included in the employee journey?

There are numerous stages in the employee journey. Generally speaking, though, they can be broken down into 6 specific phases. These are attraction, recruitment, onboarding, retention, development, and separation.

It’s important to understand what employees expect at each of these stages. That way, you can balance their expectations with those of your organization.

We are now going to look at each of these 6 phases. For each stage of the journey, think about the experience that your employees have, what they might be feeling, and whether there are any potential barriers that you need to address. 

This is the first stage of your employee journey, and it is where potential applicants are first exposed to your employer brand . This is a vital stage because if a candidate’s first impression of your organization is negative then they are unlikely to accept a job offer from you.

Think about the following:

Where do you advertise your job openings? How can candidates apply for positions? Do you communicate directly with all applicants? Do you promote the value you have to offer as an employer?

Overall, though, the best way to improve this initial stage of the employee journey is to focus on building your brand and reputation. Think about what you have to offer potential applicants and whether your EVP is strong enough to attract candidates with a genuine interest in working at your company.

Recruitment

The next stage of the employee journey is recruitment. This is when an employee passes from applicant to employee, and the experience they have at this stage has a big impact on the opinion they form of you as an employer .

The best way to improve this touchpoint is to use the right tools to streamline your recruitment processes so that you can focus more on building positive experiences. It’s also important to create clear and informative job descriptions so that applicants understand their roles and your expectations. 

Here are a few tips to consider:

• Be specific about the skills and abilities you are looking for so that nobody wastes their time.
• Involve your existing employees. Encourage them to refer potential candidates and to share opinions on the skills new team members should possess. Ask managers to sit in on interviews.
• Offer attractive benefits and compensation to keep you competitive as an employer and help you attract top talent.  

Once you have hired a new employee, the next stage in their employee journey is onboarding and orientation. This is where you give employees more information about their roles and responsibilities. This is also where you share all the tools and resources they will need to perform their duties. Plus, you should be giving new hires the opportunity to ask important questions at this stage. All this will help employees understand how to blend into your company culture.

During this stage, make sure you share enough information so that new hires understand your goals, attitudes, and values as a company . You want them to understand the role they will play in helping to build your organization. Check out this onboarding checklist for more information about this stage of the employee lifecycle.

Here are some tips to help you make this stage a positive experience:

• Make employees feel welcome and provide them with as much information as possible.
• Be as clear as possible about your expectations .
• Provide as much training as possible.
• Conduct regular check-ins  to see how new employees are settling in and if they are integrating well with the team.

Once you’ve got your new hires settled in and ramped up, you need to make sure they are happy enough to stay at your organization. This is a vital stage of the employee journey because if your employees are not satisfied and decide to leave, then the time and money you invested in sourcing, hiring and onboarding them will be wasted.

Essentially, this is all about doing what you can to provide a working environment where your employees are happy and motivated.

There are a few strategies you should implement to improve your chances of nurturing happy employees:

• Focus on building relationships with your employees.
• Foster a culture of respect and transparency .
• Promote open lines of communication amongst all team members. 
• Seek out employee feedback and measure team morale frequently.
• Understand what motivates each of your employees.
• Implement a rewards and recognition program to keep your employees motivated.
• Build a nurturing and supportive culture that promotes employee satisfaction and engagement.

Development

Another vital touchpoint in the employee journey that will help you retain employees is offering opportunities for them to develop their skills . It’s important to make your employees feel valued and challenged and that they have a clear career path in your organization. That way, they won’t be tempted to seek opportunities for professional development elsewhere.

Here are a few tips to help you improve this stage of the journey:

• Meet with employees regularly to discuss their goals .
• Regularly assess the knowledge and skills of all your employees.
• Provide regular training opportunities .
• Encourage external learning and reward employees who learn in their own time.
• Get your managers to work with employees directly to help them prioritize the areas that require further development. 
• Encourage your team members to be responsible for their own development .

The final stage of the employee life cycle is separation, also known as offboarding. This is what happens when an employee leaves your company. This might be due to retirement, new employment, or personal reasons. It also includes employees who you lay off . 

Whatever the reason for leaving, it’s important to provide a positive experience at this final stage. Aside from anything else, when a team member leaves, it has an effect on your other employees. And this can impact your overall employee journey.

• If an employee resigns, conduct an exit interview with them so that you can understand why they are leaving. Ask for open and honest feedback . Is there anything that you could have done to improve their experience with working with you?  
• If you fire an employee, make sure you do it the right way . This includes following an established dismissal process, giving enough notice, and providing them with a clear and concise termination letter .

Best practices for creating an employee journey map

Now that we’ve discussed the various stages of the employee lifecycle, let’s finish by taking a look at a few best practices for creating an effective employee journey map. 

Above all, though, the best way to improve your employee journey is to engage with your employees at every touchpoint of their time with you so that you can better understand their needs and provide them with the best possible experience.

Segment your employees and create employee personas

Most companies will have a variety of different employee personas . These will depend on roles, departments, and level of seniority, among other factors. It’s important to keep this in mind when you begin the process of employee journey mapping, as the experience an executive has at your company is likely to be very different to the experience of an intern, for example. To the same effect, a finance administrator is likely to have a very different experience than an external sales rep. Make sure you take into account each and every individual experience at your company. 

Start by identifying your employee segments . Once you’ve done that, create a typical employee persona for each segment. Make sure you consider all the interactions each persona has with your organization. Are there any processes that might frustrate them currently? Are there any barriers preventing them from having a positive journey in your company? In terms of employee feedback, are there any specific departments where employees consistently report a lack of engagement or satisfaction?

Identify touchpoints that matter in the employee journey

When you create your map, make sure you identify all the moments that matter . In other words, the touchpoints that employees are most likely to remember when they leave your company. These usually include a candidate’s first interview with you, a new employee’s first day, and their onboarding experience. Memorable experiences also include performance reviews and any support they get for their professional development.

Did onboarding go smoothly? Did they receive regular communication from you? Are you providing enough information for employees to blend seamlessly into their new roles? 

The more memorable touchpoints you include in your map, and the more you focus on the employee experience at these touchpoints, the more complete your visual representation of their journey will be.

Create metrics for tracking your employee journey

Once you have created your employee journey map, you need to implement a strategy for measuring and monitoring each stage of the journey .

Make sure you define clear KPIs and objectives for each stage of your employee journey.  Obvious indicators include retention and turnover, but you should try to include goals that specifically target the employee experience. For example, you could set goals for improving your onboarding process, the channels you use for collecting employee feedback, or the training initiatives you offer employees. You could also implement regular pulse surveys to understand the experience your employees have at each stage of their journey. Any metrics related to onboarding, wellness and engagement are essential for understanding the employee experience.

Use the right tools to manage and collect employee feedback

The best way to ensure you offer the best employee experience is to use the right tools and software. The software you use should support you at each stage of the employee life cycle . Firstly, you need effective recruitment and onboarding software and an integrated employee portal. Secondly, you need tools to help you keep track of employee performance and support your L&D programs. Thirdly, you need tools for employee recognition, as this has a huge impact on building a positive, nurturing culture. Finally, you also need a platform to conduct employee surveys and appraisals so that you have access to honest and transparent feedback at each stage of the employee life cycle.

Factorial’s all-in-one solution supports you at each stage of the employee life cycle, including attracting, recruiting, engaging, retaining, and developing employees. Streamlining and automating all your HR processes with Factorial has a huge impact on improving the employee journey.

Focus on continuous improvement

Your employee journey map should be an ongoing process . That means you need to monitor your employee experience regularly and update your map periodically. Send out regular employee surveys to keep your finger on the pulse of how your employees feel. When you identify problem areas, implement measures to improve them. 

Most importantly, make sure you are as objective as possible when you create your map. Don’t design the journey you want employees to have – create the journey they actually have. This means listening to what your employees have to say by collecting feedback at each stage of the employee lifecycle. After all, the best people to describe your employee journey are your employees themselves. They are your most important asset when it comes to designing a journey map that improves your employee experience.

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Employee Experience

6 steps to mapping the employee journey at your organization

Close employee experience gaps by mapping your people’s journey with your organization.

In order to master employee experience, you must listen to your people at each stage of their journey with your organization. To do so you first need to map that journey, an easy and impactful exercise that reveals opportunities for improvement and optimization. Here’s how to do it.

eBook: Use Employee Lifecycle Feedback to improve your EX

What is the employee journey?

From the moment someone looks at your careers page to the moment they leave your organization, everything an employee learns, does, sees, and feels is part of the employee journey. The employee journey is a framework used to understand the sum of all the employee's experiences during their time with an organization and it's used by HR to understand and enhance the employee experience.

These moments and milestones (big and small) contribute to their employee experience – and present opportunities to tune in to your employees’ needs, to be more equitable and inclusive , and to close the gaps that exist for employees.

If you want to improve employee experience you need to map the journey your employees go through while they’re employed by your organization.

What is employee journey mapping?

An employee journey map is a visual representation of each stage of an employee's time within an organization from recruitment, through onboarding, right up until the time they leave.

Employee journey mapping enables organizations to prioritize resources and funding, clarify roles, and identify critical moments that matter by visually mapping the various steps and emotional states which employees experience while interacting with the company.

Employee journey mapping allows you to:

• Align the organization on a common view of the actual employee experience.
• Focus the EX program on moments that matter most.
• Facilitate employee-centric thinking and actions.
• Prioritize resources and funding.
• Clarify critical roles within the organization and moments that matter most.

Learn how Southwest Airlines rebuilt its understanding of employee needs along all the moments that matter.

What are the benefits of employee journey mapping?

More and more organizations are looking to capture feedback and insights at every stage of the employee journey. Doing so allows you to understand the moments that matter most, how those moments impact employee experience, and what to do at each stage to have a positive impact on metrics like engagement , attrition , and productivity.

A key benefit of employee journey mapping is to use the insights from the mapping process to design and execute better experiences throughout. You do this by:

• Revealing and optimizing unseen experiences . Journey mapping helps you think about the more hidden aspects of the employee journey.
• Finding out where the employee journey runs smoothly and leveraging what’s working well in other moments of the journey so as to meet employees’ needs at various moments in time.
• Fixing bad experiences more effectively . Journey mapping helps reveal why you haven’t met employee expectations and what you need to do to make amends.
• Identifying opportunities to foster equity and inclusion . There is rarely a single critical point in the employee journey that creates inequity. It’s often the cumulative impact of bias and systemic inequity over many moments that create significant gaps in experience.

Collect and apply employee feedback with our 360-Feedback eBook: Download Now

What are the stages of the employee journey?

Every employee goes through a series of stages from the day they apply for a job right through to the day they leave. This journey can be summarized into five stages:

Stage #1: Recruitment . This includes all the steps that lead to hiring a new employee. Considerations are: how long it takes to hire, how much it costs to hire, the rate of offer acceptance, and the hire’s quality. Were your job postings attractive and clear enough to catch the attention and applications of the best candidates? Did your interview process engage and reassure great candidates so they quickly accepted your job offer?

Stage #2: Onboarding . Where a new hire gets up to speed with the systems, tools, and processes, as well as the role’s expectations. Most new employees need ‘ramp time’ to get up to speed and become productive in their job. An effective onboarding process translates someone’s initial enthusiasm for their new job into a more meaningful, long-term connection to the organization and a commitment to doing great things while they’re there.

Stage #3: Development . This is the ongoing stage in the employee journey, with individuals developing at different rates and across a variety of skills. As the employee develops within his or her role, you need to quantify their productivity, ability to be a team player, and promotion aspirations. You also want to offer them the chance to expand their skill sets, an increasingly important differentiator for many employees looking to have a ‘portfolio career’ consisting of many different experiences.

This stage often includes incremental steps or annual events, like:

• Role changes
• Performance evaluations (e.g., career conversations, training and development)

Stage #4: Retention . Employees are now fully ramped and integrated into the organization. Your challenge then is to keep them performing, developing, and contributing to the company’s success. Plus, to ensure they’re inspired by and connected to the company’s core vision.

While there are countless strategies organizations use to retain talent , programs that support EX can often look like:

• Inclusive parental leave
• Extended leave or sabbaticals
• Celebrating anniversaries and birthdays (or other personal milestones)

Stage #5: Exit . Employees can leave for a whole host of reasons: they may retire, move to another employer, or make a life change. Every employee will leave your company at some stage, and finding out why is an opportunity to improve and develop the employee experience for current and future employees. Those who leave may be more candid about why they’re going as they may feel they have nothing to lose by being brutally honest.

How to design an employee journey map

An employee journey map allows you to plot out every moment that matters and understand what you can do to improve the experience. Here’s how to start building your employee journey map.

Step #1: Segment your employees.

Start by identifying your employee segments, also known as employee personas . Ideally, segments should be based on role, not on demographics like age or gender – you can use the latter to parse out the data later. An engineer, for example, is likely to have a very different experience from someone in your marketing team. Segment employees in this way, rather than demographics like age and gender

Step #2: Establish the journey for each persona.

Now that you know your personas, you can start to map out the interactions they have with the organization from their first contact (usually before they’re hired) all the way through to them eventually leaving. You’ll need to bring in a cross-functional team for input on this, as different teams and departments will likely have different interactions along the way. You may even want to consider looking at the interactions post-exit as in some cases retirees or past employees may come back or have an interaction with the organization later on or act as advocates for the organization.

Step #3: Map feedback and insights to the employee journey.

To truly understand the impact of each interaction on the employee experience, you need to be able to map feedback to each stage in the lifecycle. So for each persona, make sure there is a feedback mechanism attached to each stage in the journey that meets them where they are and provides them with the opportunity to give feedback in the moment – this is much more useful than waiting up to 12 months to ask them about it, as you’ll get the most honest and useful feedback while the experience is still fresh in their mind.

Step #4: Align your measurements at different stages in the employee journey.

It’s likely that different stages in the journey will be managed by different teams, e.g. your recruiting, training, or onboarding teams. In order to link insights across the journey, you need to make sure that everyone agrees on a consistent approach to measurement, whether that’s using a simple metric like eNPS with open-text follow-up questions or a set of core 5-point Likert scale items (e.g., Engagement) that are consistent across each measurement. The key is to have a set of core metrics that are consistent across many of your measurements. Exit and onboarding surveys may still have custom questions unique to those processes, but having a consistent set of items in each measurement allows you to look at connections to see how the experience at one touchpoint impacts the other.

Step #5: Use automation to manage feedback at scale.

Manually sending out a survey every time someone takes a training course, goes for promotion, or interacts with any of the other moments that matter along the journey is a drain on resources. Instead, make sure you integrate your employee experience program with your HRIS and set up triggers to automatically send a request for feedback when an employee hits a certain milestone.

Step #6: Combine the employee journey with your engagement survey.

A lifecycle approach to employee experience doesn’t mean giving up on your employee engagement survey altogether. In fact, the engagement survey should be your cornerstone – but more in-depth view of the state of employee experience and the key drivers that are impacting it either positively or negatively. Many organizations choose to do shorter, more frequent surveys like bi-annual engagement surveys or monthly employee pulse surveys as an alternative to the annual survey. However you run it, it’s essential you connect it to your feedback mechanisms across the lifecycle.

As an example, employee onboarding feedback, on its own, will likely show you how your onboarding process is perceived and what can be improved, but it won’t necessarily show the impact on engagement, productivity, or attrition. When you combine it with your engagement survey (which does measure these things) you can then start to see connections – how did that improvement to onboarding affect engagement for employees in their first year? Did it reduce attrition? Did it promote cross-functional collaboration? Do those employees who went through the new program understand better how their work contributes to the organization’s success?

It’s only by connecting all these different feedback mechanisms that you’ll know the answer.

Learn how to create actionable insights with employee journey analytics

The dos and don'ts of employee journey mapping

Do: look at each phase from multiple angles.

Each stage in the employee journey is different, so it’s important to look at each individually while considering multiple components of the stage. For example, if you just look at a stage from the vantage point of an employee, you may miss important considerations related to current business challenges. In that example, you may have employee feedback on your onboarding process that tells you employees do not feel supported, but that insight becomes much more tangible when you pair that with the knowledge that the onboarding team is currently very short staffed.

Do: Know your end game

An effective employee journey mapping process should always start with clearly defined outcomes. Without them, it’s impossible to know when the journey if complete or how you’ll use it to drive improvements. Here are a few questions to ask yourself up front:

• What does a best-case output of the journey mapping work look like?
• What will this work inform?
• How will it influence people, processes, and tools?
• How will you measure its success?
• What problem are you trying to solve?
• How are you aligning this process and conversation to the metrics that matter and the current business problems in the organization?

Do: Be intentional about who you involve

This can be a tricky balancing act. It’s important to avoid “decision by committee” by involving too many people in your journey mapping session, however it’s essential to ensure those familiar with various steps in the journey are involved as they’ll have the best knowledge of all the components you need to take into account.

Here are a few roles to consider including on your journey mapping exercise:

• Cross-functional HR
• Learning and development representative
• Cross-representation of key employee groups
• Corporate and internal communications
• Business leaders and frontline managers

Do: Focus on key groups within the organization

Within any organization there will be multiple employee journeys — after all one person’s pathway through the organization is likely to be very different from the next person’s. But here is where it’s important to keep the end-game in mind - don’t get lost in small differences, otherwise you risk overcomplicating the process with too many journeys with very minor differences between them.

Think about distinct and significant groups, such as remote versus corporate office workers, where clear differences in experience exist or are already apparent. Take a retail company for example, the experience of your frontline employees in your stores is likely to be very different from that of your marketing team in your corporate office. In contrast it’s unlikely there will be significant differences between different store departments, say menswear and children’s clothing.

Don't: Take a ‘one size fits all’ approach

Don’t feel like you have to use a specific template or format to create your journey map. What is most important is the framework behind what you create – from there, organizations often use whiteboards or large sticky paper to brainstorm their journey maps.

Don't: Allow your journey map to stagnate

As the organization changes — say for example a reorganization occurs or a new succession planning process is put in place — you’ll want to revisit and update your employee journey maps to reflect any significant changes.

Journey maps are a supporting tool for the organization, the frequency with which you update them should be based on how you are utilizing them internally and the extent to which the organization and the roles within it have changed.

Remember - it’s a tool, not a solution

Most importantly, remember that journey maps are just a starting point to help your organization identify the next steps necessary to improving your overall employee experience. Journey maps should be a part of forming a broader employee experience strategy, - the real value and impact will come from the actions the organization takes whether that’s gathering additional feedback or giving people in the organization the tools they need to make improvements at each moment that matters.

Break down silos by combining your listening programs with employee journey analytics

Amanda Wowk

Amanda Wowk is a freelance writer, founder of Amanda Wowk Creative—a content writing services company—and contributor to the Qualtrics blog. She creates content for clients in a variety of industries, including travel, tech startup, healthcare, and consumer products. Prior to freelancing, she spent 9+ years in human resources and HR communications.

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Employee experience journey mapping - A complete guide

Employee experience journey mapping might sound like a mouthful, but it's basically just a fancy way of saying, "Let's figure out what our employees are going through and how we can make it better."

It's like a treasure map, but instead of gold, we're searching for how to make employees happy throughout. But why??

As the entrepreneur and businessman J. Willard Marriott once said, ”Take good care of your employees, and they'll take good care of your customers, and the customers will come back.”

So sit back, relax, put on your adventure hats and grab a cup of coffee (or your preferred beverage of choice) because we are about to explore the employee experience journey, dream up ways to make it better, and discover the secrets of mapping out this process.

Table of contents:-

What is the employee journey?

What is employee journey mapping, what are the benefits of employee journey mapping, how an employee journey map can help you, employee onboarding journey map, how to leverage employee journey mapping to create value, the dos and don'ts of employee journey mapping, what are the stages of the employee journey, what is employee experience, what is an employee experience journey, four steps for mapping the employee experience, how do you create an employee experience journey map, personas for employee journey mapping, the employee journey from the employee’s perspective, employee journey mapping touchpoints, common mistakes that companies make while mapping employee journey, how culturemonkey can improve the employee experience.

Every employee goes through a unique journey in your company, from their first day of onboarding to the last day they walk out the door. But have you ever thought about what that journey looks like? And more importantly, have you thought about how you can improve it?

An employee journey can make all the difference in retaining top talent , boosting employee engagement , and improving productivity. In fact, studies have shown that companies with a strong focus on employee experience outperform their competitors by 122% . So, why aren't all companies putting more focus on the employee journey?

Employee journey mapping is a process of identifying all the touchpoints and interactions an employee has with your company, from the moment they apply for a job to their last day in the office.

A positive employee journey can lead to more engaged and productive employees . When employees feel supported and valued, they're more likely to go above and beyond in their work. And that's a win-win for everyone.

Employee journey mapping is the process of mapping out all the touchpoints an employee has with your company, from their first day of onboarding to their last day in the office.

It's a way of understanding and improving the employee experience by mapping out their interactions with the company from the moment they first hear about the organization as a potential employer to their eventual departure.

But why should you care about employee journey maps? For one, it helps you identify pain points in the employee experience that could be driving employees away. Maybe your onboarding process is too lengthy, or your employees aren't getting enough feedback or recognition for their hard work.

It helps organizations develop a comprehensive and holistic view of the employee experience, which is critical for improving employee engagement and retention.

Employee journey mapping is like a treasure map, leading you to a trove of benefits. It's a strategic tool that enhances every aspect of your organization, from employee satisfaction and productivity to attracting and retaining top talent.

With a well-crafted journey map, you're on the path to creating a workplace where everyone thrives, and success is just around the corner.

• Enhanced productivity: A well-designed Employee Journey Map helps streamline processes and remove obstacles that can hinder productivity. When employees encounter fewer roadblocks and can navigate their roles more efficiently, they become more productive. This not only benefits your employees but also positively impacts the bottom line.
• Increased retention rates: High employee turnover can be a significant drain on resources. Employee journey mapping helps create a supportive and fulfilling work environment. When employees feel well-integrated and valued, they're more likely to stay with your organization. Lower turnover rates mean cost savings in recruitment and training.
• Talent attraction: A positive Employee Experience Journey becomes a magnet for top talent. Word-of-mouth recommendations from your content employees can be a powerful recruitment tool. A great reputation for employee experience can draw in the best and brightest in the industry.
• Clearer communication: Mapping out the journey helps identify communication gaps. Effective internal communication is key to a successful organization. By understanding where the challenges lie, you can implement strategies to improve communication , ensuring everyone is on the same page.
• Enhanced employee development: Through journey mapping, you can pinpoint opportunities for skill development and growth at every stage of the employee experience . This encourages continuous learning and personal development , which can lead to higher job satisfaction and career advancement.
• Better decision-making: Employee journey maps provide valuable data and insights. With this information, you can make informed decisions about the employee experience. Whether it's resource allocation, policy changes, or organizational improvements, you have a clear path to follow.
• Strengthened company culture: Mapping the employee journey allows you to align every stage with your company's values and culture. It's an opportunity to ensure that your culture is not just a buzzword but a real, living experience for your employees.

By gaining a deeper understanding of the employee journey and identifying pain points and opportunities for improvement, organizations can increase employee engagement and retention rate , which can lead to a more productive and successful workforce.

Here are some other key reasons why you should be focusing on mapping out the employee journey in your company:

Improves employee experience:

By mapping out the employee journey, you can identify pain points and areas where improvements can be made. This helps create a more positive, supportive work environment that retains top talent.

Increases employee engagement:

When employees feel supported and valued, they're more likely to go above and beyond in their work. Mapping out the employee journey and addressing pain points can help increase employee engagement and motivation.

Boosts productivity:

A positive employee journey can lead to more engaged and productive employees. By addressing pain points and creating a more positive work environment , you can improve productivity and drive success .

Improves retention:

Retaining top talent is crucial for the success of any company. By creating a positive and supportive work environment through employee journey map, you can reduce turnover and retain top performers .

Enhances employer branding:

A positive employee journey can also enhance your employer branding. When employees feel supported and valued, they're more likely to share their positive employee experiences with others, both online and offline. This can help attract top talent and improve your company's reputation.

Provides valuable insights:

Employee journey mapping provides valuable insights into the employee experience. By understanding employees' touchpoints and interactions with your company, you can identify patterns and trends that can inform future decisions and improvements .

Fosters a culture of continuous improvement:

Employee journey mapping is an ongoing effort to identify pain points and make improvements. By fostering a culture of continuous improvement , you can create a workplace that's always striving to be better.

Expedites onboarding:

When you map the employee journey, it significantly accelerates the onboarding process. New hires can seamlessly navigate through their initial days, feeling more integrated and confident from the get-go.

Promotes inclusivity:

Employee journey mapping also fosters inclusivity . It ensures that the employee experience is uniform and supportive across various departments and roles, creating a workplace where everyone feels equally valued and respected.

Strengthens leadership development:

Your journey map can become a powerful tool for leadership development. By recognizing the stages where leadership plays a vital role, you can tailor training and support to nurture the next generation of leaders within your organization.

Enhances well-being initiatives:

A well-crafted employee journey map integrates well-being initiatives. This ensures that employees are not only professionally fulfilled but also mentally and emotionally supported, resulting in a healthier and happier workforce.

Picture this: You've just welcomed a talented recruit to your team. What's next? The employee onboarding journey map is your treasure map, guiding you through the intricate process of making them feel right at home.

So, what exactly is an employee onboarding journey map? It's like a step-by-step guide, detailing the entire onboarding process, from pre-hire to post-orientation. It's a strategic approach that ensures your new team members embark on a voyage of learning, growth, and engagement.

The journey begins with pre-boarding, where you start connecting with your new hires before their first day. Then, there's the orientation – the grand "Welcome Aboard" moment. After that, it's all about training, skill development, and team assimilation. Finally, the journey continues with regular check-ins and performance evaluations.

Creating a tailored journey map is the key to employee retention and productivity. It ensures everyone's on the same page, expectations are clear, and the road to success is well-paved.

Understanding how to make the most of employee journey mapping is essential for modern HR professionals and business leaders. In this guide, we'll explore not only the fundamental steps in leveraging this tool but also delve into additional ways to extract maximum value from it.

Here are some key ways to leverage employee journey mapping to create value!

Identify key touchpoints

The first step in leveraging the employee journey map is to identify the key touchpoints in the employee experience. This includes everything from recruitment to onboarding , training, performance review/management, and offboarding.

Collect data

Once you've identified the key touchpoints, it's time to collect data on the employee experience. This can include employee feedback , employee surveys, and data on employee turnover, productivity, and employee engagement .

Analyze the data

After collecting data, it's important to analyze it to identify pain points and areas where improvements can be made. Look for patterns and trends that can inform future decisions.

Map out the journey

Once you clearly understand the employee experience, it's time to map out the journey. This can be done using a variety of tools, such as journey maps, employee personas, and empathy maps.

Identify opportunities for improvement

With the employee journey mapped out, it's easier to identify areas where improvements can be made. Look for pain points and areas where the employee experience could be improved and prioritize the most critical ones.

Implement changes

Once you've identified areas for improvement, it's time to implement changes. This can include everything from streamlining the recruitment process to improving communication and recognition programs .

Continuously monitor and improve

Employee journey mapping is not a one-time process. It's important to continuously monitor the employee experience and make improvements as needed. This can include collecting ongoing feedback from employees, analyzing data, and making changes to improve the employee experience.

Enhance training and development

The employee journey map can highlight specific points where training and development play a crucial role. Use this information to revamp training programs, offer skill-building opportunities, and ensure that employees have the resources they need to succeed.

Facilitate cross-department collaboration

Employee journey mapping can uncover areas where different departments need to collaborate more effectively . Foster a culture of cross-departmental teamwork to eliminate silos, improve communication, and enhance the overall employee experience.

Customize employee experiences

Tailor the employee experience based on individual preferences and needs. Use data from the employee journey map to offer personalized career paths, flexible work arrangements, or unique benefits, providing employees with more customized experiences.

Implement recognition and rewards

Recognize and reward employees for their contributions at key touchpoints in the employee journey. Acknowledging their achievements can boost motivation and job satisfaction , leading to a more positive overall experience.

Employee journey mapping is a potent tool for creating a fulfilling, engaging workplace. If you follow the dos and avoid the don'ts, you're on the right path to crafting an experience that keeps your employees happy, productive, and loyal.

The Dos: Crafting a stellar employee journey map

• DO understand your employees: Before you even put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard, take the time to truly understand your employees. Gather insights through employee engagement surveys, interviews, and feedback. Recognize their needs, desires, and pain points, and ensure these insights drive your map.
• DO define clear stages: Your map should be divided into clear, distinct stages. Start with the recruitment phase and then move through onboarding, professional development, and everyday work experiences. Clearly define the key milestones in each stage.
• DO include employee input: Employee involvement is paramount. Encourage your employees to participate in the mapping process. They can provide invaluable insights into their experiences and suggest improvements that can make the journey more engaging and fulfilling.
• DO align with company culture: Each stage of the journey should be intricately woven into your company's culture and values. It's crucial that employees feel connected to your organization's mission and vision throughout their journey.
• DO keep it dynamic: Employee journey mapping isn't a one-and-done exercise. It's a living, breathing document that should evolve with time. Regularly assess the effectiveness of each stage and make adjustments based on employee feedback and changing needs.
• DO measure outcomes: Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge the success of your employee journey map. Are employees more engaged? Is turnover decreasing? Are you attracting top talent? Use measurable outcomes to evaluate the map's effectiveness.

The don'ts: Pitfalls to avoid

• DON'T make it too complex: Simplicity is your best friend. Avoid overcomplicating the mapping process. Keep it clear and easy to understand so that everyone in your organization can follow and benefit from it.
• DON'T neglect employee feedback: If you're not actively seeking employee input, you're missing out on a goldmine of insights. Neglecting their feedback can lead to an inaccurate representation of their experiences and needs.
• DON'T stick to the status quo: An employee journey map isn't effective if it merely replicates current processes. Don't be afraid to challenge the status quo and make necessary changes for a better employee experience.
• DON'T forget continuity: The journey shouldn't end with onboarding. It's a continuous process, and all stages should seamlessly connect. Don't isolate the onboarding process from daily work experiences; instead, ensure a smooth transition.
• DON'T set it in stone: An inflexible map can become a hindrance. Don't treat your employee journey map as a final, unchangeable document. Embrace adaptability and be open to refining and adjusting the journey as your organization grows.
• DON'T ignore data: Ignoring data is one of the gravest mistakes you can make. Employee journey mapping relies on insights and measurable outcomes. Neglecting the data you gather can lead to a skewed perception of your employees' experiences.

Here are the stages of the employee's journey, in brief:

• Application: If potential employees decide your organization is the right fit, they will typically apply for a position. This involves submitting a resume or application and potentially going through pre-employment screening and assessments.
• Interview: After submitting an application, the potential employee may be invited to interview for the position. This stage involves assessing the candidate's fit for the role and evaluating their skills and experience.
• Onboarding: If the candidate is selected for the position, they will move into the onboarding stage. This involves training and orientation to the company culture , policies, and procedures for the new employee.
• Development: Once an employee is onboarded, they will move into the development stage. This involves ongoing training and development to improve their skills and advance their career.
• Performance: The performance stage involves ongoing performance management, including setting goals, providing feedback , and evaluating performance.
• Recognition: Employees thrive on recognition , and it's important to make it a key stage in the employee journey. This includes both formal recognition programs and informal feedback and praise from managers and colleagues.
• Retention: The retention stage is where employees decide whether they want to stay with the organization or leave. During this stage, it's important to provide a positive workplace culture that values and respects employees.
• Career advancement: In the career advancement stage, employees seek opportunities for growth within the organization . This may involve taking on more responsibilities, pursuing promotions, or exploring lateral moves to develop new skills and expand their career horizons.
• Wellness and well-being: As employee well-being becomes a focal point for many organizations, a dedicated stage for wellness initiatives is crucial. This stage involves supporting employees' physical and mental health, providing resources for work-life balance, and promoting a culture of well-being.
• Separation: Finally, the separation stage involves an employee leaving the organization, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. This can involve offboarding, exit interviews , and evaluation of the employee's tenure with the company.

By understanding the stages of the employee journey, people leaders can better identify pain points and opportunities for improvement and create a positive and productive workplace culture that drives success.

Whether you're just starting or have been in the game for years, taking a strategic approach to the employee journey is key to achieving your HR goals . So, get out there and prioritise the employee journey in your organization.

So, what exactly is employee experience (EX)? In a nutshell, it's the collective impression your employees have of their time at your company. It's the sum of every interaction, from the first "You're hired!" to the farewell handshake. It's the vibe, the culture, the perks, and the way you support their growth.

Think about it. Imagine two companies side by side. One treats its employees like cherished family members, nurtures their talents, and offers a fantastic work environment. The other is all about squeezing every drop of productivity, ignoring well-being.

The first one? That's the kind of employee experience that leaves employees excited to show up each day. It fosters loyalty, sparks innovation, and boosts performance. The second one? Well, let's just say it might struggle with high turnover and disengaged employees .

Creating a positive employee experience isn't just a "nice-to-have" anymore; it's a strategic imperative. It involves understanding your team's needs, fostering a vibrant company culture, and investing in their development and well-being.

The key takeaway here is that employee experience goes way beyond the paycheck. It's about nurturing a work environment that makes people thrive, fosters their happiness, and, in return, drives your organization to greater heights.

The journey typically kicks off with the very first encounter, the recruitment phase. From there, it's a thrilling ride through onboarding, professional development, and everyday work experiences. It's the highs and lows, the laughter and challenges, all rolled into one grand story.

Creating an exceptional employee experience Journey isn't just a buzzword. It's a strategic move that can set your company apart. When your employees feel valued, engaged, and appreciated, they become your best brand advocates, boosting your reputation and attracting top talent.

Imagine your workplace as a theme park – you're the designer, and the employees are your guests. You get to create the rides, attractions, and overall ambiance. The more memorable and enjoyable the journey, the longer they'll stay on this thrilling ride with your company.

In a nutshell, the employee experience Journey is all about crafting a remarkable, fulfilling adventure for your employees. So, let's embark on this journey of creating a workplace where everyone feels like they're in the heart of an exhilarating adventure!

Mapping the employee experience is your secret recipe for a workplace where employees thrive and businesses flourish. So, get ready to set sail on this transformative journey to create an exceptional workplace experience.

Step 1: Define the stages

Begin by breaking down the employee journey into stages. Start with the recruitment and onboarding phase, move on to professional development, and finally, the ongoing work experience. Each stage has its unique challenges, goals, and opportunities to shape the employee's experience.

Step 2: Employee insights

Next, gather insights directly from your employees. Conduct surveys, interviews, and feedback sessions. Ask about their aspirations, and pain points on moments that matter to them. This not only helps you understand their perspective but also makes them feel heard and valued.

Step 3: Design the experience

With a deep understanding of each stage and employee insights, it's time to design the experience. This involves creating a clear path with defined touchpoints. For example, in the onboarding phase, ensure a warm welcome, comprehensive training, and a buddy system for support. Tailor each stage to align with your company's culture and values.

Step 4: Continuous improvement

The employee experience Journey isn't set in stone. It's a dynamic process that requires continuous improvement. Regularly assess the effectiveness of each stage, gather feedback, and make necessary adjustments. This keeps your experience fresh, relevant, and aligned with your employees' evolving needs.

Creating an employee experience journey map can be daunting, but it doesn't have to be. With a little bit of planning and organization, you can create an effective employee journey map that will help you improve the overall employee experience in your organization.

Here are 5 pointers on how to create an employee experience journey map:

• Define your employee personas: To create an employee journey map, you need to understand your employees. Start by defining your employee personas. These are fictional representations of your employees based on characteristics such as their job title, department, age, gender, and experience.
• Visualize the journey: Create a visual representation once you've mapped out the employee journey. This can be a flowchart, a timeline, or any other visual that helps you understand the journey.
• Set goals: Set specific, measurable goals for improving the employee experience. This could include reducing turnover, increasing employee engagement , or improving the employee onboarding process.
• Develop a plan: Once you've identified areas for improvement and set goals, develop a plan to achieve them. This may involve making changes to processes, implementing new technologies, or providing additional training to employees.
• Test: Implement your plan and test the changes you've made to the employee experience. Collect feedback from employees to ensure that the changes are having a positive impact.

By following these 5 pointers, you can create an effective employee journey map that will help you identify areas for improvement and set goals to achieve them. Remember to continuously monitor and improve the employee experience to ensure that your organization is providing the best possible environment for its employees.

But what are the personas of employees?

Personas play a crucial role in employee journey mapping as they help create a clear picture of the employees going through different journey stages. A persona is a fictional character that represents a group of employees with similar goals, needs, and behavior patterns.

Creating personas for employee journey maps is crucial in ensuring you accurately map the employee experience.

Here are some pointers to create personas for employee journey mapping:

• Research: Start by researching your employees and gathering data on their needs, behaviors, and pain points. You can collect this data from surveys, interviews, and focus groups.
• Segment your employees: Based on the data collected, segment your employees into different groups with similar needs, behaviors, and pain points.
• Give them a name: Once you have segmented your employees, give each group a name that represents them.
• Create a backstory: Create a backstory for each persona that outlines their journey, starting from their first interaction with the company to their current stage.
• Identify their goals: Identify the goals and motivations of each persona. This will help you map out the touchpoints that can help them achieve their goals.
• Understand their pain points: Identify the pain points for each persona. This will help you map out the touchpoints that can alleviate their pain points.
• Add a face: Add a visual representation to each persona to make them feel more real.
• Use personas to create empathy: Use personas to create empathy among the team and to help them understand the needs and pain points of different employees.
• Continuously update personas: The needs and behaviors of employees change over time, so it’s important to continuously update your personas to ensure they accurately represent your employees.
• Use personas to guide decision-making: Use personas to guide decision-making throughout the employee journey mapping process. This ensures that decisions are made considering the employee’s needs and pain points.

By using personas, you can create a more accurate and empathetic employee journey map that will help you improve the overall employee experience.

Have you ever thought about the employee journey from the employee's perspective?

As people leaders, it's important for us to put ourselves in our employees' shoes and understand how they experience their journey within the company.

From the day they first apply for a job to their last day of work, every touchpoint an employee has with the organization can impact their overall experience. This includes the hiring process, onboarding, performance evaluations, and even their exit interview.

As employees, they want to feel valued, respected and appreciated for the work they do. They want to feel like they're part of a team that is working together to achieve common goals. They want to have the resources and support they need to perform their job to the best of their abilities.

However, there are also challenges that employees face, such as navigating complex processes, dealing with office politics, and managing work-life balance. These challenges can impact employee engagement , motivation, and overall employee satisfaction with their job.

By listening to our employees' feedback and concerns, we can identify areas of improvement and make changes to enhance their journey within the organization. This benefits the employees and leads to increased productivity , retention , and a better company culture overall.

"It's not the destination, it's the journey"? Well, in the world of employee experience , that journey is known as the employee journey map. And just like any journey, it's made up of various touchpoints that shape an employee's experience.

What are these touchpoints, you may ask? They're every interaction an employee has with the company, from the moment they first hear about the job opportunity to the day they leave the company. These touchpoints can be divided into three categories:

• Pre-hire touchpoints: This includes any interaction the employee has with the company before being hired, such as the application process, interviews, and pre-employment testing.
• Core touchpoints: These are the primary interactions employees have during their employment, including onboarding, training, performance reviews, and development opportunities.
• Post-employment touchpoints: Even after an employee leaves the company, there may still be interactions to consider, such as exit interviews, alumni networks, or opportunities for rehiring.
• Culture integration touchpoints: Culture integration touchpoints involve the ways employees become acclimated to the organization's culture. For example, this could include participation in company-wide events, team-building activities, or orientation sessions that emphasize the company's values and mission.
• Employee wellness program touchpoints: Employee wellness programs are a crucial touchpoint for promoting the well-being of your workforce. This includes initiatives like offering fitness classes, mental health resources, or wellness challenges that encourage a healthy lifestyle.

Some examples of specific touchpoints to consider at each stage include:

• Pre-hire: Job postings, career fairs, recruiter emails, initial phone screens, skills assessments, and reference checks.
• Core: Onboarding materials, orientation sessions, team introductions, benefits enrollment, regular check-ins with managers, skills training, and company events.
• Post-employment: Exit surveys, alumni networks, rehiring programs, referrals, and employee retention programs to keep former employees engaged and connected to the company.
• Culture integration: As part of culture integration touchpoints, you could organize regular team-building events, such as off-site retreats or virtual team-building activities, to help employees connect with their colleagues and foster a sense of camaraderie. 
• Employee wellness programs: Wellness challenges, such as step competitions or nutrition initiatives, can encourage a healthy lifestyle, allowing employees to engage with and benefit from the company's wellness program.

By considering each touchpoint in the employee journey, companies can gain valuable insight into areas where they can improve the employee experience and opportunities to retain top talent and create a more positive workplace culture .

Employee journey mapping is a powerful tool to improve the overall employee experience and to identify areas for improvement in the HR department.

However, not all companies get it right. Here are some common mistakes that companies make while mapping the employee journey:

Skipping important touchpoints

Companies often forget to include critical touchpoints in the employee journey. These touchpoints can be small but essential in shaping the employee experience. For example, companies may forget to include touchpoints such as job offer acceptance, onboarding, or the first 90 days of employment.

Not involving employees

Employee journey mapping should be a collaborative effort between HR and employees. However, companies often forget to include employees in the process. By not involving employees, companies miss out on valuable insights that can help improve the overall employee experience.

Focusing on the positives only

Employee journey mapping should include both positive and negative experiences. Companies often make the mistake of only focusing on positive experiences, such as promotions or salary increases. However, it's equally important to identify negative experiences such as difficult coworkers, lack of recognition, or inadequate training.

Not linking to business outcomes

Employee journey mapping should be linked to business outcomes, such as employee engagement , retention, and productivity. Companies often forget to measure the impact of employee journey mapping on these critical business outcomes.

Assuming one size fits all

Employee journey map should be tailored to the needs of different employee personas. Companies often make the mistake of assuming that one size fits all. However, the employee experience varies based on the job role, department, and location.

Not prioritizing improvements

Employee journey maps should not just be a one-time exercise. Companies often make the mistake of not prioritizing improvements based on the impact they will have on the overall employee experience. Identifying quick wins and prioritizing improvements based on their impact on business outcomes is essential.

Not measuring success

Employee journey maps should be measured to track progress and identify areas for improvement continually. Companies often make the mistake of not measuring success, which makes it difficult to assess the impact of the employee journey map exercise.

Overcomplicating the process

Employee journey mapping should be a clear and straightforward process. However, some companies make the mistake of overcomplicating it with excessive detail or complex tools. This can lead to confusion and make it challenging to implement improvements effectively.

Neglecting technology

In the digital age, technology can streamline the employee journey mapping process and make it more accessible. Neglecting to use digital tools or software can be a significant oversight, as it can make data collection and analysis more efficient.

Lack of consistency

Consistency is crucial in mapping the employee journey, but some companies make the mistake of varying their approach for different departments or job roles. This inconsistency can result in an unequal employee experience, leading to disparities in engagement and satisfaction.

Not addressing turnover

Some companies focus solely on the current workforce and overlook the importance of understanding the journey of employees who have left the organization. Analyzing the reasons for their departure can provide valuable insights for reducing turnover in the future.

Ignoring the remote work experience

With the rise of remote work, it's essential to include touchpoints related to the remote employee experience in your journey map. Companies that fail to do this miss the opportunity to create a holistic employee journey that considers the unique needs of remote workers.

Companies need to avoid these common mistakes to create an employee journey map that truly reflects the employee experience and drives real results for the business.

Well, well, well, folks! We’ve come to the end of our journey mapping adventure. It’s time to put those maps to use and transform the employee experience. But wait, before you go, let me summarize the highlights of our journey together.

Firstly, we learned what employee journey mapping is and how it can improve the overall employee experience. We also explored the different stages of the employee journey and how to create an employee journey map.

We didn't forget about personas and how to incorporate them into our journey maps to make the employee experience more personal and relevant.

But wait, what about the mistakes companies often make? We can't forget those. We talked about the common mistakes companies make when mapping employee journeys so that you can avoid them and create a successful journey map.

Now, here’s where CultureMonkey comes in. The platform has everything you need to create a seamless employee experience journey map. With CultureMonkey, you can collect anonymous feedback at every stage of the employee lifecycle , identify gaps in your employee experience, and take action to improve the overall employee experience.

CultureMonkey offers a wide range of features, including pulse surveys , manager effectiveness surveys , eNPS , onboarding surveys, exit surveys, employee engagement surveys , and much more. With all these tools at your fingertips, you can take control of the employee experience and transform it into something amazing.

So there you have it - a complete guide to employee experience journey mapping. So take the time to understand their journey and use that knowledge to create a workplace they love. Happy mapping!

Employee experience journey mapping FAQs

How to design an employee journey map/steps to create an employee journey map.

To design an employee journey map, you should begin by identifying the employee journey stages, including pre-hire, onboarding, development, and separation. Then, create a list of touchpoints or interactions that an employee has with the organization at each stage. Finally, gather employee feedback through surveys , interviews, and focus groups to better understand their experiences.

What is experience journey mapping?

Experience journey mapping is the process of creating a visual representation of a person's journey as they interact with a company. It involves identifying all the touchpoints and interactions a person has with a company and mapping them out to understand the experience. The goal of experience journey mapping is to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement.

Is Journey Mapping an Agile approach?

Employee Journey Mapping is not necessarily an Agile approach but can be used in Agile methodology. It involves visualizing an employee's experience with the organization and identifying touchpoints where the company can improve the employee's experience. The Agile approach focuses on iterative and collaborative work to deliver value to the end-users.

What is the difference between workflow and journey map?

A workflow is a visual representation of a specific process, while an employee journey map is a comprehensive illustration of an employee's overall experience within the organization. A workflow focuses on a specific set of tasks and their sequence, while an employee journey map tracks the employee's interactions and experiences at different touchpoints within the organization.

Employee journey examples

Employee journey examples include the different touchpoints and experiences an employee goes through while working for a company, such as the recruitment process, onboarding, training, performance reviews, and career development opportunities. Other examples can include employee benefits, work-life balance , and company culture . By mapping out these different touchpoints, companies can identify areas for improvement.

Santhosh is a Jr. Product Marketer with 2+ years of experience. He loves to travel solo (though he doesn’t label them as vacations, they are) to explore, meet people, and learn new stories.

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The Employee Journey: Mapping the Way Forward

The employee journey is a crucial part of any organization’s success.

Businesses fail to realize that every interaction between employees and their employers, from recruitment to retirement, is a journey. Employee experience is the sum of these exchanges, and when managed well, it can be a powerful tool for business success.

The employee journey encompasses more than just recruitment and onboarding. It also includes their career progression, such as training and development opportunities, interactions with colleagues and management, response to feedback and performance reviews, and even their experience when their employment ends.

According to a recent Gallup poll , 48% of employed Americans are seeking a new job or potential opportunities. These alarming statistics demonstrate that businesses must pay close attention to the employee journey to keep their best talent.

The key to successfully mapping out an employee journey is to create a culture of engagement while steadily investing in employee experience.  This involves creating a personalized experience for each employee centered around their career goals.

This article will discuss the importance of the employee journey,  provide tips to create effective employee experiences and highlight the most popular methods for mapping out an ideal journey. By understanding the employee journey and creating a practical experience, businesses can hold onto top talent and increase employee engagement tenfold.

What is the employee journey?

The employee journey is the collection of experiences an employee has throughout their entire tenure with a company. It encompasses everything from recruitment to  employee onboarding , training, career development, and eventual departure from the company.

Essentially, it’s the story of an employee’s time with your business. Each step in this journey shapes the employee’s perspective, attitude, and motivation toward their job, company culture, and colleagues.

A negative recruitment experience may make a candidate feel undervalued and unappreciated, resulting in a lack of interest in joining your team. Similarly, poor onboarding or  training failures could leave your employees feeling unsupported and unprepared for their roles, leading to low morale and reduced productivity.

Providing a positive employee journey can lead to a more engaged, productive, and loyal workforce. Creating a supportive culture prioritizes employee well-being and growth can foster a sense of community and belonging, leading to better  employee retention rates, improved performance, and a strong employer brand.

What is employee journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping visually represents the customer journey, from the first point of contact to post-purchase support. It involves identifying the different touchpoints a customer interacts with throughout their journey and analyzing their feelings at each stage.

On the other hand, a customer journey is the actual experience that a customer has with a brand, including their emotional and practical interactions. While the two concepts are closely related, customer journey mapping is a tool used to gain insights into the customer journey, whereas the customer journey itself is the experience that the customer has with the brand.

Why is employee journey mapping important?

Employee journey mapping is essential for organizations that seek to gain a deeper understanding of their employees’ perspectives and experiences throughout their tenure with the company. It enables businesses to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement, which can significantly impact employee satisfaction and engagement.

By mapping out the various touchpoints along the employee journey, organizations can take a more proactive approach to improve the recruitment process, onboarding, training and development, workplace culture, communication, employee benefits, and other areas. This can help to attract and retain top talent, improve  employee productivity , and positively influence overall business performance.

In today’s competitive job market, businesses must create a positive and engaging work environment that aligns with their values and goals. Employee journey mapping gives organizations the insights to establish an environment and foster a more productive, motivated, and loyal workforce.

The benefits of employee journey mapping are clear, and businesses must invest the time and resources necessary to implement this tool successfully. Doing so can create a substantial competitive advantage and contribute significantly to the organization’s long-term success.

What are the benefits of employee journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping is essential for businesses looking to improve their customer experience. By visually representing each touchpoint a customer has with your brand, journey mapping can help you understand your customers’ needs, wants, and pain points.

Here are just a few benefits of customer journey mapping:

Identifying opportunities for improvement: By mapping out all of the touchpoints along the customer journey, you can identify areas where your customers may be experiencing frustration or confusion. This can help you pinpoint where to focus your efforts to improve the customer experience.

Understanding customer expectations: Journey mapping can help you better understand your customer’s expectations at each journey stage. This insight can inform everything from your marketing messaging to your product development roadmap.

Aligning internal teams: By creating a shared understanding of the customer journey across departments, journey mapping can help align your entire organization around a common goal: improving the customer experience.

Prioritizing investments: Journey mapping can help you prioritize where to invest resources to improve the customer experience. For example, if you identify customers experiencing frustration during checkout, you may invest in streamlining that process.

Driving customer loyalty: By improving the customer experience at every touchpoint, you can make loyal customers more likely to return and recommend your brand to others.

How to create an employee journey map

An employee journey map visually represents employees’ steps when engaging with your organization.

It helps you to evaluate the employee experience from their perspective, identify pain points and opportunities for improvement, and ultimately create a more engaging and satisfying work environment.

McorpCX reported that using an employee journey map resulted in a 25.3% increase in year-over-year employee engagement compared to the 10.8% increase for organizations that did not use journey maps.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating and implementing an employee journey map:

Step 1: Define Your Employee Personas

Before creating an employee journey map, you must define your employee personas. An employee persona is a fictional representation of your ideal employee based on demographic, behavioral, and psychographic data.

To create your employee personas, start by conducting employee research and analyzing your existing employee data. Once you understand your employee base, you can create an employee persona document including age, gender, job title, interests, pain points, and goals.

Step 2: Map Out Your Employee Journey

The next step is to map out your employee journey. This involves identifying all an employee’s touchpoints with your organization, from initial hiring to post-employment opportunities.

To do this, gather a cross-functional team, including representatives from HR, leadership, and other relevant departments. Brainstorm all potential touchpoints an employee might have with your organization and organize them into a chronological journey.

Step 3: Identify Pain Points and Opportunities

With your employee journey map in hand, it’s time to analyze the data and identify pain points and opportunities for improvement. This involves looking at each touchpoint and evaluating it from the employee’s perspective. Ask questions such as:

• What emotions are employees feeling at this touchpoint?
• Are there any barriers or obstacles preventing employees from moving to the next touchpoint?
• How can we make this touchpoint more engaging and satisfying for employees?

As you identify pain points and opportunities, document them on your employee journey map.

Step 4: Create an Action Plan

Now that you have identified pain points and opportunities, creating an action plan to improve the employee experience is time. This involves prioritizing the most critical pain points and identifying specific actions that can be taken to address them.

For example, if you have identified that employees are experiencing frustration during the onboarding process, you may want to simplify the paperwork, provide more transparent communication about company culture and values, or offer mentorship programs for new hires.

Step 5: Implement and Monitor

Finally, it’s time to implement your action plan and monitor the results. This involves working with cross-functional teams and leadership to make the necessary changes and tracking metrics such as employee satisfaction, retention rates, and productivity.

Continue to iterate and improve your employee journey map over time, using employee feedback and data to guide your decision-making.

Creating an employee journey map is a powerful tool for gaining an in-depth understanding of your employees and improving their overall experience with your organization. By following these five steps, you can create a comprehensive employee journey map and use it to drive engagement and satisfaction within your workforce.

What comes after an employee journey map?

After creating an employee journey map, the next step is to take action based on the insights gained from the mapping process. This involves identifying specific pain points and opportunities for improvement and developing a plan to address them.

Some of the key areas that businesses may focus on after creating an employee journey map include:

• Onboarding: Improving the onboarding process to help new employees feel more engaged, connected, and productive from day one.
• Training and development: Providing ongoing training and development opportunities to help employees grow and advance in their roles and careers.
• Workplace culture: Fostering a positive workplace culture that aligns with the values and goals of the organization and creates a sense of belonging for employees.
• Communication: Enhancing communication channels between employees and management to ensure clarity, transparency, and engagement.
• Benefits and perks: Offering competitive compensation and perks to attract and retain top talent.

Taking action based on the insights gained from an employee journey map allows organizations to humanize their data and boost employee engagement , ultimately leading to increased productivity, retention, and overall business success. 

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Employee Journey Mapping: Improve Your Employee Experience

Your employees’ experiences at work impacts the success of your business. Employees who feel positive about their employer and their workplace are more engaged, more productive and stay at the company longer.

Employee journey mapping is a way to measure the employee experience at every stage of an employee’s tenure at the company. The employee experience is how the employee feels about workplace interactions and events, such as performance reviews during their employment. By building and analyzing a map of the employee journey, HR teams can identify potential areas for improvement.

What Is an Employee Journey?

The employee journey describes the entire time that an employee spends at your company—from the hiring process to offboarding. It includes all stages and employee experiences, from completing the initial job application to participating in the final exit interview. The employee journey is also sometimes called the employee lifecycle.

Along the journey, there are key moments and memorable experiences that can have a lasting impact on employees’ opinions of their workplace. You can likely remember the excitement of your first day at work—but you may not remember the second or third day. Pinpointing these important moments helps you build a strong foundation for a positive employee experience.

Examining the employee journey from the perspective of both the employee and the employer can provide valuable insights:

Employee perspective:

The early stages of employment can set the tone for the employee experience. Employees may remember that they felt welcome during their first week or that their manager took them to lunch on the first day. They’ll also remember negative experiences—for example, if it took a week to get their laptop or access to their email.

What is one example of a moment that matters within an employee journey?

Some of the most memorable experiences may be major events with long-term career impact, or they may be personal touches like a surprise party at work or the company’s support for a cause that’s important to them. Some noteworthy career touchpoints include the first job interview, first performance review, department changes, team events, promotions and exit interviews.

Employer perspective:

Many of the moments that matter to employees are important to employers, too. For example, if a new employee doesn’t have a positive early experience, they are more likely to leave within the first year. Since memorable moments can significantly influence employee performance and employee engagement , you should identify them and then measure and monitor them closely.

What Is an Employee Experience Journey Map?

As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. To help improve your employee experience, don’t wait until there are issues. Instead, be proactive with an employee experience journey map. What is employee journey mapping? Employee journey mapping is a way to track the key stages and experiences in the employee journey. Create a chronological chart to visually capture and examine each step of the employee experience. Discuss the different stages and look for strengths and weaknesses of each.

The concept is derived from customer journey mapping, a method that companies use to outline and visualize the customer experience. Marketing and operations teams use this technique to enhance the customer experience.

In the same way, HR teams and business leaders can use employee experience journey mapping to optimize the employee experience. How do you map employee experience? Like with customer experience mapping, HR teams develop personas that represent different segments of the workforce and then focus on optimizing the experience for each persona.

Employee Journey Map

Persona: Sandra Smith, Sales Department

Free Employee Experience Journey Map Template

Download this free template to start applying the principles of employer experience journey mapping within your organization. (opens in new tab)

Why Is an Employee Experience Journey Map Important?

In a recent poll, more than half of employees (opens in new tab) said that they’re not engaged with their work, and 13% said they’re actively disengaged—which means they’re having miserable work experiences and spreading their unhappiness to their colleagues. A well-designed journey map can help you find areas that need improvement and boost the employee experience. Why is employee experience so important? Because a positive experience can increase engagement and lead to higher retention rates, greater productivity, lower recruiting costs and better customer service.

Your employee journey map can provide a unique way to depict your company’s goals, values, and processes. The best employee experiences bring the company’s values to life and help build a strong culture. A distinctive culture can help a company attract talent that will fit in and thrive within its work environment.

For example, if a company prides itself on automation and technology, then the workplace should use the latest tech for innovative and efficient business processes. This will help employees better relate to customers and strengthen the company’s brand and reputation in the marketplace.

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5 Steps to Create an Employee Experience Journey Map

You can map the entire employee experience journey or focus on a specific troublesome section. For example, if high turnover is a problem in the first year, you may want to start by mapping the first few stages of the journey.

Here are five steps to build your employee experience journey map:

• Start with research. Conduct employee experience research. You may already have some quantitative workforce data such as turnover rates, tenure statistics and exit interview details, which can provide a starting point. Next, interview employees to gather information on needs, goals, expectations, problems, and perspectives. Talk to employees from across the business, at different organizational levels and with varying levels of tenure.
• Develop employee personas. Segment your workforce into employee personas, which are fictional representations of a segment of your workforce. Not all employees have the same experiences or expectations. For example, sales reps will have different needs and goals than IT staff, and an entry level candidate will have different expectations than a VP. Once you’ve identified these segments, develop a concise profile of each persona, and include their goals, expectations, challenges and measures of success.
• Identify stages/moments that matter to each persona. Define the various employment stages at your organization and outline desired outcomes for the employee at each stage. Some examples of areas to include are recruiting, hiring, onboarding, compensation and benefits, ongoing engagement, volunteer opportunities, learning and development, performance management, advancement, rewards and leaving the company.
• Create a map or storyboard. Visualize the journey from the employees’ point of view. Include the insight you’ve gained from measures like turnover, employee surveys, exit interviews and other discussions about goals and expectations. Outline the company processes and touchpoints for each stage and include any problem areas, such as inefficient onboarding, unhelpful performance review processes or a lack of career progress possibilities. Examine the transitions between stages and look for points in the journey where an employee might feel lost or disengaged.
• Take action. Smooth out the bumps in the road along the employee’s journey. For example, are there too many steps to the onboarding process ? Are performance reviews timely and frequent enough? Add possible solutions like a formalized onboarding process and training for management on how to conduct effective performance reviews. Other solutions might include offering career development programs or boosting internal communications efforts to keep employees abreast of business decisions and developments to the employee experience journey map.

Measuring the Employee Experience Journey

Ask employees how they feel about the employee experience. Conduct employee engagement surveys or simply send emails to gauge employee sentiments, especially during moments that matter. For example, you may want to check on new staff members after their first few weeks to see how they are feeling about their new position.

As you collect more quantitative data, you can compare how the employee experience correlates with employee experience key performance indicators (KPIs) such as offer acceptance rates, productivity, engagement, absences and turnover. And implement changes based on the data and feedback you receive.

How Software can Improve the Employee Experience

By using human capital management (HCM) software, companies can automate and manage the employee lifecycle to create a more engaging employee experience. For example, one of the benefits of HCM software is that it gives workers quick and easy self-service access to benefits and compensation information, as well as their employee profile. A simple interface helps employees with daily tasks like requesting time off and accessing an employee directory. Employee timelines help your team track details like compensation and training.

HCM software can provide insight for finance teams and managers. For example, is a downturn in sales related to vacant sales positions? And it reduces manual and labor-intensive processes such as creating job requisitions and onboarding processes. Additionally, robust HCM software can connect with other key areas of the business, such as payroll and budgeting processes, which can assist with decisions about hiring and promotions.

HCM software can also help you more easily stay on top of new and leading practices, as well as track KPIs, such as the time it takes to train new employees, productivity, and turnover rates.

Investing time in employee journey mapping can help your company offer an improved employee experience. As the experience improves, employees feel more engaged at work. Processes become more efficient, and employees can become more productive. These efforts can all be boosted with software that supports the employee experience and provides the tools you need to map the employee journey, find pain points and implement the changes to fix them.

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Employee journey: a complete guide

Creating an engaging and supportive employee journey is an essential strategy for companies striving for high employee satisfaction, engagement and overall business performance. This journey, which encompasses an employee’s entire experience with an organization, from initial introduction to departure, is complex and multifaceted. Managing the employee journey requires insight, strategy and a deep focus on both the big picture and the fine details of employee interactions.

What is an employee journey?

The “Employee Journey” refers to the complete journey an employee takes within an organization, from first contact to the moment they leave. This term encompasses every interaction, experience and moment of contact employees have with the company, playing a crucial role in both their professional development and overall satisfaction with the work environment.

Examples of these contact moments:

• the job interview;
• the first day of work;
• team meetings;
• organizational meetings;
• conversations such as the benefits conversation, onboarding conversation, assessment conversation, absenteeism conversation, coaching conversation and exit conversation.

The focus is on all contact moments, both planned and spontaneous, that foster conversations about development, workload, autonomy, etc. These moments contribute positively to the employee experience and include alumni meetings and formal talks. This line is continued when employees leave. Leavers can return (boomers) or become customers, confirming: he who does good, meets goodness.

By understanding and optimizing the employee journey, organizations can not only foster a positive work culture but also significantly improve their ability to attract and retain top talent.

Why is this trip important

A well-structured employee journey is important for both employees and employers. For employees, it creates a meaningful experience that can lead to increased engagement and performance. For employers, a positive employee journey can lead to improved employee satisfaction, higher retention rates and a stronger employer brand. An engaged employee is not only more productive, but also contributes to a positive company culture and reputation. With our real-time employee engagement insight e-guide, discover how to measure, interpret and improve engagement so you retain the best talent and save costs. Download the free e-guide right away!

With Learned’s Career Framework, you make evaluations objective and advancement opportunities transparent. By doing so, you will ensure engaged employees and will reduce turnover.

How to create an employee journey

Understanding an employee journey is a process that helps organizations understand and optimize their employees’ experiences throughout their careers within the company. This process is essential to creating a positive work environment and promoting employee satisfaction and engagement. Here are some steps to understanding an employee journey:

1. Define the stages of the employee journey

Identify and define the key stages an employee goes through, from recruitment and selection to onboarding, development, retention, and ultimately leaving the organization. This provides a clear overview of the entire trip.

2. Identify touchpoints and interactions.

Define the different touch points – the moments of interaction between the employee and the organization – within each stage of the journey. These could include job interviews, training sessions, performance reviews, or team meetings.

3. Collect and analyze data

Use surveys, interviews, and feedback sessions to collect data on employee experiences at various touchpoints. Analyze this data to gain insight into what is going well and what can be improved.

4. Create personas

Develop personas that represent different types of employees within the organization. This helps to better understand the needs, expectations and experiences of diverse groups of employees.

5. Map the employee journey

Use the information gathered to create an employee journey map. Highlight key stages, touchpoints, and employee emotional experiences at each point. This makes it easier to oversee the entire journey and identify areas that need attention.

6. Implement improvements

Use the insights gained from the employee journey map to make targeted improvements. This can range from optimizing the onboarding process to providing personalized development opportunities.

7. Monitor and iterate

Understanding the employee journey is not a one-time project, but an ongoing process. Continue to collect feedback regularly and analyze the impact of changes made. Be prepared to adjust your approach based on new insights and changing circumstances.

By following these steps, organizations can develop a thorough understanding of the employee journey and work proactively to improve the employee experience. This not only leads to higher satisfaction and engagement but also contributes to the overall performance and success of the organization.

Example employee journey

Let’s explore the employee journey through a fictional character, Emma, who begins her career at an innovative tech company called “FutureTech.”

Phase 1: attraction and recruitment

Emma first encounters FutureTech at a career fair. She is immediately intrigued by the company’s mission and culture. After following FutureTech on social media and reading positive employee reviews, Emma decides to apply for an open position as a junior software developer.

Phase 2: application and selection

Emma applies online and receives an invitation for an interview within a week. The application process is transparent and communicative, with clear information about the next steps. After a series of interviews and a technical test, Emma receives an offer, which she enthusiastically accepts.

Phase 3: onboarding

On her first day at FutureTech, Emma is warmly welcomed by her team. She receives a comprehensive onboarding, including a tour of the office, introductory sessions with colleagues and an overview of current projects. Emma feels valued and part of the team.

Phase 4: growth and development

Emma enjoys regular feedback sessions with her manager, discussing her performance and opportunities for growth. She uses FutureTech’s learning platform to develop new skills and participates in a mentoring program. Within a year, Emma is promoted to a medior software developer.

Phase 5: engagement and retention

Over the years, Emma feels strongly about FutureTech. She appreciates the corporate culture that fosters innovation and collaboration. Emma actively participates in team building activities and corporate events. Her input is valued and she clearly sees her contribution to company goals.

Phase 6: feedback and evaluation

Emma undergoes annual performance reviews where her performance, career goals and any concerns are discussed. These sessions provide valuable insights and help set clear goals for the coming year.

Stage 7: departure or transition

After five years at FutureTech, Emma decides it’s time for a new challenge. She openly discusses her decision with her manager, who supports and helps her with a smooth transition. Emma’s last days at FutureTech are positive, with a farewell gathering organized by her colleagues.

Phase 8: alumni network

After her departure, Emma remains connected to FutureTech through the alumni network. She shares her knowledge with new employees, stays abreast of company updates and attends networking events. Emma’s journey with FutureTech may have ended, but the positive experiences and relationships remain.

Emma’s journey at FutureTech illustrates the different stages of the employee journey, from attraction to departure, and highlights the importance of each touchpoint in creating a positive and supportive employee experience.

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Learned.io plays an integral role in enriching the employee journey, particularly by providing personalized learning and development pathways that are critical to each stage of the employee journey. As a result, Learned supports organizations in creating an engaging, productive and fulfilling work environment. Try Learned now for 14 days for free!

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People Management

How to create an employee journey map.

Praburam Srinivasan

Growth Marketing Manager

May 9, 2024

Every employee’s North Star is giving their best at work. However, only 41% of employees today feel they are performing optimally.

Closing this performance-skills gap and unlocking employee growth is the organization’s responsibility. An effective way to do this is by mapping the team’s journey using an employee journey map. When done right, it boosts employee retention, increases employee engagement, and improves overall experience.

In this guide, we’ll explore employee journey mapping , including its definition, how it benefits your organization, and how to create one in six simple steps.

What is Employee Journey Mapping?

How employee experience mapping helps employees, how employee experience mapping assists managers, stage 1: recruitment, stage 2: onboarding, stage 3: development, stage 4: retention, stage 5: exit, step 1: define your employee persona , step 2: identify touchpoints, step 3: understand employee needs, step 4: map out the current employee experience, step 5: identify gaps with real-time employee feedback, step 6: implement changes and measure success, gather and analyze employee feedback, use agile software to improve employee journey mapping, analyze each stage from multiple viewpoints, evaluate your end goals and be mindful of the people you involve, don’t go for a one-size-fits-all approach, don’t forget to keep revising your employee journey map over time, builds an employee-centric workplace culture, improves customer satisfaction rates, increases motivation in the workforce, build a positive employee journey from day zero with clickup, frequently asked questions (faq).

Employee journey includes everything a person does, feels, and internalizes from when they see your job description on a job portal to when they exit your organization.

This framework—an HR favorite—enables managers to assess all facets of an employee’s experiences during their tenure with the organization.

Employee journey mapping allows you to visualize each employee’s experience at your company, from recruitment to when they leave. The goal is to :

• Identify areas of improvement within the current employee experience
• Create opportunities for adding value to the employee’s work and build a positive employee experience
• Gather real-time feedback from employees on what’s working for them and what isn’t
• Assess employee satisfaction level and take corrective action to improve it
• Pen more accurate and relevant job descriptions
• Inform your budget and allocate it to areas that increase employee engagement

Benefits of Employee Experience Journey Mapping for Employees and Managers

Motivated, engaged employees drive success for your organization. However, you can’t succeed at creating value for employees if you don’t know how you’re doing currently or what they find essential. Enter employee journey maps. 

Using employee experience journey mapping poses multiple benefits for both employees and managers. 

Insights derived from an employee journey map help organizations find ways to boost employee satisfaction.

As the company takes action to address the gaps in the employee experience, the employees will start feeling happier at their jobs.

They’ll be more motivated to deliver high-quality work. 

An employee journey map is a gateway into how your employees are performing and what’s standing in their way to success. Think of it as a sum of your employee experiences expressed in a highly visual and easy-to-understand manner.

A visual map, like an employee journey map, allows stakeholders and leadership to understand the employee’s experience with the organization much better. It lets them know what is working in their present employee experience and what isn’t. 

Managers leverage employee journey mapping to improve every employee’s experience within the company and gain a competitive talent edge. 

When employees voluntarily choose to stay on, managers can use their time to build a talent pipeline of high-performing talent instead of dealing with high employee turnover rates. It also helps them prioritize resources, budget, etc., and clarify employee roles.

Moreover, with insights from the employee journey map, leaders and managers can find ways to design jobs and benefits to attract high-quality talent and have a ready pool of interested candidates for their hiring needs.

5 Employee Journey Stages to Know

Each employee experiences a series of stages—from the moment they apply for a job until they leave. This journey runs through five stages of the employee lifecycle:

The recruitment stage includes all the steps that come with hiring an employee, including important considerations such as:

• How long does it take, and how much does it cost to hire a prospective candidate
• The job offer acceptance rate
• The quality of new hires
• The attractiveness of company job postings
• Candidate engagement levels during the interview process. 

Recruiting teams often use HR templates to improve this stage of the hiring process.

For instance, ClickUp’s Staffing Plan template allows your HR team to create a comprehensive staffing plan that: 

• Visualizes the availability of each team member
• Facilitates task assignments based on availability
• Provides a comprehensive overview of all team members and their skillsets

Hiring managers can use the plan as the backbone to hire employees according to skills, expertise, and available funds.

The onboarding stage refers to the first few weeks on the job when new hires familiarize themselves with the company’s processes and people. 

HR teams usually create employee handbooks to help new hires onboard faster and clarify their roles and responsibilities.  This can also be done with the help of onboarding software.  

A well-designed and implemented employee onboarding process helps employees become more productive in their roles and build long-term connections with the organization.

The development stage focuses on helping employees develop their skills and expertise at different rates. 

It entails reviewing employee performance to measure productivity and outcomes, assess soft skills like teamwork, and understand career aspirations. This helps managers offer opportunities for expanding their skill sets. It also creates opportunities for incremental advancements such as role transitions, promotions, etc. 

HR teams can use a variety of talent management software to drive initiatives. Some companies also help employees upskill or improve job performance through training programs using specialized training software . 

The retention stage entails maintaining an employee’s performance, fostering their development, and encouraging their continued contribution to the company’s success.

At this stage, the company must ensure employees feel connected to its mission and are motivated to give their best.

Organizations deploy strategies to retain talent , such as:

• Inclusive parental leave policies
• Options for extended leave and sabbaticals
• Rewards and recognition programs
• ESOPs and cash incentives for top performers
• Opportunity for remote or hybrid work
• Celebrating work anniversaries, birthdays, etc.

The exit stage refers to employees leaving the company (either due to retirement, life changes, etc., or opportunities in other organizations). Here, the HR team conducts exit interviews to understand what went wrong with the employee’s experience and to make improvements.

6 Steps to Create an Employee Journey Map

Listening to your employees at each stage of their journey within the organization forms the basis of a robust employee experience journey map. But where do you even start?

Let’s walk through the steps to create an employee journey map to help you understand your employees’ personalized needs.

Use this 6-step checklist to create a comprehensive map highlighting significant milestones, pivotal moments, and factors that matter to your employees.

The first step in employee experience journey mapping is segmenting your employees and creating an employee persona. Refrain from basing your employee persona on details such as demographics. Instead, segment employees based on job roles (such as individual contributor, team leader, etc.), groups (such as remote or on-site employees, new employees or experienced managers, etc.), functions (such as finance, marketing, etc.), and levels .

For example, an entry-level designer’s employee experience journey map will differ from that of a mid-level marketing manager.

Once you’ve defined your employee personas, prioritize which personas to map first.

Pro tip : When creating the employee persona, make sure to include your employee advocates and past employees who may have rejoined your company to get a more holistic understanding of what your employees want and where your organization missed the mark.

Next, you must document the interactions throughout the employee’s time within your organization—from recruitment to departure. Get input from cross-functional teams and departments for more well-rounded feedback.

To identify the right touchpoints, view your persona’s experience across five key stages and the activities and interventions you have in place for the respective stage:

• Recruitment: Job listings, interview processes, contract discussions and finalization
• Onboarding: Interactions from day one to the employee being fully integrated within the organization
• Development: Performance evaluations, opportunities to build skills, training interventions, growth opportunities
• Retention: Elements of the job that help engage and keep employees happy, e.g., benefits, leave policy, job satisfaction, recognition, etc.
• Exit: Exit interviews when employees resign, the offboarding process 

Alternatively, if your organization has a set role progression system, use time as the marker for plotting your persona’s experience. Use this example and tweak as you see fit:

• Day zero (before the first day)
• One-year mark
• Two-years mark
• Offboarding

The third step requires you to map employee feedback and the impact of each interaction on every stage of the employee lifecycle.

To do this, include all possible factors impacting your employee experience. List processes under each stage to ensure you cover all key employee experiences. 

For instance, let’s assume your employee is in the recruitment stage. Critical processes to review and map the employee experience include:

• Posting the job opening on relevant platforms like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, etc.
• Reaching out to candidates with personalized emails or messages
• Coordinating interviews with the hiring team
• Conducting interviews with a customized questionnaire
• Communicating with candidates about the status of their application
• Hosting virtual or in-person networking events for potential candidates
• Providing resources and how-to guides about the company culture and values
• Offering insights into the team structure and potential career paths within the organization

You can map the employee journey in various formats, such as a list or a timeline. 

When brainstorming with employees to understand their professional goals at work , use a custom, ready-to-use template like ClickUp’s Career Path Template.

This template is ideal for:

• Creating career pathways that integrate personal career aspirations and organizational objectives
• Demonstrating opportunities for employee engagement, growth, and learning
• Tracking each employee’s progress towards professional goals for powerful team management
• Planning and setting S.M.A.R.T milestones for each team member

Pro tip: Use career map templates to identify career growth opportunities and support your employees with a milestone-driven roadmap.

Plotting the employee experience includes integrating all key moments that matter to your employees. This is where an empathy map template helps understand your employees’ thinking.

You must make the employee journey map as in-depth as possible, including critical resources employees need and all processes employees must complete at every stage.

Given there are so many moving parts to consider, you need a highly visual tool like ClickUp’s Mind Maps to visualize the employee journey map easily:

Collaborate with employees to map the journey and update the content with the tool’s drag-and-drop nodes. Build task-based or node-based mind maps depending on the type of employee journey you want to map out.

The best way to identify gaps and value-creation opportunities within your current employee experience is to get in-the-moment information about your employee’s goals.

You need to know your employees’ professional aspirations to ensure your employee experience is smooth and relevant.

Charting out employee goals is extremely easy with ClickUp Goals :

Use this feature to set trackable goals along the employee journey. Whether you establish OKRs, weekly employee scorecards, etc., all your objectives can be defined with clear timelines and measurable targets. Plus, managers get to save time with an automated progress-tracking process in place.

Once you’ve outlined the goals, it’s time to set up a mechanism for gathering stage-based or time-based employee feedback. Meet employees where they are and get honest, fresh feedback on their employee journey.

Use the following questions to uncover a pattern within each stage:

• Which stages have positive or negative feedback?
• Are there common sentiments across stages? Can they be addressed promptly?
• Are you asking for feedback instantly instead of waiting for the right time? 

For instance, if an employee complains of incorrect job descriptions compared to their daily responsibilities, you can change the job descriptions at the hiring stage.

Here’s a checklist of tools to use and collect employee feedback most effectively:

• Anonymous surveys for onboarding
• NPS surveys with open-text follow-up questions
• One-on-one private interviews
• Annual employee engagement surveys
• Exit interviews
• Online reviews from current or past employees on websites such as Indeed, Glassdoor, etc.
• Virtual suggestion boxes

Based on the feedback gained, it’s time to put the feedback into action . Where and how do you even begin?

Once you understand the feedback and how it impacts the employee experience, you’ll need to prioritize which feedback to act on first. You’ll also need to consider the budget and resource requirements for these changes.

After executing the changes, revise your employee journeys and assess them periodically to ensure they align with your employee’s current demands. Measuring the success of your employee journeys is as important as creating them.

Use ClickUp Brain to fast-track your information-gathering process. It has three AI-driven tools to help you manage your employee-related information, automate tasks, get answers to employee-centric questions, and create personalized content for your team—with an AI assistant as a sidekick.

Here’s a walkthrough of the three AI tools at your disposal:

• AI Knowledge Manager: Gets you instant, accurate, and contextual answers for any information related to your employees captured within ClickUp, such as what their current roles are, what projects they’re involved in, etc.
• AI Project Manager: Allows you to automate tasks, progress updates, and status reports for your employees so you won’t have to waste time on manual work such as creating performance reports for your employees, analyzing data on task completion rates, and so on
• AI Writer for Work: Doubles up as a writing assistant to help you perfect your documents, writing style, tone, and replies; the tool also lets you create tables, transcripts, and templates for your employees. Some common applications include checking for grammatical and spelling errors within project briefs, creating emails for internal communication, etc.

Take the help of AI and implement changes smarter and more efficiently. 

What to Include in an Employee Journey Map

An effective employee journey map has its share of must-haves and benchmarks to follow. Use these tips to improve the quality of your journey mapping:

Incorporate employee feedback using ClickUp’s Employee Feedback template to make your employee experience more inclusive and equitable while closing the employee expectations gap.

Leverage this template to understand what your employees think about the company, its corporate culture, management, etc. It also helps you gather meaningful employee feedback and track their sentiments over time.

The idea is to assess your employee’s current state of mind and evaluate their emotional state at every step of the way—a task for an all-in-one tool like the ClickUp HR management platform:  

Leverage this software to gather qualitative and quantitative feedback and create the best onboarding experience. The tool offers customizable views to align the team and build a central hub for important employee information.

Capturing employee feedback at the right time is key. And expecting the team to do this manually is a waste of valuable resources and time. This is where leveraging agile software like ClickUp to implement agile methodologies pays off. You’ll be able to:

• Gather feedback from employees at various touchpoints in real time and get up-to-date insights into their experiences when they happen
• Track changes and improvements made based on employee feedback and ensure your employee’s concerns are addressed quickly
• Combine different feedbacks across teams, departments, and roles to promote a shared understanding of what’s working well and drive team collaboration
• Iterate and adapt your employee journey mapping process and ensure it remains relevant and effective
• Involve employees within the employee journey mapping process and enhance their engagement levels

Pro tip : Integrate your employee experience program within your HR software and create triggers to send feedback requests when an employee completes certain tasks, achieves specific milestones, and more.

Each phase of the employee journey is unique, necessitating a thorough examination of its various components.

For instance, viewing a stage solely from an employee’s perspective might overlook crucial factors related to prevailing business challenges. 

Consider this scenario: Say you’re analyzing the “development” stage of the employee journey. While focusing solely on the employee’s experience, you might identify a need for more training opportunities.

However, if you consider additional factors, such as recent changes in technology and industry standards, you might realize the lack of training resources is due to budget constraints and outdated training materials—a more insightful and broader perspective to work with for your team.

Including a mix of relevant roles in the assessment helps you clearly define your employee journey map. Examples include the HR team, L&D representative, cross-functional employee representatives, corporate communications team, and front-line managers.

Doing so will help you to understand:

• What your ideal journey mapping looks like
• How your employee journey will impact organizational tools and systems
• The issues you are trying to solve
• How to measure success and align it with organizational end goals

What to Avoid in an Employee Journey Map?

Let’s now look at what to avoid in an employee journey map.

No two employees are alike, and neither is their employee journey with the organization. Every employee brings unique experiences, skills, and aspirations to the table. If you don’t customize the employee journey to fit their individual needs and goals, you’ll not be able to drive higher engagement, satisfaction, and productivity.

Use tools like mind maps, sticky notes, or ClickUp Whiteboards to create a custom employee journey map that works:

ClickUp Whiteboards allows you to convert your team’s ideas into coordinated actions from a centralized place.

Having a template is great, but don’t be afraid to make it your own and build a personalized employee journey map for various employee personas.

Sure, every employee journey map looks different for different segments. However, it is an ever-evolving entity bound to change as your organization grows and your employee’s needs evolve. Constantly revisit your map and make changes that reflect the current reality.

Creating the employee journey map: a recap

• Define your employee persona(s)
• Identify all the touchpoints to measure
• Understand employee needs at every stage
• Map the current employee experience from various viewpoints
• Use internal feedback to identify gaps in the experience
• Personalize and improve the employee journey and reassess it at intervals
• Keep the end goal in mind

Three-fold Impact of Good Employee Journey Mapping 

Employee journey mapping impacts the organization in three interconnected ways:

Considering you’re gathering employee feedback and taking informed actions, you’ll understand the moments that matter the most and how they affect the employee experience.

With strategic insights and data on key metrics such as attrition, engagement, and productivity, your work culture and thinking process become more employee-centric.

As your employees serve with a new-found sense of purpose , your customers will be happier with a higher quality of service. As customer satisfaction rates soar, more customers will likely become loyal to your brand and be long-term brand advocates .

Employee journey mapping reveals hidden aspects of your employee experience. These unseen experiences double up as an opportunity to meet—and exceed—employee needs. As the employee experience improves , your employees will be happier and more motivated.

Optimizing your employee experience starts with mapping each individual employee’s journey and listening to your employees at every stage. Using agile software like ClickUp helps understand your employee’s emotional, mental, and career goals. You’ll be able to connect with employees at critical moments and get their feedback on what sticks for them and what isn’t working.

The insights you extract from employee journey mapping will help you improve—and master—the employee experience. With timely action, your organization can cement a solid place in employees’ minds and gain their loyalty in the long run.

Make the most of this impactful visualization technique with ClickUp and build a meaningful employee journey map filled with all the moments that matter. Sign up now !

1. How do you draw an experience map?

To draw an employee experience map, follow these steps:

• Step 1: Learn about your employee goals and needs. Use this information to build your employee persona
• Step 2: Identify personas to prioritize as well as touchpoints within the employee experiences across five stages: recruitment, onboarding, development, retention, and exit
• Step 3: Map the employee journeys for each persona
• Step 4: Collect employee feedback
• Step 5: Identify opportunities for improvement and create value
• Step 6: Execute changes and measure the employee journey map for success

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Employee Journey: What It Is and How to Map it Out

Mapping employee journeys  can help organizations better understand the different stages employees go through during their employment lifecycle. Understanding these stages enables employers to boost employee satisfaction and  provide memorable experiences throughout their employment .

In this blog, we will define the employee journey, introduce the components of every employee journey, and explain how to do employee journey mapping.

What is Employee Journey?

In essence, an employee journey consists of all the events, touchpoints, milestones, and activities employees take and go through during their employment in an organization.

Some human resources professionals like to use the term  “moments that matter”  as a synonym for employee journey. Why? Because the main goal of identifying employee journeys is  understanding what are the most important moments  for employees during their employment. Journeys help companies understand the components that have a  positive impact on employee motivation  and engagement in the workplace.

Employee journey begins as soon as a person enters the organization and starts interacting with the peers and finishes when the person leaves the organization.

It is important to understand the difference between the candidate and employee journey. While the candidate journey consists of  touchpoints that happen before  a person enters the organization (recruitment and selection), the employee journey usually  starts with  onboarding .

Defining various employee touchpoints and creating journey maps are even more important now when  hybrid work is growing in its popularity .

🎧 But is hybrid work here to stay? Tune in to listen to our podcast on this topic. 👇

8 Essential Components of Every Employee Journey

Depending on the organization, employee journeys can have a different number of components.  However, there are certain components every employee’s journey consists of.

Every employee journey starts with onboarding. Including onboarding in employee journey mapping is important because onboarding experience can significantly  impact employee engagement , productivity, and retention.

According to  Glassdoor , organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by  82%  and productivity by over  70% .

Compensation and benefits

Compensation and benefits play one of the most important parts of every employee’s journey. Moreover, salary is still  the number one factor  impacting employees’ work satisfaction. Here, it is crucial to understand the importance of a fair compensation structure within the organization and provide competitive compensation packages aligned with employees’ expectations.

Sometimes, additional benefits can be even more important than the base pay. For example, some employees  would accept a pay cut  in return for flexible working hours, good healthcare benefits, and other  employee well-being programs

According to  Deloitte , one in three professionals say work flexibility would increase their job satisfaction and morale, and almost  30%  say it would increase their overall productivity or efficiency at work.

Growth and development

Continuous learning and development are often in  the top three priorities  for employees who want to grow their careers. This is why many organizations today have structured career planning plans and strategies.

According to research,  74% of employees  do not believe they are reaching their full potential at work, and  52% of Millennial and Gen Z workers  believe that opportunities for advancement a company an attractive employer.

Being aware of this fact and creating career growth plans can, therefore, help organizations to both attract and retain top talent  in their organizations.

Performance management

Employee performance management is one of the most important components of every employee’s journey. Organizations need to  reconsider traditional performance management  systems where managers yearly or quarterly evaluate their people.

According to  research ,  90% of employees  think performance reviews are painful and inefficient, and  51%  of them think they are inaccurate.

Rather than waiting for quarterly or yearly reviews, employees should be able to  give and receive on-the-spot feedback . This approach enables employees to stay on track with their goals, KPIs, and OKRs.

Internal communications and team collaboration

Remote work and distributed workplaces  have had a significant impact on the importance of honest, transparent, and frequent internal communications. This pandemic is the most stressful time of many people’s lives, and they  expect full transparency from their employers .

This is the reason why many organizations are now investing in  implementing proper employee communications strategies . They are also digitalizing their workplaces so that employees can  easily collaborate with each other  using various team collaboration solutions.

📹 Also watch our session:  Engaging a Remote Workforce .

Personal events

Many organizations tend to  forget about employees’ personal  events when identifying employee journey components. This is a big mistake as exactly these events make some of the most important moments in employees’ lives.

For example, personal events such as maternity and paternity leave should never be excluded from career journeys. Employers should put effort into  making these moments more memorable  and enjoyable to their people.

Not only that this approach boosts employee morale, but it also helps organizations  build a stronger employer brand .

Digital Employee Experience

When building and evaluating employee journeys, many employers still neglect the importance of  digital employee experience . Digital employee experience is the  experience employees have with various technologies used in an organization .

Because of the emergence of remote and hybrid work, many employees today depend on digital solutions their company provides. Even though there is plenty of research that proves the benefits of digital solutions, many organizations are yet to digitalize their workplaces. As a consequence,  96% of employees  still see the amount of time spent in their inbox as a huge problem.

This is the reason why organizations are now turning to  modern, more sophisticated, and mobile-friendly   employee engagement apps ,  internal communications platforms , and other workplace technologies.

Exit is an employee journey component  no less important  than previously mentioned pillars. Even though this is the moment when employees leave their organizations, it is important to make this experience positive.

Performing exit interviews is a great way to understand employees and improve your processes based on their feedback.

How to Map Employee Journeys

In the world of customer experience, journey mapping is not a new methodology. Companies have realized years ago that mapping customer experience can enable them to  provide a better and more personalized experience  to their buyers and, therefore, positively impact business growth and revenue.

One  customer journey mapping research report  showed that:

• 90%  of organizations who used journey mapping found it delivered a positive impact.
• Journey mapping leads to an  increase in customer satisfaction .
• Journey mapping leads to an  increase in Net Promoter Score  (NPS).
• Reduced  customer churn .
• Fewer customer complaints.

Because organizations now understand that  employee experience  directly impacts customer experience, it is not surprising that many organizations are turning to employee journey mapping practices.

Let’s take a look into best practices for mapping employee journeys.

4 Crucial Steps For Creating Employee Journey Maps

Mapping employee journeys take time. The most important step in every employee journey mapping process is engaging your own employees in order to  better understand their needs and “moments that matter”  to them.

These are the 4 must-follow steps for creating employee journey maps:

Define employee personas

Mapping employee journeys need to start with  defining employee personas . In most organizations, there are multiple employee journeys based on employee profiles. It is important to segment your workforce in order to create personalized journeys with a high impact on employee engagement, satisfaction, and performance.

HR professionals in talent acquisition have been practicing this approach for a while now. Creating candidate personas is crucial for understanding job seekers and attracting the right people to your organization.

Now, it is  time to adopt the same approach  when creating employee journeys. Understanding various employee needs, preferences, skills, experiences, and career goals is a powerful way to create journeys that will have a  positive impact on your employees’ overall experience .

Define moments that matter

In the previous section, we introduced the most important components of employee journeys and career paths. These components can also be called “moments that matter”, and these  moments can vary among different employee personas .

The best way to identify these moments is to ask employees for their own feedback. In this digital age,  regular employee surveys  can be the best and quickest way to gather and analyze responses from employees.

According to one  research , these are some of the moments employees see as most important.

Set measurements for each of the journey components

After defining moments that matter, it is important to define measurement for each of the journey stages. This is the only way to scale the entire process and to keep improving it continuously.

Each of the defined stages should have a set of KPIs or initiatives. Here are some  examples of goals you can set :

• Improve employees’ onboarding experience
• Implement a solution that will enable easy and instant top-down and bottom-up feedback
• Create and launch structured learning and development programs
• Implement regular employee surveys to understand the current state of employees’ experiences

Measure and keep improving

Measuring employee journey initiatives is important for continuous improvement. Here, asking for regular employee feedback is  the best way to understand bottlenecks and opportunities  for improvement.

Encouraging employees’ share of voice  is the only way to get honest feedback and stay on track with various employee journey projects.

Unfortunately, many employers today still send generic surveys to the entire workplace, and most of them  don’t even have a way of reaching their deskless and frontline workers . As a consequence, organizations lack valuable data that can enable them to make smart, data-driven decisions.

If you are looking for a modern and intuitive solution to continuously engage your employees in your employee journey initiatives and to regularly send personalized communications and employee surveys, schedule a Haiilo demo and learn about the power of proper employee communications!

Recommended Reading

10 Ways to Foster Upward Communication in the Workplace

12 Steps to a Successful Enterprise Agile Transformation

11 Reasons Why Business Communication is Critical to Your Company's Success

Get your free demo now!

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Employee Journey Map: What is It & How to Design It

Working life is quite a journey, so today, we will talk about the employee journey map and how to follow it up to understand our workforce’s journey better. It bases the construction of a map on the employee lifecycle.

To better understand your employees, you must create detailed maps of their journey and organize activities around their essential steps within a company.

This will allow you to plan your employee development, employee engagement and ensure you hit KPIs related to employee retention , productivity, and more.

What is an employee journey map?

An employee journey map is the visualization of a timeline of the complete employee experience . This data mapping process raises employees’ perspectives, emphasizing the moments that matter most to them.

It can be argued that the employee journey includes the employee’s touchpoints with your company, even when they are just candidates. However, most consider that the exact duration of the customer journey map is from the moment of hiring until the moment the employees leave the company.

Unlike the Customer Journey , the employee journey is closely related to the employee experience, so tracking it is an important step in improving the employee experience .

Learn About: Employee Lifecycle Management Software

Advantages of the employee journey mapping

Understanding the employee journey is crucial to its success, so it became an essential topic for HR teams. It is a helpful method of increasing employee spotlight & satisfaction, and loyalty by providing a better understanding of your needs at different times.

By understanding the employee journey, you will be able to:

Improve employee experience

Enhance employee satisfaction, decrease employee turnover, increase employee engagement, build a positive company culture.

LEARN ABOUT: Candidate Experience Survey

Stages of the employee journey map

There are several stages that every employee goes through, such as hiring, beginning employment, and retirement or resignation. However, every company is different, and it’s up to you to recognize and create employee journey touchpoints that help you give them the best experience and keep them working in your organization.

Here are all the proposed stages of the employee journey that you should include in your employee journey map:

Recruitment

Incorporation, employee development, compensation and benefits , commitment and continuous communication with employees , employee recognition , employee feedback , employee promotion , personal events , exit from the company .

LEARN ABOUT:  Employee Rewards Ideas for Employee Engagement

How to create employee journey mapping

Where should you start to create an employee journey map? How can you make sure it suits everyone in your diverse workforce? 

Here are the steps to offer your employees a great experience from the beginning to the end of their stay in your organization: 

Segment your audience

Create multiple employee journey map, survey your employees, revise based on feedback, measure the success of your employees..

The employee journey map is essential to understand how your employees are experiencing their journey within your company. Armed with that information, you can improve the experience, transforming your organization from the ground up.

LEARN ABOUT: Workplace Employee Experience Examples

Start working on yours, talking to employees, identifying their values ​​and the steps they follow within your organization, so you can get some ideas on how to start mapping and integrating employee journey.

Learn more about how to get ongoing feedback from your employees and start taking action to positively impact your organization with  QuestionPro Workforce.

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8 Stages of Employee Journey That Empower Employees

According to statistics , a great employee onboarding experience helps improve retention by 82%. The numbers show that the employee journey, from onboarding to exit, is crucial to an employee's life.

The entire tenure of an employee needs to be wholesome and valuable. And to do that, you need to implement a strategic journey that the employees will enjoy.

And how are you going to do that? Well, this blog is about leveraging the employees' journey for enhanced productivity.

What is Employee Journey and Why it Matters?

"Employee Journey" refers to an employee's full experience with an organization. From the first contact as a possible recruit to the last day of employment. This journey includes various important stages: recruitment, onboarding, development, retention, and departure. Here's why it matters and how it can help you create a pleasant employee experience:

1. Recruitment and Onboarding:

The journey starts with recruitment, with the goal of attracting the right personnel. A good first impression here sets the tone for the entire relationship. Effective onboarding is critical for integrating new employees into business culture. You need to assist them in understanding their jobs, and making them feel valued and welcomed.

Read more: 8 Easy Steps To Build a New Employee Onboarding Process

2. Development and Growth:

When onboarding an employee, the emphasis changes towards their development. This includes training, career advancement, and possibilities for personal development. Investing in employee development improves their abilities and displays the organization's commitment. It is to support their professional and personal goals, boosting morale and productivity.

3. Retention:

A great employee journey is crucial to retention. Employees who feel valued, recognized, and involved are more likely to remain with the organization. This includes regular feedback, good work atmosphere, recognition, and a good work-life balance .

4. Departure:

Even when employees leave, their final views of the organization are important. A respectful and friendly offboarding procedure can help former employees become brand champions.

Why It Matters

The "Employee Journey" is an important part of the workplace, helping to shape a positive and dynamic work environment. This journey, which includes every stage from recruitment to departure, is critical. It increases employee engagement , retention, and productivity of an organization.

A well-designed employee experience attracts top people and strengthens a strong employer brand. This helps the organization stand out in a competitive employment market.

Organizations cultivate a dynamic culture that values employees by offering a supportive environment.

This strategy guarantees employees feel, involved, and connected to the company's goals and values. This leads them towards increased motivation and job satisfaction .

Moreover, it fosters loyalty and dedication resulting in decreased turnover rates. It also transforms employees into brand ambassadors. Furthermore, focusing on the employee journey encourages innovation and creativity. This is because employees who feel supported are more inclined to contribute new ideas and solutions.

Another critical thing is to prioritize employee well-being and work-life balance. It is a part of the journey and improves individual performance. It helps in creating a healthier, more resilient workforce . In short, the employee journey is a strategic business investment. An investment that fosters a vibrant and successful workplace. And not just another human resources initiative.

Creating Value

To deliver a positive employee experience, companies must be-

Responsive, and

Adaptable to their employees' needs and feedback.

Regular communication, a welcoming work culture, recognition and reward systems, and professional and personal development opportunities are all part of this.

The 8 Stages of the Employee Journey You Must Know

Now that you have understood the employee journey and why it matters, let us investigate more. Below is the list of all the necessary stages included in the journey. We will also discuss the common pain points, opportunities for improvement, and actionable steps for each stage:

1. Onboarding

This initial stage sets the tone for the employee's journey. As an employer you need to provide them with a warm welcome. Moreover, you also need to provide them with the tools, information, and connections. This will help them start on a positive note.

- Pain Points: New employees often feel overwhelmed with information, struggle to understand company culture, or lack clear role expectations.

- Opportunities: Streamline the onboarding process, set clear expectations, and integrate company culture.

- Actions: Implement a structured onboarding program that includes mentorship. It should also involve clear communication of job roles and an introduction to company values and culture. This will set the tone for them and make it easier for them to adopt.

Be unbiased with your recruitment and be neutral with your employees.

2. Integration

Integration helps employees assimilate into the company culture and team dynamics . It is about making them feel valued, included, and a part of the organizational fabric.

- Pain Points: Difficulty assimilating into teams, understanding informal company networks, or feeling isolated.

- Opportunities: Facilitating team integration and fostering a sense of belonging.

- Actions: Organize team-building activities and encourage cross-departmental interactions. Furthermore, provide platforms for social engagement within the company. This will ensure that they get acclimated to everyone in the organization. Moreover, it will also help them create good workplace relationships in the long run.

3. Performance and Development

This stage emphasizes continual performance evaluation and personal development. The company offers employees opportunities for learning and advancement tailored to their skills. .

- Pain Points: Lack of clear performance metrics, infrequent feedback, or inadequate professional development opportunities.

- Opportunities: Implementing continuous performance evaluation and promoting personal growth.

- Actions: Set clear, measurable goals, provide regular and constructive feedback. Besides offer continuous learning and development opportunities. With increased learning opportunities, the employees will improve their learning curve. And in the long run will have the chance to get new skills.

4. Career and Growth

The emphasis at this stage is on professional advancement and personal improvement. The organization prioritizes personal aspirations with company objectives by providing clear progression opportunities.

- Pain Points: Limited career advancement paths, lack of transparency in promotion processes, or insufficient skill development.

- Opportunities: Creating clear career progression pathways and supporting skill enhancement.

- Actions: Develop transparent career pathways and provide mentorship programs. Also offer training to upskill employees. A good career path will ensure employees understand their worth. This will help them choose the right path that aligns with their skills.

Include leadership in this process and keep things transparent. With the right support and investment employees can surpass their potential and become good assets for the organization.

5. Recognition and Rewards

This critical stage entails recognizing and rewarding people for their contributions and accomplishments. Hence, cultivating a culture of appreciation is essential to motivate employees to improve.

- Pain Points: Inadequate recognition of efforts, non-competitive compensation, or one-size-fits-all rewards system.

- Opportunities: Personalizing recognition and creating a fair, competitive rewards system.

- Actions: Put in place diverse recognition programs, offer competitive and fair compensation. Also tailor rewards to individual preferences and achievements. Incentivize the awards with redeemable points, allowing employees the flexibility to use them.

You can also use badges to improve engagement or recognize them in public forums. This will make them feel valued and boost their morale. Investing in things that align with the work culture makes it more effective in the long run. This will help you increase job satisfaction levels and reduce turnover in the long run.

And if you want to explore more on what a rewards and recognition platform is capable of, you can click here .

6. Transition

Transition addresses the changes that employees experience. Whether through internal migrations, role changes, or other professional transformations, it is inevitable. In this stage, one has to ensure that these transitions are smooth and fit in well with their career path.

- Pain Points: Poor management of role transitions, lack of support during job changes, or negative exit experiences.

- Opportunities: Smoothing transition phases and ensuring positive exit experiences.

- Action: Provide support during internal transitions. Also maintain open communication, and ensure respectful and constructive exit interviews. Be with the employees during the time of need when in transition. They will need all the help they can, which will improve their journey and enhance their experience.

If it is possible then create an internal community that solely looks after such matters.

7. Advocacy

At this point, employees become corporate ambassadors. They share their positive experiences and help the organization's external reputation. Hence, curating a strategy they won’t find difficult to adjust to and use effectively is important.

- Pain Points: Lack of employee engagement in brand advocacy, insufficient communication of company success, or weak alumni networks.

- Opportunities: Turning employees into brand advocates and maintaining long-term relationships.

- Actions: Encourage employee involvement in storytelling. Moreover, celebrate company achievements, and build strong alumni networks. This will help in maintaining connections with former employees and strengthen employer branding . Furthermore, alumni can also help provide mentorship sessions to the existing employees with their experiences and expertise. This will help the employees gather knowledge and improve themselves in the long run.

Learn More: Employee Advocacy in 2024: Everything A Leader Needs To Know

The final stage handles the departure process with dignity and respect. The focus remains on maintaining a positive relationship and leaving the door open for potential return.

- Pain Points: Insufficient communication during the exit process, lack of constructive feedback, or negative final impressions of the company.

- Opportunities: Managing the exit process with respect and gathering valuable insights.

- Actions: Conduct thorough and empathetic exit interviews . On top of that provide clear communication of the exit process, and offer support. Handle departures to leave a positive impression, keeping the door open for rehire or referrals. Additionally, use feedback from employees who are exiting to identify areas for organizational improvement. Also maintain an alumni network to keep former employees engaged and connected to the company.

Tips on Designing an Effective Employee Journey Mapping

You now have a fair idea about an employee's journey stages. The next step is to design an effective employee journey map to enhance employee experience. And how can you do that? Let us have a look at it.

1. Co-create the Map with Employees and Stakeholders

Involve employees and key stakeholders in creating the roadmap. This will help in capturing real-world experiences and needs. This collaboration fosters ownership and relevance through diverse insights. Conduct workshops and brainstorming sessions for a complete perspective on the employee experience.

This approach is critical as it helps in a robust design where every input is valued. On top of it, it creates strong building blocks for the future that the organization can follow in the long run.

2. Incorporate Cross-Generational Insights

Design your map to reflect the various age groupings in the workforce. Different generations have distinct expectations and experiences. You can design a more inclusive map incorporating Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z viewpoints. This serves as a greater spectrum of employee requirements and preferences.

Moreover, it also enables you to enhance your diversity and inclusion efforts and create a more open-minded workforce. Besides, a study shows that a diverse workforce is 35% more productive. This emphasizes the importance of D&I. Hence, it becomes essential that the journey map is diverse to provide the best employee experience.

3. Leverage Predictive Analytics

Use predictive analytics to forecast future personnel requirements and trends. Expect future challenges and opportunities by analyzing feedback, performance data, and market trends. This will allow you to adjust the journey map for better outcomes in the long run.

Making the most out of the data in hand will also enable you to focus on the pain points of your strategy. This will help make informed and concrete decisions that the organization can benefit from.

4. Integrate Emotional Touchpoints

Explore emotional touchpoints by charting an employee's journey to grasp their feelings. This means identifying feelings at every career step. It involves from the thrill of getting hired to the stress of new duties and the happiness of acknowledgement.

Identifying these emotional states allows employers to change their approach. This is to meet employee requirements and sentiments better. Hence, resulting in a more compassionate and responsive workplace culture. This emotional mapping helps create strategies that address job practicalities. In return it enhances employees' emotional well-being in the workplace. So improving their entire experience and satisfaction is vital.

5. Use Gamification for Engagement

Gamification refers to making the process interactive and engaging during employee journey. Incentivize employee participation and valuable input in the mapping process. You can do this by integrating game elements like awards, challenges, and leaderboards. This method can transform a generally monotonous work into an enjoyable and engaging pastime. Hence resulting in better participation rates and more accurate, thorough data.

It can also instill a spirit of competition and achievement in employees. This motivates greater involvement in their personal growth and shapes the company's culture.

Recommended Read: How to Use Gamification in the Workplace Effectively

6. Update Journey Maps with Real-Time Feedback

Employee journey maps must be evolving tools rather than static records. Regular updates based on real-time feedback guarantee that the travel map remains relevant and precise. Using tools like pulse surveys or suggestion boxes helps capture changing employee opinions and experiences.

By reviewing and updating the journey map, companies can adjust to changes and address emerging concerns. Allowing organizations to grab new opportunities. This improves the employee experience, ensuring the journey map reflects the workplace's current state.

Optimizing The Entire Employee Journey

Optimizing and leveraging the employee experience for long-term advantages necessitates continuous initiatives. Here are some crucial points:

1. Continual Assessment and Adaptation:

Examine and update the employee journey map in according to changing organizational needs. This dynamic strategy ensures that the journey is always relevant and effective. And enabling organizations to react to internal and external market changes.

2. Align with Organizational Goals:

Ensure that the employee journey aligns with the organizational goals and strategy. You can create a holistic experience that promotes employee happiness and corporate success. You need to ensure it by matching the journey with the company's vision and objectives.

3. Integrate Technology for Efficiency:

Use technology to streamline and improve the employee experience. This can include HR management solutions for onboarding, performance tracking tools, and internal communication platforms. The appropriate technology can simplify procedures, enhance communication, and deliver useful data insights.

4. Foster a Culture of Continuous Learning:

Encourage a learning atmosphere in which employees are eager to acquire new skills and knowledge. Regular training, workshops, and professional development opportunities aid in long-term talent retention.

Read More: Why The Habit Of Continuous Learning Is Important

5. Personalize the Employee Experience:

Recognize that every employee is unique, and personalize the journey to match their own needs and preferences. Personalization includes customized professional development programs and flexible work arrangements. This helps in improving employee satisfaction and engagement in the long run.

6. Measure Impact and ROI:

Assess the performance of employee journey efforts using measures like-

Employee engagement,

Turnover rates, and

Productivity levels.

Assessing the return on investment (ROI) aids in evaluating the impact on the company and drives future improvements.

7. Focus on Well-Being and Work-Life Balance:

Focus on employee well-being and work-life balance as integral parts of the journey. Wellness initiatives and flexible policies improve employee health and satisfaction. Furthermore, it also enables an organization to create an employee-centric work culture.

The employee journey includes all stages of an employee's career, from recruitment to offboarding. Optimizing this journey through personalization, adaption, and technology integration creates an engaging culture. This also empowers people and fits with business goals. Hence, creating a work culture that thrives. So, why wait? Invest in the journey and make it meaningful for your employees.

Mrinmoy Rabha is a content writer and digital marketer at Vantage Circle . He is an avid follower of football and passionate about singing. For any related queries, contact [email protected]

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• CREATING A PLAYFUL CULTURE
• EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE DESIGN
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• Your Guide For Employee Journey Mapping

Let’s Dive Into Employee Journey Mapping To Tell Your Story.

Investing time into employee journey mapping will impact your employee experience.

An employee journey map can identify the shortcomings in your employee experience. You can learn how to cater to the employee experience for different employees.

Employee journey maps are a great way to lay out the story of your organization. Laying down the major plot points (or moments that matter) that employees have along the way.

There will be a basic structure to the story, and that will change depending on the employee. Think of it like those choose-your-own-adventure books from when you were a kid.

(December 15th, 2021): My thoughts on employee journey mapping were featured in a whitepaper from UXPressia

Here’s are a couple of talks I did with UXPressia on using employee journey mapping to create a better employee onboarding experience:

February 16 2023 – How to Improve Employee Experience Using Journey Mapping: Best Practices from Paul Lopushinsky

  June 8 2021 – UXPressia: How to Improve Onboarding with Employee Journey Mapping

I also did an interview with UXPressia on Employee Experience Journey Mapping: How to Do it Right, which you can read here.

You can also watch the recorded interview below:

This Guide Will Cover The Following (Click Below To Jump To That Section):

• What Is An Employee Journey Map?
• The Benefits of Employee Journey Mapping.
• The Steps Of The Employee Journey Map.
• Sourcing And Recruiting
• Pre-Boarding
• Compensation And Benefits
• Ongoing Learning And Development
• Ongoing Engagement
• Rewards And Recognition
• Performance Planning, Feedback, And Review
• Advancement
• Retire, Fire, Resign
• Conducting Research For Your Journey Map.
• Personas For Employee Journey Mapping.
• Resources For Storytelling.
• Conclusion And Next Steps.

1. What Is An Employee Journey Map?

The Journey Map is a concept that comes from the world of User Experience Design. It’s used with the customer in mind.

When you hear someone talking about a journey map, it’s likely referring to the customer journey map.

This journey map looks at touchpoints, like awareness, sales, and retention. The image below is a good breakdown of the journey map.

Source: conceptboard

Like the design thinking process , a number of organizations will build out thorough user journey maps (I’ve done so in my UX Design past), but only for their customers and not turn the process inward.

With a few tweaks, you can turn the user journey map inward and create an employee journey map.  

Think of your journey map like actual maps.

First, let’s start with a world map.

This will be your entirety of your employee journey map. The world map has changed very little – it’s when you start to zoom in that you start to see the changes.

Zooming in further, we have a country map.

Here will be the best practices for your journey map. This includes onboarding, preboarding, and ongoing learning and engagement.

We can zoom in further, and get into the province/state/country area, and even further with a city map.

Think of how much a city map changes over a period of time. Or even a google maps image of a city street view. Some buildings rise, others are torn down. Things are always changing.

This gets into the nitty gritty of your journey map, where you’ll look into depth about a specific touchpoint. For example, for onboarding, this could be the journey map of the buddy system, or pre-boarding.

UXPressia, whom I’ve done talks and interviews with (see the beginning of the post for the recordings), have some templates you can make use of to get started.

Another thing to recognize with journey maps is that they’re always ongoing.

They’re not a one and done thing, where you’ll drop up once and never change again.

They’re more like a blog post than a book. A blog can get updated overtime (like this article has been), compared to a book which stays the same years after being published. Well, until a 10/25th Anniversary edition comes out. Or they add in a new foreword. You know what I mean.

Back to the map analogy, while the world map (the big picture of your employee journey map) may not change, when you zoom down to the street level, things will.

Thinking About Your Employee Journey Map In Storytelling Terms

Like any story, they will have a basic structure (acts, conflict, characters, arcs), but how those things play out will depend on the story.

The same case goes for the story of your employee experience. Mapping it out will help you in figuring out how you want the stories and journeys to play out for employees.

Remember, that in our own stories in our lives, we are the hero.

This likely takes you back to your high school classes. So many stories we’ve heard in our lives when broken down, have a similar foundation. It’s the characters and the smaller details that will change.

For your journey map, each individual will have a different story, but strive to have a solid foundation.

There is no one size fits all. Don’t copy another organization’s employee journey map ( falling victim to the FAANG effect which we’ve written about ), but feel free to pull influence from them when it comes to employee journey mapping.

The important thing is that you cover the major aspects of the employee journey, and how it aligns with your organization.

Before we look into the steps of the employee journey map, let’s take a look at the benefits of employee journey mapping.

2. The Benefits of Employee Journey Mapping.

Why bother with employee journey mapping? Couldn’t you be spending your time on something else?

While the study is on customer journey mapping, here are some findings for organizations who made use of journey mapping.

Customer journey mapping research report 2018

• 90% of organizations who used journey mapping found it delivered a positive impact.
• Journey mapping lead to an increase in customer satisfaction.
• Journey mapping lead to an increase in Net Promoter Score (NPS).
• Reduced customer churn.
• Fewer customer complaints.

There are few research and academic studies on employee journey mapping. I was able to come across a couple of them.

One of them is the following: Improving Onboarding with Employee Experience Journey Mapping: A Fresh Take on a Traditional UX Technique

Overview: In April 2016, two new hires began their roles in the Learning and Research Services department at MSU Library. This presented a chance to learn from new employees and improve onboarding.

They mapped out the first six months of the employee onboarding experience. They meet with the new employees once a week for the first four weeks. Afterwards, once a month.

They made adjustments over the employee onboarding experience, like shortening the timeframe.

Working with the new employees, they identified shortcomings and implemented solutions. They were able to identify possible solutions to the negative experiences they experienced. By the end of the six months, they had a far greater understanding of how the onboarding should go.

That is the study in a nutshell – if you have time, check out the link above to read the whole thing.

Here is another I came across: EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE JOURNEY MAPPING: A NEW APPROACH TO ATTRACTING TALENT IN THE TOURISM SECTOR IN THE SHADOWS OF COVID-19

Overview: This was a study on a 5-star hotel in Budapest. They were looking at how to improve retention in the hospitality industry in the wake of Covid.

They identified 15 touch points and many critical points. Upon completion, the hotel received many recommendations in regards to improvements.

Some examples include playing up the benefits of working there (good location, free meals, fun atmosphere). Other recommendations included implementing a buddy system to help with getting up to speed.

They were able to identify many complex problems that required solving. These would take longer discussions and collaboration to come up with key solutions.

Source: Pixabay

An employee journey map will allow you to put into context the employee experience in a visual format.

We are visual creatures, and having the entire employee experience right in front of you will be beneficial in identifying all the steps in your employee journey.

An employee journey map makes for better storytelling.

Facts and stats tend to bore us.

We are engrossed by compelling stories. Storytelling is one of our oldest and most powerful tools available to us.

Creating an employee journey map will allow you to better tell the story of your employee experience.

An employee journey map creates something that is unique to YOUR organization.

Creating an employee journey map unique to your organization is a great way of demonstrating the values, thoughts, and processes of your organization.

Having one will do wonders for your organization. Assuming you keep it updated, and don’t let it fall to the wayside.

Remember, this is your story. There may be many ones like it, but at the end of the day, it’s your map, and your story.

3. The Steps Of The Employee Journey Map.

Now that we know what a journey map is, and the benefits of creating one, let’s look at the steps to consider when it comes to employee journey mapping.

To be clear, these ten steps below are what I call best practices…feel free to include or exclude what you want. This list comes from the following:

Design Your Employee Experience as Thoughtfully as You Design Your Customer Experience

For each part of the journey, ask the following questions:

• What is the employee trying to do?
• What is the employee feelng?
• What are the moments that matter?
• What are the pain points and barriers?

Here are ten steps you can use for your employee journey map.

Some of these I will be going over in more detail than others (click to jump to section).

1. Sourcing And Recruiting

What could their first touch point be with your organization? It can be from seeing your organization at a career fair, they have a friend that works there, or they saw an opening on LinkedIn.

Now we have the resume submission phase (or pre-interview if you will).

I’m sure we’ve all across job postings that made it super inconvenient for those applying.

Instead of attaching a resume with a PDF, they might have some bizarre system where you have to enter things in the old-fashion way. Or they make the process too long, or makes you enter in redundant information.

What do you mean that format isn’t accepted?

They’re not going to waste their time and look elsewhere. I hope your organization doesn’t have that problem.

My advice is to check with new hires, or go through the process yourself and see where it needs tweaking. You may be in for a surprise.

Moving on, is it clear what to expect next? Is it clear to candidates when they’ll hear back, on whether they’ll get an interview?

Do you leave them in the dark for 7.5 months and then send a generic rejection email? Again, think from their perspective.

I get it. You’re busy, and you may have many, many applicants for the role you are trying to fill.

Someone who may not be a fit today may be a better fit six months or a year from now. The fewer unneeded barriers you have getting in the way of the right candidates, the better.

That said, you don’t want everyone and their mother applying for your positions. Have it filtered down enough of what you’re looking for, and just as important, what you’re not looking for.

Then, we have the interview process itself.

What is yours like? Are you copying the 19.5 step interview process because Google made it famous ( a result of the FAANG effect )?

Or are you actually cutting down to the meat and bones of what matters?

Are you crystal clear of expectations of follow ups of when they’ll know by?

Here is a personal story of a bad interview process I had.

Back in my Product Manager days, I was set to do an initial phone interview. The call never comes. Ok, shit happens, they could be sick, or something urgent came up.

Email them to get back to me for another time.

They get back to me the next day saying something came up, we reschedule. I get their number as well.

Time comes for the interview, and no call after several minutes, so I call them. Nothing.

I get in contact with an admin at the organization, and they said the one who was going to interview me was busy and will get back to me later. Hmm…

Tried calling a couple more times the next day, a couple of emails, and nothing. I moved on. About 3.5 weeks later I got the generic rejection email and said they found someone else.

Facepalm bear is not please. Source: Unsplash

Now, this may have been a one-off case with the person I was supposed to have a call with, but do you think I looked at future positions from that organization?

Even if others had good experiences with that company, with what I experienced? Pardon my French, but fuck them.

There are going to be a number of individuals where this is the end of their employee journey map for the time being.

A role in the future opens up that’s a better fit or they have more experience.

Depending on your touch points for sourcing and recruiting, it will lead them to consider future openings. Or they move on and never want to hear from you again.

Again, with my story above, I wasn’t going to bother looking at that organization again.

First impressions matter.

2. Pre-Boarding

Update August 24th, 2021: I’ve written an in-depth article here on how to nail new employee preboarding which you can read here.

So they’ve accepted the job offer. Now what? Do you send them an email of when to come in and leave it at that? Or do you do more?

Pre-boarding is valuable in easing anxieties that we all face when starting a new role.

With the one organizations where I had a good employee onboarding experience with, I had a thorough yet brief guide of things to expect for my first day, week, month, and quarter. I had a lunch a week before I started with a few members of my team.

That did wonders for me when I showed up on the first day.

In other situations, I would get an email saying “See you at 9am on Monday”, and that’s all.

I didn’t have an idea of what to expect from my first day, week, or month. No information about dress code, the parking situation, log in information.

All these little things that you need to know, but were afraid to ask.

I didn’t want to be that new person asking three million questions.

Granted, because these organizations didn’t put in the legwork, that’s what ended up being the case.

That said, pre-boarding should be done in moderation. Why?

I’ve talked with organizations who got feedback that pre-boarding expectations were too high. Too much time to put in before day one started.

Unpaid work.

Like little or no pre-boarding, too much pre-boarding can create a whole different set of anxieties with starting a new job.

This is a very, VERY rare case. I’ve never experienced it myself.

That said, I have come across a few organizations where this was the case, so I wanted to make note of it.

Like Grandma used to tell you, everything in moderation.

Remember that there is that magical time in between when the paperwork is signed, and they start the job.

They could be starting after the weekend, in two weeks, or in a month. They might be coming right from another job, or had some time between their last role and this upcoming one.

They might take that time to travel, do some hiking, visit friends, or decide to rewatch The Sopranos in its entirety while lying around doing nothing.

We’ve all been here before. Source: Red Letter Media

With that in mind, have a thorough pre-boarding process, but all in moderation.

Don’t overwhelm them by expecting them to know everything and the kitchen sink for when they first come in. Give them enough information so they know what to expect when they begin.

It turns out that around 64% of new hires receive no preboarding experience.

So even if you do a tiny bit here, you’re outdoing most organizations.

I’ve written an in-depth article here on how to nail new employee preboarding which you can read here.

3. Onboarding

The first day/week/month is an integral part of the employee journey.

Did they get there early and no one was around, and had to wait around?

Were people confused by the fact that they were starting?

Was their desk not ready, their computer not ready, and were they without email for some time?

If they’re starting remote, is it clear with what they should be doing?

Is there a video call for them to introduce themselves, or is no one the wiser?

Or are things laid out for them, meetings set up, and people welcoming them?

This kind of day one can have a noticeable impact if an employee decides to stay long term at an organization, or decides to start looking elsewhere.

When I talk to people about onboarding, I paint them a story of two different kinds of onboarding. A day one where the onboarding was terrible, and another in which an organization made them feel different.

Here are some responses I’ve received over time – notice the difference between the two. Starting with bad onboarding:

Lots of acronyms being used results in not feeling a sense of belongingness.

The experience was awkward and it made me feel that the employee was not valued.

If that was me, I think I probably won’t last a year in that company if things don’t change.

I feel as if I have turned up at the wrong organization.

I thought multiple times “I don’t want other folks to feel this way”.

Now compare that to a quality onboarding experience with a strong day one:

The onboarding experience is often an employee’s first extended interaction with their new employer. The onboarding process should set the foundation for long-term success.

Welcomed, satisfied, comfortable, and most importantly not lost!

This made me feel like I was part of a team, a team with a winning mentality.

Excited and looking forward to what next day will bring, and looking forward continuing in the company.

Every organization is going to tackle onboarding differently.

Every organization has a different story – from team size, to industry, to history.

I recommend the following goals for your employee onboarding experience as a framework – it works across industry and organization size. Feel free to adjust as you wish.

• From day one, new employees know they’ve made the right choice in joining.
• Giving employees everything they need to know (but were afraid to ask).
• Ease them into your organization.
• Show them how your organization works (values).
• Show that their work matters.
• Show that you are a flexible organization.

“While our project stretched over six months total, we found that the most useful data was uncovered within the first month. This timeframe may differ in other organizations depending on how quickly employees are onboarded and receive new training, or if the journey map is looking at the experience of an existing employee,” -Jacqueline L. Frank, Instruction & Accessibility Librarian at Montana State University-Bozeman

Improving the employee onboarding process is one of our core services at Playficient . I’ve written plenty on the employee onboarding process that you can explore below.

• 12 Employee Onboarding Ideas Your Organization Can Use Right Now
• A New Employee Onboarding Guide That Actually Works
• A Guide To Building A Buddy System At Your Organization
• Why The Entry Interview Should Be Essential In Your Employee Onboarding
• How To Write A 30 60 90 Day Plan For Your Org’s Onboarding

4. Compensation and Benefits

Compensation and benefits are important in the employee journey mapping process.

Whatever you do, please, please, PLEASE do not be one of those organizations who justify paying lower salaries because they offer a better “experience”. Don’t do it for the “exposure” or “how good it looks on a resume”.

If you’re a young organization without the budget, that’s understandable. But it drives me up the fucking wall when I see large organizations skimp on this.

You know what also looks good to employees? A nice paycheck to go with it.

Compensation and benefits is not something we focus on or are knowledgeable of at Playficient.

Here are some external guides that you can look at in regard to compensation and benefits:

• How to Build a Competitive Employee Benefits Package
• Employee Compensation and Benefits: The Complete Guide
• An HR Leader’s Guide to Compensation and Benefits

5. Ongoing Learning And Development

You want employees to be learning on the regular at your organization. Many organizations struggle with providing ongoing learning and development.

One of the most common pieces of feedback I see on Glassdoor is a lack of career advancement or development.

If they’re lacking in ongoing learning and development, employees are going to look elsewhere once they hit that wall.

When working with companies, I have found this to be a major sticking point. To advance, employees may have to move to a management position, or look elsewhere. Some are fine with moving to management, but if they’re working in a tech role, for example, they may want to stay along the tech path.

Granted, that’s a whole other ball game, and something many companies struggle with.

While some organizations have a 30/60/90 day plan for new employees , many organizations have little to offer afterward.

One key element of learning and development is making sure you have the right tools to make this easy for your organization.

You want a quality LMS (Learning Management System) in place.

For more on how an LMS can benefit your organization, check out my article here.

6. Ongoing Engagement

Now that the employee is settled in, you don’t want engagement to slide by the wayside.

Many elements fall under the ongoing engagement umbrella – here are a few of them:

• Worklife Balance
• Relationship with manager and team
• Relationship and communication with other teams
• Communication from leadership

At Playficient, we’ve talked about employee engagement, overwork, and how to avoid loneliness in the workplace, which you can read about here.

• A Guide To Ensure Your Employee Engagement Strategies Don’t Stink
• Workplace Loneliness – A Guide For Management
• Why Are We Still Being Overworked In The Workplace?
• Forced Fun Is No Fun – So Why Do Organizations Keep It Up?

7. Rewards And Recognition

Employees want to see something come out of their hard work.

No, I’m not talking a watch or a gift card to Subway.

I’m talking about actual recognition for the accomplishments and the value that they provide. Get creative.

Thanks for your five years here! Have a small cake. Source: Unsplash

Here are some external guides to give you some ideas on what to include for rewards and recognition.

• A Comprehensive Guide to Reward and Recognition in the Workplace
• THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION
• Your Comprehensive Guide to Employee Recognition Programs

8. Performance Planning, Feedback, And Review

What do you do when it comes to performance review?

Are you doing these yearly? Every few months?

What about employee surveys? Do you actually do something with the feedback, or does it end up in the netherrealm?

Another frequent complaint I’ve seen on Glassdoor reviews for organizations is poor feedback in regard to how an employee is doing.

We all need feedback to know what we’re doing well, and where we need to improve.

Using who, what, when, where, why, and how, here are some questions you can ask to identify what needs to be in place for performance, planning, feedback, and review.

• Who is the employee receiving the feedback from?
• What kind of feedback are they receiving?
• When are these performance reviews happening? Once a year? A Quarter?
• Where can employees look to get further feedback and guidance?
• Why are they receiving the feedback that they are?
• How can this process be improved?

Here are some common mistakes I see in regards to performance feedback:

Here, we can see it’s a common thing that employers can be very out of touch to what’s going on with employees. They don’t walk a mile in their shoes.

Here, we can see a case of what happens when these reviews are not happening enough. Concerns from employees don’t end up getting addressed, and what was once small turns into a monster.

Here is a case study on Adobe for when they revamped their performance management.

• In annual employee engagement surveys, the annual review was one of the top processes that needed improvement.
• With their new check-in system quarterly meetings were the suggested minimum, with a goal-setting form provided for employees.
• Ongoing feedback was emphasized, pushing towards as real-time as possible.

I have written a couple of articles here on performance management:

• How To Optimize Your Performance Management
• How To Conduct A Better Performance Review

9. Advancement

Somebody got a promotion. Great! What do you have in place for it as they move to their new role?

Many organizations tend to overlook preparing further onboarding when an employee gets a promotion.

What are their new responsibilities?

Where can they get mentorship from?

What is going to change in their day-to-day?

These are important questions to ask and answer for the advancement phase of employee journey mapping.

Climbing that corporate ladder. Source: Unsplash

10. Retire, Fire, Resign

An employee has spent decades at the organization and is now planning to retire.

An employee leaves for another role at another organization.

Your organization is in the unfortunate state where you cut back on staff.

At this stage in the employee journey map, you also need to consider not only the (former) employee, but those around them.

If someone retires, leaves elsewhere, or gets fired, how do you ensure their knowledge gets passed on?

How do you break the news to other employees?

What happens when someone who was essential to your team is now gone?

To the person who is retiring, leaving, or fired, how easy is the process?

How do you handle it from your end?

Is it warm and personal? Cold and “strictly business”?

Do you build dossiers on former employees to use against them in the future like Theranos did (I shit you not).

On that last point, if that even crosses your mind, stop reading and get off this site. Seek therapy. I want nothing to do with you.

Do remember that just because they’re not at the organization anymore, it doesn’t necessarily mean their journey is done.

What do I mean by that?

It’s possible in the future they end up returning to the organization.

They keep in touch with people from the organization. You never know.

They can share what it was like working at your organization, for better or for worse.

They might get bored of retirement and decide to come back.

Or they’ve advanced their career elsewhere, and a new role at your organization pops up that they would be a perfect fit for.

Would it make sense for them to return to take this role – akin to slipping on an old shoe? Or would their experiences lead them not to consider it at all?

These are all things to keep in mind.

And so our journey ends…or does it?

4. Conducting Research For Your Journey Map.

Now let’s get into the meat and potatoes of the employee journey mapping process – conducting research to fill out your journey map.

While there are plenty of overlaps, employee journey mapping has notable differences from a customer journey map.

When conducting interviews with customers, it’s easier to get unfiltered feedback.

If your product or service sucks, they’ll let you know.

If you’re interviewing an employee about why your company sucks? That’s different.

They may be a bit hesitant to talk smack about the place that hires them in this kind of scenario.

Measuring the impact of an employee journey map is vaguer than a customer journey map.

For a customer journey map, it’s far easier to tie a more positive customer experience to areas like an increase in revenue.

For the employee experience? It’s a bit more difficult.

Before we get more into those, let’s talk about starting an employee journey map.

When you begin an employee journey map, keep things simple and specific.

Don’t go thinking to yourself “hey, let’s work on the overall employee journey map for all employees”.

That’s a massive undertaking, depending on the size of your organization.

It would be like an explorer back in the day deciding to map out the entire world instead of a smaller area.

So let’s start small in your focus. When I’ve worked with clients, the most common stages that I work on with them are:

• Recognition
• Performance planning, feedback, review

From there, you need to decide on who you’re targeting. Get more specific than “our entire company”. Unless you’re a small company, you’ll want to focus down further.

Here are some areas to consider in getting more specific:

• Length of tenure
• Career length

This allows you to narrow down your focus. It makes it easier to see the impacts that implenting your employee journey map can have.

It also gives you momentum moving forward if you want to continue with an employee journey map.

Here are some examples of areas of the employee journey map you can focus on, and who:

• Focus on the onboarding process of those in the marketing department with a tenure of 3-9 months.
• Focus on the ongoing engagement of quality assurance employees with a tenure of 3-4 years.
• Focus on learning and development for those in finance from an age of 25-35.

Narrowing down to something specific will do wonders. Not only in identifying problems, but measuring your implemented solutions.

The more specific you get, the better. Well, to an extent. You don’t want to make things so narrow that this only results in targeting a couple of individuals.

Conducting Interviews

One question I get all the time in regards to conducting interviews is the following:

This is a great question!

One key difference between a customer journey map and an employee journey map is that it’s easier to get unfiltered feedback from a customer.

If an employee is airing all their grievances about what’s wrong with the organization, that can come back to haunt them. Word gets up to management about their issues, and that gets used against them.

Hate to say it’s a reality, but that is the case. I’ve had friends be vocal about their issues with an organization when they needed it. This came back to bite them in the butt at various points in their time there.

There are three options here in regards to conducting interviews, each with their pros and cons.

1. Hire An Outside Party (like Playficient)

Pros: + Can avoid issues of employees being uncomfortable in sharing information + Bring in an employee journey mapping expert + You help me put food on the table

Cons: – Need to find an outside party – Outside party needs time to get accustomed to your organization (you’re going to need to get me up to speed on all your acronyms)

2. Anonymous Surveys

Pros: + Anonymous + Scalable compared to conducting 1:1 or group interviews

Cons: – Hard to dig deeper into answers given – Can’t pick up on body language, tone of voice, word emphasis etc.

3. Conduct Internal Interviews

Pros: + Convenient + Strong knowledge base of your organization

Cons: – Easier to fall to biases (the answers you want to hear instead of what you need to hear) – Employees may feel possible consequences for their answers

Of course, I recommend #1 (hire an outside party such as Playficient) as the best option (there may or may not be some bias there).

If you DO want to go with conducting the interviews internally, there is a way to mitigate the cons that arise.

If you go this approach, don’t have their direct manager interview them.

Get someone from the P & C team. Or a different manager they don’t report to.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction.

The Interview Process

I will give an overview of how I go through the interview process for research, and answer the three following questions:

What kind of questions to ask?

How many interviews should we conduct.

• What do we do with all the information?

Starting with the first question:

There are a million different questions you can ask, but to help you out, here are a list of five I like to use in interviews.

Doesn’t matter the role, the organization, or what you’re trying to accomplish.

• Tell me about some of the more memorable days or projects you have had in your role.
• What is something you know now that you wished you knew when you began your role?
• If you had a magic wand to change anything in your role, what would you change?
• What is something that you wish your manager knew?
• What are your favourite aspects about your role? Which ones would you rather not deal with?

The magic wand question is my favorite to use. So many possibilities that can lead the interview to go in interesting directions.

Here are some other important things to consider…

• Do not railroad the conversation. Let their answers guide the conversation.
• Expanding on the point above, don’t just go through a list of questions like a checklist.
• Don’t just take their answer at face value and not dig in deeper.

The last point is key. You want to dig deeper into their answer.

For example, if you asked “magic wand question” and their answer was:

That leads down an interesting path.

• What does upper management think they do?
• Why do they feel upper management doesn’t have a clue of what they do?
• Do they examples of times where it was clear upper management didn’t have a clue of what they did?
• Why do they feel this way?
• What can upper management do to get a clue with what they do?

This is how I conduct my interviews, and how you should to. Have a list of questions on hand, but be ready to dig in deeper on what comes up.

If those conversation find their natural conclusion, try a different question.

This is another question I get frequently.

How many interviews do we need to conduct to be confident in our findings?

More often than not, five interviews is all you need.

That’s it.

Why so low?

Here are some excerpts on findings from Nielsen Norman Group: Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users

When you test the second user, you will discover that this person does some of the same things as the first user, so there is some overlap in what you learn. People are definitely different, so there will also be something new that the second user does that you did not observe with the first user. So the second user adds some amount of new insight, but not nearly as much as the first user did.

The third user will do many things that you already observed with the first user or with the second user and even some things that you have already seen twice. Plus, of course, the third user will generate a small amount of new data, even if not as much as the first and the second user did.

As you add more and more users, you learn less and less because you will keep seeing the same things again and again. There is no real need to keep observing the same thing multiple times, and you will be very motivated to go back to the drawing board and redesign the site to eliminate the usability problems.

After the fifth user, you are wasting your time by observing the same findings repeatedly but not learning much new.

The article is a good read for the study and research behind it.

More often than not, conducting five interviews with the right segment is all I need to identify common patterns and pain points.

Asking 6, 8, 10, 15 won’t lead to that many more insights.

What if you can’t find any patterns after five?

I find that it can be either be the following (or a combination of the two):

• You need to conduct more interviews.
• Go back and get more specific of who you’re talking to and what areas you want to focus on.

You’re going to have better focus and be able to measure outcomes if you decide to focus on those who went through onboarding within the last year within a department compared to asking everyone at your organization about their onboarding experience.

When in doubt, get more specific.

As you continue to conduct interviews, use them more for confirming past findings.

If you’re on the fourth or fifth interview and a common pain point has come up prior in the past interviews, bring up that point to confirm your past findings.

That said, you don’t want to railroad the conversation as a result. Keep things open for them to provide new insights.

Jacqueline L. Frank, Instruction & Accessibility Librarian at Montana State University-Bozeman

What to do with all the information you’ve collected?

You want to be taking notes during your conversations. Make note of key points and statements with strong language.

If it’s a possibility, record the interview. I use it more to go back and listen to key moments to ensure I understand their answer.

I like to put a notable statement on a single sticky note. If you want to use actual sticky notes, go crazy.

I use a visual whiteboarding tool like Miro to do so (and save paper).

From there, I’ll begin to sort these stickys under categories.

These can be anything from:

• Day one onboarding
• Career development
• Relationship with team
• Worklife balance

You’ll be able to notice these categories emerge as you go through your sticky notes.

From there, we can start to put together the foundation of the journey map.

The following is how I like to sort the areas of focus (the rows of the employee journey map):

• Employee Goals and Expectations
• Employee Experiences (+ and -) & Emotions
• Key Moments that Matter
• Pain Points
• Opportunities for Improvement

Those should all be clear of what they mean, save for Key Moments that Matter.

These are notable moments (good or bad) that are brought up in interviews that stand out in their mind.

Anything from their first meeting with their manager, to their first day on the job.

I like to use a combination of summary statements, along with key quotes to emphasize points.

I want to emphasize the importance of making your findings anonymous.

In most cases, I’m fine with using direct quotes from interview (as long as you don’t mention where it came from).

However, if there are use cases that pop up for only select individuals, then you want to paraphrase, or leave it off altogether.

What should go in the rows?

These are the activites or key areas of what you’re focusing on. They can be things like:

• First 90 days
• Work-Life Balance
• Performance Reviews

UXPressia offers a great journey mapping tool along with several templates.

Check them out here.

How do we turn the employee journey map into actionable steps?

So you got down all the information in a nice looking employee journey map. What do you do now?

Start with looking at employee suggestions for improvements.

These will have come up in your interviews (assuming you conducted them in a proper manner). The magic wand question that I mentioned up above is a great question to ask to get insight into what kind of solutions that they have in mind.

How do you come up with solutions?

A very good question!

I love to bring up this quote from Leonard Cohen about songwriting:

This gets into a whole different concept of design thinking. For my in-depth guide on the subject of design thinking, check it out here.

For a short summary, try the following:

• Conduct a brainstorming session to come up with ideas
• Run ideas by those you have interviewed for feedback
• Send out a survey to collect feedback

Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Employee Journey Mapping Initiative

You can’t manage what you can’t measure.

How can you ensure you’re able to track how effective your output is from the findings of your employee journey map?

Being specific about what you’re tackling with your journey map (the who and the what) will make this easier to see its output.

What are some KPIS you can use?

• Employee Satisfaction
• Employee Retention
• Pulse Surveys
• Course Completion Rates

5. Personas For Employee Journey Mapping.

Let’s now make your employee journey map more specific and look at the “who”.

One of the ways you can do so is by creating employee personas.

Personas receive use in the user experience world to identify types of customers, pain points, goals and needs.

No two employees are the same.

You have various departments at your organization.

You have roles at different levels of seniority.

You have employees of various ages, experiences, personalities, interests, and so on.

With employee journey mapping, you’re going to have touch points that everyone interacts with, along with additions, depending on their role, their seniority, etc.

Source: Unsplash

A software developer is going to have a journey that looks different to a salesperson.

Someone starting in a junior position is going to have a different journey than someone coming in at a VP level.

So while you can’t make a persona for every single individual, you can have an outline to help cover the essentials.

In storytelling terms, you can think of character archetypes. Here are some examples of comedy archetypes that you’ll be familiar with:

• The straight man. Think Jerry Seinfeld or Michael Bluth from Arrested Development.
• The eccentric. Think Kramer from Seinfeld.
• The buffoon. Think George from Seinfeld.

How to build personas to use for employee journey mapping.

To start, take a look around your organization. You’re not building these out of thin air.

Go talk with your employees and listen! Talk to as many people as you can, at various levels of seniority, with various teams and departments.

Dig into the pain points, what they’re looking to achieve, and behaviors.

Again, you can use these questions as I mentioned earlier:

• What are the barriers?

Decide what is important to be included in a persona. It’s very easy to get caught up in the details of what should be included on a persona.

A lot of these details, while nice, don’t exactly add to the picture.

Stick to what’s really essential. Validate with your employees, to see what they think.

The problems with personas in employee journey mapping, and how to avoid them.

While personas are a helpful tool, they can get misused, end up being a waste of time.

In fact, personas tend to only be used 3% of the time.

This article here has some great info on the topic:

The Big Problem with Personas ___ The big problem with personas is… nobody uses them.

Here’s an example of a typical persona. It looks informative but the wordy bio overloads it with too much text.

If one were to reference it, they would have to wade through layers of text to pick out the essentials. This is overwhelming to do and time-consuming. Leave wordy bios out of your personas because they turn people off off from using them.

To make personas usable, we need to remove these defects and focus on the essentials. Your personas need to have these five essentials:

• Concise snippets of information
• Clarity on who the persona represents
• Insight into user goals and priorities
• Details about their tasks that frustrate them
• Details about their tasks that delight them

Instead of the wordy bio, something visual that gets the point across.

I’ve seen people building personas get hung up over the smallest of details which don’t matter.

I’ve read personas that were a dump of text that caused my eyes to gloss over.

What matters is the context, their goals, their needs, barriers, and how to address them.

One of best pieces of advice I received on personas.

Ready for this one?

Reddit starter packs.

I learned this from a UX designer, and it’s amusing how well these work as personas(with a few tweaks).

Reddit starter packs is a subreddit of a post with various images and text to convey a trope or archetype that we’re all familiar with.

The best way to explain is by providing a few examples:

Outdoorsy millenial living in the Pacific Northwest starterpack (living in the PNW, this one is very true).

Source: Reddit

We’ve all been a combination of these. Source: Rdddit

We’ve all been this employee. Source: Reddit

They’re straight to the point, visual, memorable, and usually funny. A lot of them I look at and go “yes, I know those kind of people”.

Use them as guiding points for your personas.

5. Resources For Storytelling.

One of the best ways to brush up and improve your employee journey mapping is to work on your storytelling. What’s the best way to do so?

After all, storytelling is one of our most powerful (and oldest) communication tools.

You can always read and watch classic books, films, or television shows that have stood the test of time and try to pick up from them why these stories work.

If you want a more analytical breakdown of storytelling, here are some books to get you started.

* Do note that these are affiliate links below. *

The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller by John Truby. Very thorough guide on writing a screenplay.

The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell One of the most well known, if misunderstood books, when it comes to storytelling. It’s well known due to George Lucas taking influence from it while writing Star Wars. Hollywood has since loved to try to copy it, with little success. It’s more about the psychology and patterns of stories throughout the year that we’re familiar with than a template.

Into the Woods: A Five Act Journey Into Story by John Yorke Great breakdown of the five-act structure in storytelling (think Shakespeare).

Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need by Blake Snyder This one is a bit of a controversial book when it comes to screenplays. It’s a great breakdown of the three act structure, but many have made use of it as a formula that you can’t derive from, and many have pointed to this book as the decline in quality scripts in movies over the last couple of decades.

Screenwriting 101 by Film Crit Hulk! A well known blogger over the last decade primarily focused on long-form articles on movies, Film Crit Hulk has a free book on the topic of screenwriting that is very well done.

6. Conclusion And Next Steps

To recap, we covered the following in this post:

By now, you have an understanding of the benefits of employee journey mapping and how to construct one. Perhaps you have one lying around, or it’s never crossed your mind.

What can you do moving forward with your employee journey map?

Start working on your employee journey map obviously! This will be an ongoing journey, just like, well, an employee journey map.

As I mentioned earlier, UXPressia have some templates that you can play around with.

By starting with a solid foundation, by talking with current employees, by identifying your values, and the steps of your organization’s employee journeys, you can begin to map out what yours will look like, and how to integrate it with your organization.

Looking for more help in regards to building your employee journey map? We can help you out at Playficient through our employee experience design services.

Be sure to share this post if you found value from it, or leave a comment below. Thank you for reading!

About the Author

Related posts.

• Do You Put The “Cult” In Corporate Culture? Please Don’t. (May 23, 2023)
• Forced Fun Is No Fun – So Why Do Organizations Keep It Up? (April 18, 2023)
• How To End Bullshit Meetings (January 25, 2023)

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The Employee Journey: Every Moment is an Opportunity to Increase Engagement

The employee journey begins before someone even applies for the job and can last decades. It includes all the moments that matter throughout the relationship with the organization, both professional and personal. Each milestone and interaction is an opportunity to create an exceptional employee experience.

Great things happen when people feel valued by the organization they serve and connected to the work they do. Employees report higher levels of job satisfaction and engagement. Employers see less turnover, increased productivity and a healthier bottom line. Everyone wins.

So, how do you create an empowering, engaging company culture that attracts and retains top talent? You start with a roadmap.

Companies with highly engaged teams experience:.

Less Absenteeism

Less Turnover

Fewer Workplace Accidents

Source: 2020 Gallup Report

More Productivity

Increase in Profitability

84% of HR professionals are concerned their organizations’ current recruiting and hiring tools aren’t reaching diverse talent pools.

Source: ICIMS Insights, 2021 Workforce Report

Attract: Recruit and Hire Top Talent

Finding the right person for the job can be an arduous process. The job posting needs to get in front of a pool of qualified, talented potential new hires. You need to effectively communicate why your organization is a top company to work for — more than just offering competitive compensation, a top company is known for its culture and people-centered behavior. The hiring strategy needs to be even-handed, with thoughtful consideration to diversity, equity and inclusion. And that’s all before the first application even comes in.

But this first stage of the employee journey is foundational. Businesses are built around people and those people’s happiness in the workplace is increasingly non-negotiable. 

First impressions last. Your company’s brand, website, social media, and other external communication set the tone to attract employees from the onset. Job-seekers will do their research and make judgments about whether or not to apply for a position based on what they find!

An effective recruitment process is clear and streamlined, meeting potential hires where they’re at: professional organizations, job-seeking websites, social media and other recruitment platforms. Encourage and reward employee referrals for candidates, as well. 

Often, the interview is the first face-to-face interaction — whether virtual or in-person. And it’s the perfect opportunity to exemplify your company culture, which is often one of the top questions candidates ask about during an interview. Be flexible with scheduling, transparent about salary ranges and job expectations, and communicative about next steps.

Communicate

Courteous, professional communication is key during the period between interviewing and making an offer. Don’t leave candidates wondering what’s next. That goes for both the candidates you're hiring and the ones you’re not.

“It’s not enough to offer bonuses, benefits, and competitive wages. In fact, that’s pretty much the bare minimum. Your company needs to be tuned in to what makes the modern worker tick:  What their values are, what their needs are, and what they want from their employer beyond a consistent paycheck.”

Terri Moore - Senior Vice President of People and Culture, Inspirus

Learn How to Be a Company that Attracts Top Talent

69% of employees who experienced a great onboarding process reported being more likely to stay with a company for at least 3 years.

Source: Society for Human Resource Management, Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Good Onboarding.

Onboarding Employees: The First 90 Days

Onboarding isn’t just orientation. It goes far deeper than paperwork, introductions and explaining workflows. The onboarding process is the first of many opportunities to show the company’s culture, values and missions. It’s the ideal time to affirm the employee’s decision to join the organization and set them up for success in their new role.

And an effective onboarding process isn’t just for the new hire’s benefit. It can have a huge return on investment for the employer, too. Employees who feel valued and connected to the company's ‘why’ are more engaged, more productive and more loyal from Day 1. 

Pre-arrival

Ideally, onboarding should begin before the new hire’s arrival. Set up office computers and any accounts or accesses they will need. Share a copy of the employee handbook ahead of time. A personalized note or a gift of company swag can be a thoughtful extra touch.

First Day: Welcome!

Feelings of anticipation can run high on the first day at a new job. With an employee engagement platform like Inspirus Connects , peers can warmly welcome a new hire and connect even in a remote work environment. Appoint someone to introduce the new hire to others  and show them around. Set aside time to go over company policies, job expectations and goals on the first day.

Education/Orientation

A lot of information is shared on the first day, so make sure to set aside time for follow-ups and questions throughout the first couple of weeks. Have a consistent, structured training and orientation plan for all new employees to ensure no steps are missed. That plan should include goals to measure success over time. 

Wellbeing Introduction

Prioritize employees’ health and wellbeing with authentic support for all aspects of employee wellness: physical, mental and financial. Mental health days, employee assistance programs, tuition or student loan repayment plans, child-care support funds and professional development stipends are all great starts to supporting employees in different areas of life.

Firsts: 30 Days, 60 Days, 90 Days

These first three months on the job are an important transition point when the new employee takes on assignments and starts to meet deliverables. Set up meetings to recognize wins, talk through roadblocks and go over any questions at the 30-, 60- and 90-day mark. Publicly celebrate these mini-milestones with a shout-out on your employee engagement platform.

Gaining a Mentor/Ambassador

Mentorship is one of the best ways to encourage growth and progression. An effective mentorship and training program should start as soon as the new employee is hired, be revisited during regular review processes and continue throughout the entire employment journey.

41% of workers surveyed reported they are likely to job hunt in 2022.

Source: American Staffing Association Survey, 2022

Employee Development: From Three Months to Five Years

As the months turn into years, new opportunities to recognize employees and improve company culture arise. And celebrating these moments can make all the difference. The average employee tenure at a job is just over four years, according to the latest numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics . For workers between the ages of 25 and 34, that drops to a median tenure of 2.8 years. Recognizing an employee before they think about heading out the door is key to retention – waiting a couple of years in is too late.

Additionally, upheavals from the past two years of the global pandemic have led to seismic shifts in the workforce as record numbers of people resign. Employees are reevaluating what they want from their jobs - to feel valued, to be acknowledged and to share in a sense of organizational purpose. Your employee recognition program can’t wait until the 10-year anniversary to start!

Evaluations/Performance Reviews

Genuine praise and authentic feedback come from fair, comprehensive evaluations. Schedule annual or quarterly reviews with clear goals and performance metrics, but also allow opportunities for regular informal feedback and recognition for accomplishments and goals achieved.

Progression and Promotions

Reward employees for their career accomplishments and nurture growth with the organization. One of the best ways to train future leaders is promotion from within, by giving employees the opportunity to take on new challenges.

Little Wins

More than a third of American workers feel undervalued at work. Inspire a culture of performance and recognition by celebrating the moments that exemplify company values: the little wins as well as the big ones. On-the-spot recognition and peer-to-peer feedback are immediate ways of acknowledging the small but important wins like budget completions, sales milestones or a job well done.

Using rewards, incentives and recognition are one of the best ways to continue stoking the performance culture and elevating employees. Celebrate the milestone moments of success and the team members’ contributions!

Wellbeing Rewards

One in four Americans over the age of 12 have a mental or substance use disorder, according to McKinsey . Organizations that prioritize mental and emotional wellbeing in addition to physical and financial health see a more positive team culture, higher employee engagement and improved productivity.

Mentorship & Career Coaching

 A study by LinkedIn found that a top reason people change jobs is for career growth and advancement opportunities. Nurture that growth within the company through mentorship programs and career coaching, providing employees with concrete paths to advancement.

Service Anniversaries

In today’s workforce, waiting for a tenth anniversary - or even a fifth anniversary - might be too late. Acknowledge significant or strategic milestones, including “firsts” and annual anniversaries from the employee’s hire date. Create an environment where employees feel valued and honored for the work they do with timely recognition and meaningful moments.

“Never underestimate the powerful effect of milestone recognition. After all, the need to feel appreciated and to belong top Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs.” 

Theresa Harkins-Schulz, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience and Product, Inspirus

Learn more about Rewards and Recognition: When to Use What

Companies that excel at internal mobility retain employees an average of 5.4 years longer — nearly 2x as long as the average retention span of 2.9 years.

Source: LinkedIn's 2022 Workplace Learning Report

Employee Performance: Five Years and On

When an employee achieves five years with the organization, that in itself is reason to celebrate! Five years is above the national average for an employee’s tenure.

Continue engaging employees as you did from three months to five years (outlined above), plus:

Becoming a Mentor

As the employee’s journey progresses, participation in a mentorship program should grow, too. Give experienced employees opportunities to formally mentor others on the team while honing their own leadership skills.

 Nurturing the leadership pipeline internally has huge benefits. Reward employees for their successes and support their career growth with personalized progression. Opportunities to upskill and reskill are critically important and not only support the employee’s professional growth but also help fill gaps left by departing employees.

Leading Teams

Effective team leadership is the culmination of a strong foundation of experience, a thoughtful mentorship program and increased responsibilities. Help your best people rise to the top.

“Perhaps the greatest value from a great service awards program is its ability to kickstart a culture of recognition.” 

Paula Ambrozic, Vice President of Customer Success, Inspirus

Learn the Ten Best Practices for Employee Service Award Programs

Employee Departure: A Lasting Retirement or Exit Experience

Leaving an organization, either to retire or to move on to something else, can be an emotional end to the employee journey.

A positive exit experience, however, turns a former employee into a proud ambassador for the organization. It’s great for overall company culture. And, sometimes, it results in “boomerang employees” who leave and then return – the number of employees returning to a former workplace rose 4.5% in 2021, according to the Wall Street Journal .

Service Recognition

Honor your employees with meaningful service recognition throughout their journey and end on the same note. Celebrate their service and contributions to the company and leave the door open for a later relationship. Previous employees are a growing pool to recruit from.

Post-Employment Survey/Debrief

Communication is key at all stages of the journey and that remains true during a departure. Ask open-ended questions about what went well and what could be improved. The exit interview can be a great opportunity to gain insight into the employee experience that management may otherwise have missed.

Craft a people-centric employee journey

Ready to take a deeper dive into engaging employees at all stages of their journey with your organization .

Contact us to learn more about fostering belonging, building strong connections and creating an exceptional employee experience at all stages of the journey.  

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• Employee Journey Map

A Guide to Crafting an Employee Journey Map for Organizational Success

A lot of companies rely heavily on just one thing to measure how engaged their employees are- an employee engagement survey.

But in any workplace, there are employees at different stages, right? You’ve got the newbies going through their onboarding, the seasoned props that have been there for ages, and everyone in between. And each person’s journey at work is totally unique – from the training they’ve had to the goals they’ve achieved.

Now, with these surveys, it’s tough for companies to really understand how all these different experiences add up. That’s why many companies are turning to something called employee journey maps. These maps help them gather valuable feedback at every step of an employee’s time with the company.

In this guide, we’ll give you the lowdown on what exactly an employee journey map is and how you can create one for your own workplace. Let’s get started.

What is Employee Journey Mapping?

Employee journey mapping is like plotting out a step-by-step guide of an employee’s entire ride, from the moment they first think about applying for a job to when they eventually say their goodbyes.

But it’s not just about jotting down what happens at each stage. It’s about looking into how they feel and what they experience along the way. This technique helps companies really get what their employees go through, showing them where things are great and where they could be better. Because once you’ve understood an employee’s experience from when they’re in an applicant pool for recruitment , to when they’re moving on to their next step, you can ensure they’re always having a positive experience.

Stages of the Employee Journey

As mentioned earlier, your employees are all at different stages of their journey with your company. These have been broken down into seven, including:

Attraction: This is all about putting your best foot forward to catch the eye of potential candidates and entice them to join your team.

Hiring: Once you’ve found the perfect match, it’s time to seal the deal. This is where you extend the offer and officially welcome new team members into the fold.

Onboarding: Newbies begin their journey, forming opinions of company culture, with a focus on creating belonging and providing top-notch training on company tech like employee time management platforms and communication portals.

Engagement: Engaged employees are like your company’s biggest fans—they’re enthusiastic, motivated, and ready to give their all to help the team succeed.

Performance management: Just like a coach guiding their team to victory, performance management is about setting goals, providing feedback, and helping employees grow and improve over time.

Team Management: Effective team management plays a pivotal role here, fostering collaboration, resolving conflicts, and ensuring that everyone is aligned toward achieving common objectives.

Development: Every employee has their own unique career journey, and development is all about helping them reach their full potential by providing opportunities for learning, growth, and advancement.

Departing: Saying goodbye is never easy, but when it’s time for employees to move on, it’s important to part ways on good terms and wish them well in their future endeavors. Who knows? They might even come back someday as a boomerang employee!

Following the completion of the journey stages, it’s important to incorporate performance metrics such as productivity, quality of work, and employee satisfaction. These metrics enable organizations to make data-driven decisions and continually improve the employee experience.

Crafting Employee Journey Maps in 5 Simple Steps

Creating an impactful employee journey map is key to enhancing the employee experience. By breaking down the process into clear steps, you can ensure you capture every aspect of employee interactions. Let’s explore each step in detail:

Step 1: Define Your Objectives:

You’ve got big dreams for your company, right? Maybe you’re looking to smooth out that bumpy onboarding road, or perhaps you’re on a mission to keep your A-team locked in and loving their job. Whatever the case, defining your objectives can help you to get crystal clear on what you want to achieve so that you can tailor this journey map to fit these goals.

To do this, you’re going to want to set some SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Say you work at a data company and want to ensure your employees in their development stage feel engaged and are constantly learning. Your SMART goal might look a little something like this: Implement a certification for data engineering program and ensure that 90% of eligible employees complete the certification within the next 12 months.

Step 2: Identify Employee Personas:

Understand who your employees are by segmenting them into distinct personas. Consider factors like job roles, seniority, departmental functions, and career aspirations. By defining these personas, you can create journey maps that resonate deeply with each group’s experiences.

For instance, you might have “The Mentor” persona, a seasoned professional who excels in guiding and nurturing new hires, crucially impacting the onboarding and development stages of the employee journey cycle.

Step 3: Map Out Unique Journeys:

Detail the distinct journeys of each persona, tracing their path from recruitment to exit. Highlight key touchpoints, emotions, and milestones associated with each phase. Personalizing the journey for each persona helps identify specific pain points and opportunities for improvement.

For example, “The Tech Enthusiast” persona might start with attending tech meetups during the attraction stage, then undergo rigorous coding challenges in hiring, create informative guides like the Delta Book in the engagement stage, and later feel fulfilled by leading innovative projects in the engagement stage. Highlighting key touchpoints, emotions, and milestones associated with each phase helps tailor the employee journey for maximum impact.

Step 4: Gather Employee Feedback:

You know how important it is to keep your employees feeling engaged and awesome, right? Well, to really understand what’s going on in their world, and demonstrate your commitment to valuing employees , you gotta ask!

Keep it simple – toss out some employee engagement surveys , have a 1-1 chat, or just grab a coffee together. Hearing their thoughts straight from the source helps you tweak things to make their work lives even better.

Additionally, consider utilizing document translation services if you have a diverse workforce, ensuring that all employees, regardless of their primary language, can provide valuable feedback in a language they’re comfortable with.

You could also consider leveraging ambassador marketing programs where enthusiastic employees can advocate for the company, providing valuable feedback and insights from a unique perspective.

Remember, providing clarity on policies and expectations is essential. Consider incorporating an employment contract template to ensure transparency and alignment between the company and its employees.

Step 5: Identify Opportunities for Improvement:

So you’ve mapped out the whole employee journey now, yay! Now it’s time to dig deep. Look for those spots where things could use a little boost, these are golden chances to level up the entire employee experience. Maybe it’s improving the onboarding process or improving those ongoing learning opportunities. By pinpointing these areas, you can work to create winning strategies to make your team thrive, turning those “meh” moments into “heck yeah” wins!

Final Thoughts

Crafting an employee journey map isn’t just about understanding each stage of the employee experience, it’s about improving it. By breaking down the process into clear steps, you can pinpoint areas for improvement and create tailored strategies to meet your team’s needs. So, whether you’re just starting out and wanting to create a positive company culture or looking to revamp your approach, following these simple steps will pave the way for organizational success and a workforce that’s truly living their best work lives.

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You may also like, new employee onboarding guide [with templates].

Optimize your onboarding process with our comprehensive guide. Build a 4-week plan for new hires, boosting productivity and job satisfaction.

20 Best Employee Engagement Survey Questions

Unlock workplace potential with our guide on employee engagement surveys! Discover impactful questions and expert tips for a thriving team. Dive in now!

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Employee Journey Map Metrics That Matter

Estimated Reading Time : 5 mins

You’ve probably heard that repetitive slogan the real estate industry uses to highlight what they value most: Location, location, location! In many other business sectors the mantra to rally around is: Metrics, metrics, metrics! We recently discussed the value of employee journey mapping , and the logical next step is to figure out which metrics to map.

A lot of the conversation about employee experience (EX) is inspired by customer experience (CX). After all, when in a people management or HR role, employees are our core customers . Just as customers are offered opportunities to rate that meal or customer service encounter, we’re moving to measuring interactions within an organization as well.

By assigning metrics to stages of the employee journey, you give your people the opportunity to say, “Here’s how this was for me.” You can gain useful insights into key trends and drivers, segmented to each stage of the journey, to see what might be missing or identify areas of improvement for employee engagement.

Adding value to the employee journey

We’ve already come through the “ Great Resignation ” and endured “ quiet quitting .” But that doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels. Knowing the high costs of hiring and/or replacing employees who leave, retention must remain a priority. By adding metrics to the employee journey map process, we can better identify and understand friction points. This can help your organization to avoid misunderstandings and provide a more seamless employee experience.

Different organizations will map the employee journey in various ways. Some might start at the hiring process. Others begin with onboarding. Maybe you have just five main touchpoints on your map, while a competitor has segmented the journey with 15 key markers. How your particular map looks will inform the appropriate metrics.

Your metrics will also reflect your priorities. Productivity is an important gauge for many organizations. Your expectations for this will change throughout the employee’s journey. After all, you typically wouldn’t expect a brand-new hire to be able to knock out 12 pieces of in-depth content in just the first week. Yet, at 30 days, you could expect a better level of understanding of your pillar messaging and how your content management system works. Thus, if the employee at 30 days isn’t meeting the productivity metric you have for content writers, you might touch base to determine what support is needed.

Looking at absenteeism rates against the employee journey can also be illuminating. By overlaying the employee journey map with the data on someone’s time off requests, you might see a marked uptick in absences right around the time you’d expect them to be in line for promotion. This could flag someone who is frustrated about their current role and looking elsewhere. Seeing someone is out a lot immediately after getting a new role might indicate a need to provide more skills development opportunities to confidently handle their new role.

Consistent communication across the journey

You can’t ask people every day, “How are you feeling about our business now?” That’s why it makes sense to calibrate your employee engagement data against the journey maps.

Since many factors play a role in employee engagement, you have many different questions you can ask along the way. Employee satisfaction, or effectively “Are you satisfied with your job?” can be gauged throughout the journey. But, an employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)  in the first 30 days could say less than one gathered after 30 months of service.

If a priority is excellent communication, journey mapping could shape the questions asked. For example:

• Day one you might ask about communication during the hiring process
• Day seven you could ask about communication with team members or HR
• Day 30 you might solicit input into communication with a supervisor
• Day 90 you could gauge how the employee feels about company-wide communication
• At one year, gauge communication around career path, professional development, and promotion opportunities

Look for trends among employees at different stages. Perhaps all your new hires score high for engagement in their first 30 days. That bodes well for your onboarding and early engagement efforts. But if engagement consistently slumps at the one-year mark, your business would do well to make some adjustments.

Turning data into action

You’ve made the effort to use metrics and reach out to employees to learn their experience, but you’re not done yet. Feeling heard, respected, and supported drive employee engagement . If you ask an employee’s opinion, get their input, then do nothing about it, you’ll turn that employee off. Next time you ask for their feedback, you are less likely to get responses. And they’ll be questioning whether your company really does care. Therefore, it is critical that you show you are listening to the feedback you get from your metrics.

Keeping the conversation continuous will help. You can do that with:

• Employee pulse surveys: You ask a quick question or two on an informal basis.
• One-on-ones: Maybe you meet in person weekly or quarterly or more or less often, depending on your work culture and environment.
• Questionnaires, SMS and QR code prompts
• Annual reviews: This might be a 360 or other tool supporting reflection and goal setting.
• Onboarding and exit surveys

To support turning data into action, try to learn from trends and follow-up in real time. You might set alerts to notify you of changing trends. Then, you can quickly say, “We’ve noticed this is happening” and communicate to people how you will be taking action. This helps employees know that you’re paying attention and paying heed whether the feedback is negative or positive.

The employee Net Promoter Score we already mentioned comes right out of the CX playbook. Another useful metric for employee engagement is a variation on the customer effort score. Instead of measuring how hard the customer has to work get service or return a defective product, you’ll gauge how easy your organization makes for people to get the job done. Think about this in the context of onboarding: You want people to have access to all the documents they need and know who to ask for help.

Learning from employee journeys

Ultimately, it pays to measure metrics mapped against the employee journey. Always consider when you will get the most useful information from your metrics. Some metrics you gauge pretty consistently throughout the journey. However, evaluating employee satisfaction with the time-off request system on their first day is pointless. Remember GIGO? Garbage In, Garbage Out reminds us that asking people the wrong questions results in the collection of useless data.

Automating your employee experience program can help simplify mapping and metrics. You can set up triggers to automatically send feedback requests when an employee hits a certain milestone. You can program alerts to identify when trends shift dramatically. Talk with a Sogolytics consultant today about how to learn from  your employee journey to uncover effective insights to improve your organization.

Want to explore this topic more? Check out our webinar on EX metrics !

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For a positive company culture, invest in employees and remove toxicity.

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Founder and Chairman at ParkHub .

When it comes to driving business success, it's become increasingly clear that the backbone of any thriving organization is its people.

Investing in employees and cultivating a positive company culture is a non-negotiable. But that investment includes being ready to jettison employees who don’t share the company’s values—no matter how much they produce.

Why Investing In Employees Matters

From the outset, I've always believed in giving employees something meaningful, something that goes beyond just a paycheck. For example, my company's practice of offering unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO) is more than just a policy; it signifies trust. It signals to our team members that we value their well-being and recognize the importance of work-life balance. This not only resonates with employees but also plays a pivotal role in their retention decision-making.

A MetLife study recently found that unlimited PTO makes employees feel their employer cares about them, potentially leading to better retention rates. Unlimited PTO also cuts down on tracking headaches and the last-minute dash to "use or lose" time off.

Another important aspect of nurturing your workforce is providing avenues for upward mobility. It's simpler when an organization is small. The leap from a team of three to a team of 20 is replete with opportunities for growth. However, as the team expands further, say to 60 or more, creating those opportunities becomes more intricate.

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Investing in continuous learning and skill expansion is the solution. A study by LinkedIn showed that 94% of employees would stay longer at a company if it invested in their learning and development. So whether it's accreditations, certifications within a given industry or funding educational endeavors for a developer to learn a new codebase, these efforts are palpable tokens of investing in people.

As an example, my company has collaborated with area universities, such as Southern Methodist University's Life After Ball internship program for student athletes. While we don't offer tuition support, we do pay our interns a reasonable market rate for the roles they assume. We also have a history of bringing several interns on as permanent employees after the internship period.

A final, critical element is creating an inclusive environment where everyone’s ideas are valued. In our company, we expect clear, respectful and honest communication. We also believe no one job is "above" any other.

Research shows that companies with diverse teams are more innovative, more adaptable and achieve better financial performance. The act of making all employees feel accepted and valued plays a crucial role in individual motivation and overall team dynamics.

An inclusive environment ensures that every voice is heard, which fosters a richer pool of ideas and perspectives. Thus, prioritizing these aspects not only strengthens company culture but also drives meaningful business outcomes.

Addressing Toxicity In The Workplace

A key challenge that many leaders face is dealing with toxic individuals. In my experience, such individuals, regardless of their role, can have detrimental effects on the organization's culture. But addressing this issue directly is never easy, especially when such individuals are top producers and bring significant value to the organization.

Often, businesses tolerate this behavior, or even suppress concerns arising around such individuals, solely because of the value they bring. However, from my perspective, no amount of value or productivity can justify toxicity. If someone is detrimental to the company culture, affecting the morale and well-being of other team members, then they must be addressed, regardless of their role or contribution.

The impact that toxic culture can have on an organization is significant. Employees are less likely to want to work there and more likely to leave. According to a Glassdoor survey , 77% would consider a company's culture before applying for a job there.

Having had to make difficult decisions in the past, such as letting go of directors and even members of the executive team, I've learned that these are the moments that harden your professional resolve. It's essential to understand that in the course of business, you may not always see eye to eye with everyone. However, the ultimate goal should always be to foster a culture where respect, growth and positivity reign supreme.

Culture Is A Journey

Building and maintaining a positive company culture is an ongoing journey, one that requires constant attention, effort and, sometimes, tough decisions. But the rewards—in terms of productivity, retention and overall morale—are well worth the investment.

By genuinely investing in our employees, offering them opportunities for growth and ensuring a toxicity-free environment, we can create workplaces that aren't just places to earn a living but spaces where individuals can thrive, grow and feel valued.

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Rippling’s design career ladder: How to support an employee’s professional journey

May 10, 2024

Alicia Warren Hossein

According to a Design Career Index survey , only 29% of companies have a form of documented career progression, normally limited to pay bands. Yet according to a 2023 UX Collective report , a lack of career progression is one of the top reasons product designers leave their jobs. 

Want to better support your designers as they evolve? Build a career ladder for your team and turn it into a concise rubric.  

From buzzword to building block

Ladders help us visualize how to progress through our work lives. In a tricky-to-navigate career like product design, employees can use it to assess where they stand and chart a course for developing the skills that will help them grow. 

But “climbing the career ladder” can also be a vague, ambiguous term. When poorly defined, designers can misinterpret the ladder as a checklist for a promotion. 

Redesigning the career ladder

When I joined Rippling in 2022, the ladder looked like this:

While this gave designers a glimpse into company expectations, they wanted more clarity on benchmarks for career progression.

Through rigorous critique and reviewing other design rubrics, we asked ourselves: Does the existing ladder solve the problem of identifying the outcomes we look for in designers? Will these outcomes be important to Rippling years down the line? 

Focus on core competencies and outcomes

A career ladder should define core competencies employees need to level up, showing which traits companies value when hiring. Since there’s no one-size-fits-all career path for designers, who span different backgrounds and have different work (and life) experiences, a ladder should accommodate the twists and turns baked into their journeys by specifying the hard and soft skills an organization needs to succeed. 

We organized the core competencies for Rippling’s career ladder into three categories:

• Impact: How a designer influences team members and solves complex problems.
• Craft: Understanding Rippling systems’ infrastructure, visual and UX design skills, and customer insights.
• Soft Skills: Ability to give and receive feedback, mentor, and fit within Rippling’s culture.

Career ladders as another product

Design leaders need to evaluate how to structure their career ladders to fit the unique needs of their company and support team members as they grow. As with any new product design, that means doing your homework. Here’s what to keep in mind when envisioning a ladder’s structure. 

• Organization : Where does Design report? What is the vision and mission of the organization? Lean into your org chart, leadership principles, and the DesignOps canvas to build this foundation. 
• Expert analysis : Look at organizations that have already published ladders. For Rippling’s career rubric, we looked at Amazon, Meta, Figma, Intercom, Buzzfeed, Wayfair, Netflix, and more, identifying common core competencies.
• User research : A ladder’s success depends on whether people use and derive value from it. The best way to get into those details is by conducting user research.

4 traits that set designers apart 

After working through these core principles creating the ladder, a few key themes central to designer success emerged that weren’t previously highlighted.

• Product thinking: Standout designers are creative problem solvers who understand Rippling’s building blocks and system capabilities. 
• Quality of execution: Rippling designers are accountable for the end product—from copy to pixels to maintaining internal documentation. 
• Communication: We wanted the new ladder to emphasize collaboration and persuasion. 
• Leadership principles:  We also wanted to infuse Rippling’s guiding leadership principles —like “go and see,” push the limits of possible, and build winning teams—into the ladder. 

Emphasizing these traits helped designers deepen their craft at Rippling and challenge each other to build high-caliber products.

Today’s career ladder

As a result, today’s career ladder looks a bit different. 

Since the overhaul, designers have had more conversations about quality with their product teams, developed core competencies, and spearheaded their own initiatives, born from the realization that our customers had a problem we could help them solve. Rippling designers are at the forefront of getting these solutions over the line and into code. 

What’s more, we’ve already seen multiple designers move up the ladder! Now, they can visualize where they stand, and leadership can be transparent about what they need to improve upon.

The design career ladder helped me prove my case for a promotion last year because it provided clear boundaries and gaps between different levels. When most of my mappings landed in the level above my current one, it was evident that I was ready for the next step. The ladder proved that to the leaders who wanted to support my growth.

Nathaniel Qin

Senior Product Designer at Rippling

We’ll continue to iterate and add user guides, archetypes, and other ways for designers to make this more tangible—all to better help our team members flourish. 

We're hiring designers! 

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Alicia is a designer working on new product initiatives for Rippling.

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When Your Star Employee Leaves

How to help your team cope with the shock, sadness, and stress.

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If you’ve invested in someone you manage, it’s natural to feel hurt when that person tells you they’re leaving—especially if they’re a strong contributor.

The classic management advice is: Don’t take it personally. Be professional. But it’s important to acknowledge your feelings and work through them—for yourself and with your team.

In this episode, three HBR leaders join managers drawn from the Women at Work audience to share their experiences losing team members. They discuss how to manage your emotions in the moment and how to look for learnings that will help you move forward. They also offer ideas for how to share the news with your boss and the rest of your team.

Key episode topics include: leadership, managing people, gender, employee retention, staff transitions, staffing, managing emotions, difficult conversations.

HBR On Leadership curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock the best in those around you. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the original Women at Work episode: Dealing with the Feels After an Employee Quits (October 2021)
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HANNAH BATES: HBR on Leadership , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you.

If you’ve invested in someone you manage, it’s natural to feel hurt when that person tells you they’re leaving, especially if they’re a strong contributor.

The classic management advice is: Don’t take it personally. Be professional. But it’s important to acknowledge your feelings and work through them — for yourself and with your team.

Today we bring you a conversation about how to cope with the shock, sadness, and stress of losing a star employee with the help of two HBR editorial leaders – Maureen Hoch and Nicole Smith – and Women at Work listeners themselves, who share their experiences losing team members.

In this episode, you’ll learn what to tell your boss and the rest of your team when someone leaves.  You’ll also learn how to manage your emotions in the moment, and then how to revisit your feelings later to process them.

This episode originally aired on Women at Work in October 2021 – in the midst of what was known as the “Great Resignation.” You’ll hear it mentioned in the episode, but the conversation has implications for leading through difficult staffing transitions that are relevant at any time. I think you’ll enjoy it. Here it is.  

AMY GALLO: I am feeling for my friends who manage teams right now because this phenomenon of the Great Resignation is hitting them really hard.

EMILY CAULFIELD: What are you hearing from them?

AMY GALLO: I hear a lot of stories about dreading the “Can I talk to you for a moment?” Or getting the invite from a beloved direct report that it’s unclear why exactly they’re setting up a meeting. And the sleepless nights of, how do I make sure I don’t lose anyone else on my team?

Amy Bernstein: I have to tell you nothing strikes fear in my heart like the email the subject line of which is “Got a sec?” I mean, that —

EMILY CAULFIELD: It never takes a sec.

AMY BERNSTEIN: I always want to say — yeah — I just want to say no.

AMY GALLO: Yes. No, I don’t.

AMY BERNSTEIN: All managers have gone through this, and we know how we’re supposed to respond, and it’s genuine. You want what’s best for anyone on your team. You want them to be happy. You know that no employment situation is forever. But even though you know all of that intellectually, it still hurts. It still strikes home.

EMILY CAULFIELD: I didn’t realize how personally managers take it, which is so sad for all my past managers who I’ve been like, bye.

AMY GALLO: You’re listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I’m Amy Gallo.

AMY BERNSTEIN: I’m Amy Bernstein.

EMILY CAULFIELD: And I’m Emily Caulfield. Every time I see a manager calm and collected after somebody on their team quits, I wonder, what are they actually thinking and feeling? Well, we’re about to find out.

AMY BERNSTEIN: You’re going to hear from several managers, me included, about how we deal when someone leaves our team.

AMY GALLO: We’re starting with two women who opened up to me about their experiences of losing multiple employees.

AMY GALLO: The first woman works in city government in the U.S. Typically she manages a team of seven or eight; but in 2020, two team members left within a couple months of each other. She’d actually been expecting the resignations. Both had been with the city for a long time and had let her know many months prior that they were searching for new jobs.

WOMAN 1: But it was the next three that were not expected.

AMY GALLO: Those happened in quick succession within a month.

WOMAN 1: Those conversations were hard to swallow. It’s an emotional rollercoaster because at first it was part of the job: people will leave; this is part of being a manager. But then it started being like, OK, this is exhausting. I’ve just learned to be quiet and listen, take it all in, ask what their next opportunity is, and let myself breathe in that space and not react in front of them; because I definitely react, but it’s not good to do that in front of them. And I usually touch base with my boss and say, “hey, this person’s leaving, here are the facts, and this is what I want to do moving forward.” Or, “do you have another idea?” Kind of game plan it out.

AMY GALLO: The resignation that hurt the most was the employee who left for a lower-paying but also lower-stress job.

WOMAN 1: Our workload and our capacity has just been overwhelming, so it was really a cry for help that she can’t sustain in this position any longer. That really got to me emotionally just because we have these monthly one-on-ones, and to not recognize the signs that she was struggling or suffering even and that I thought we were decent friends and still not recognizing that.

AMY GALLO: Yeah. Did it make you wonder what other people on your team were feeling that you weren’t seeing?

WOMAN 1: Definitely. Covid has created this hybrid or remote work for us and I’m a pretty good read on people — I usually know what’s up — and that kind of social awareness has disappeared with Covid.

We’ve been doing a lot more in-person work now, so it’s definitely bringing it back to a better place, but yeah, definitely. I think there’s a lot of that question and what does everyone else think. Especially because by that time that those three left we had hired new people. So, they’re coming in a month to three months into an organization saying, what am I getting myself into? Is there something wrong with this place? I’m like no I promise but maybe it is I don’t know.

AMY GALLO: She’s in it for the long haul, but that doesn’t mean she wants the working conditions to stay the way they are. And fortunately, all those resignations, she said, led senior management to offer more support in making the workload more sustainable. They paused some projects and changed the budget mid-year to add a few new positions.

WOMAN 1: For me, emotionally, I broke down for that because I recognized that they recognized how much we were struggling.

AMY GALLO: She’s also making changes to the things that she can control.

WOMAN 1: If we only expect people to stay two years, then we need to be more efficient with our onboarding. I need to spend way more time with people so I can understand their weaknesses or what they do or don’t understand. For me to feel better about, did I do enough? When someone does eventually leave because that will still happen, but did I put enough time in to onboard this person? Did I spend enough time to truly understand what makes them tick to make sure that they’re getting all of the resources that they need to feel successful in the job?

AMY BERNSTEIN: There’s that feeling when someone quits because the work is too much and the pressure is too much. When you realize, yeah, it’s been too much for all of us, and if this person can quit, why do I have to put up with this myself? I’m also totally stressed out.

EMILY CAULFIELD: And once all your staff quits, then your extra-overworked. Managers are going to be the most burnt out people of us all after this great resignation.

AMY GALLO: I think that’s exactly right, Emily. And that’s actually what we heard from the second person I spoke to was how overwhelming the workload was when she lost so many members of her team.

WOMAN 2: It started around about March of this year, which in the UK, that’s when we’d been in a few months of quite heavy lockdown, and you could see that people were really coming to the end of their tethers.

AMY GALLO: To give us context, how many people do you manage and how many people quit?

WOMAN 2: I have a direct team of six people of which at one point four had left the business. That was a really considerable impact on my life.

AMY GALLO: Yeah. Were you expecting the four who quit to do so?

WOMAN 2: Nope. Definitely not.

AMY GALLO: Yeah. What was your initial reaction?

WOMAN 2: It was a mix. There was some disappointment. Disappointment that they were going, a bit of disappointment that I hadn’t created an environment that was great for them to stay. But also, if I’m honest, a little panic of like, what am I going to do now? We have clients, I work in a service firm. We have to provide what we’ve said we will for clients, and that essentially meant me picking up a lot of things directly. Quite a lot of early mornings, late evenings, weekend working, giving up time, digging in and just doing things.

AMY GALLO: Yeah. It sounds exhausting.

WOMAN 2: Yes.

AMY GALLO: Take us back to perhaps the most painful of the departures. How did you react when they told you they were leaving and what were you feeling inside at that moment?

WOMAN 2: I would actually say it was the first. It almost felt like a bit of a cascade following that, but it was that first one that I think really triggered things. So, I’m a believer that when you are surrounded by your team, lot of the time you get a sense of when people aren’t happy. You get a sense of when they may be off doing an interview. And when everyone is virtual, you do not get that. So, ,when they had the conversation with me, which was obviously over a video call, it was a shock. I wasn’t expecting it from this person. This was somebody that I was very invested in, very invested in their future, where they’d come from, where I thought they could go to, and I didn’t expect it. And you have to maintain that face of like, okay, well, that’s really sad. Can we do anything to keep you? And my gosh, this is disappointing. Internally you’re like, when did this happen? When were you doing this? How did I not pick this up? Why didn’t I know about this? Why didn’t you talk to me? In retrospect, why not ask a few of those questions? In a slightly less impassioned way, but yeah. There was a big contrast between how I felt I had to behave and then how I felt I had to then go and talk to other people in the business about this, versus what I actually thought, which was like, oh, this is dreadful and I think this is going to trigger some other things happening off the back of this, and that’s where we were.

AMY GALLO: Describe the contrast a little bit more, because you were saying you were expected to behave in one way and you actually felt a completely different way. Tell us a little bit more about that contrast.

WOMAN 2: I think as a manager, you really have to show that you are supportive of people’s decisions even when that decision is I’m not going to work here anymore. And that’s what I was trying to convey. Like, okay, I understand this. But to be fair, I didn’t understand it. I didn’t actually understand quite why they had quit and why we couldn’t give them what they were actually looking for. And I think it was a really, very, very different feeling internally versus externally. And then, because you’re not in an office and you can’t go and grab a couple of people and talk about it, it then almost sort of compounded as in, why did this happen and what could we have done? And that’s pretty tough, as well.

AMY GALLO: Yeah. If you weren’t behaving the way you thought you were supposed to, what would you have said in that moment?

WOMAN 2: I think I would’ve been more like, you’re really a star employee within the team. I really like what you’re doing. I really think you have a massive opportunity to move forward. There’s this and this and this. Can we just have a conversation over a glass of wine or something, and tell me more about why you are doing this? Just as a person, not as your manager.

AMY GALLO: What would’ve been the harm of doing that?

WOMAN 2: In hindsight, none. It would’ve actually been great. I think that’s a great learning, which is that you would’ve done that in an office environment. You would’ve been like, come on, right? We’re going to go out at least for a coffee now and have this chat and you cannot do that. I do think that’s been another downside of being just on calls for the last 18 months, is that you cannot as easily break through some of these barriers and emotions.

AMY GALLO: Yeah. It almost sounds like you’re saying that having to have these conversations virtually means you end up being less human.

WOMAN 2: I think you can be. Yes. And I think that it’s partly that work has become a little bit more robotic in some ways. It is very much now like, I have half an hour here and half an hour there. And this call, and then this call. And to then recall, or just remember that this is your team, this is people that you work with, to really bring out that human side, not just like, get through the next thing and get through the next thing.

AMY GALLO: Right. The two survivors on your team?

AMY GALLO: I’m sorry to use that word, but I think it’s apt.

WOMAN 2: No, it’s great.

AMY GALLO: How did they feel? How did you manage their emotion about everything that was happening?

WOMAN 2: Spending more time actually trying to be a bit more human, trying to talk about things other than, great, this meeting is tomorrow, have you done the deck? And the other thing I did was actually start to admit that I was feeling very stressed and that I was feeling that I’d really had to take on a lot and do the jobs of three to four people, and that I actually couldn’t do that anymore. So I actually slowly started to delegate more things and actually get people involved in more things and have them realize how much was going on and how many things were actually behind the scenes that they didn’t know about. And that’s been very helpful all around.

AMY GALLO: Were there other people at work, your boss, the remaining people on your team, who you’ve talked to over the past, it sounds like, almost six months now about how you felt about these employees quitting and being so understaffed?

WOMAN 2: Yes. And to be clear, my boss has been absolutely fantastic. I just got slightly stuck in that piece around sometimes, it takes more time to hand things over than it does to just do it yourself, and I got very stuck in the, just do it myself. If I just do it myself, I can do it quickly. I can get it done. But I actually had a huge amount of support from my boss, and she very much was like, look, what can I take on? Or, phone me if you need to chat. I didn’t really take her up on that, and I would, going forward. I would actually have more conversations that were just, I need to download this or, hey, I have five competing priorities. Can you just let me talk them through and help me prioritize them? For example. So taking away some of this feeling that I have to make every decision, that’s what I would do differently. Not feel that I have to make every single decision.

AMY GALLO: Right. Right. I imagine you are counting the days until you have a full team again.

WOMAN 2: Yes. So, over the next couple of weeks, help is coming. I have people joining the team, which is really fantastic. I’m very excited. We have a lot of things in place to sort of make them feel welcome and supported. I just feel so much lighter. I feel like, ah, it’s going to be a really nice end to the year.

EMILY CAULFIELD: I’m really happy to hear that things are going a lot better for her now, and that things are looking up with her new employees.

AMY GALLO: Yeah. It does sound like relief is on the way for her. Both my conversations with these women, I still had a lot of questions coming out of them. How do you handle the guilt you feel when good employees leave? How can you anticipate if and when people might leave, and how to handle your boss’s reaction? It sounded like the second woman in London I spoke to had a supportive boss, but what if you’re afraid your boss is going to be mad, or going to blame you? I’m not a manager.

EMILY CAULFIELD: Neither am I.

AMY GALLO: But Amy B, you are. So, Emily and I are going to step aside and let you talk with two other managers at HBR, Maureen Hoch and Nicole Smith.

EMILY CAULFIELD: The three of you collectively have a lot of experience managing people, and I imagine you all have some experience with people leaving.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Yes. Yes, we do. Maureen’s the editor of HBR.org and Nicole, who goes by Nicki, is HBR’s editorial audience director. Thanks to you, both for being here.

MAUREEN HOCH: Glad to be here.

NICOLE SMITH: I’m so glad you invited me to this conversation.

AMY BERNSTEIN: Nikki, let me start with you. You know, we all listened to the manager who is based in London. What stuck out to you from that?

NICOLE SMITH: I think her interview was honest and transparent in her shock, in not knowing completely what to say and then having to gather herself, and so many of us are like that. We try to compose ourselves, but the truth is that we’re human. We’re managers, but we’re human. And so, we feel it when other people that we’ve built bonds with and soul ties to and spend day in and day out, leave us, and the only human reaction is to be shocked, is to self-reflect, maybe even some self-doubt.

AMY BERNSTEIN: And that self-reflection for me, at least, often involves asking myself, well, how much of this was about me and how much of it really wasn’t?

NICOLE SMITH: How many times have we heard that phrase, that people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses? We’ve almost been socialized to think about this and to believe this. And whether it’s true or not, it’s almost a go-to. What did I do to encourage for you to feel like you don’t want to be here anymore? And the truth of the matter is, there’s a myriad of reasons that people could choose to move on from their current job, from their current organization. At the end of the day, you always wonder, was I a part of that decision?

MAUREEN HOCH: I agree. It’s really hard to separate out the personal from the professional, even if you know. I’ve done this myself. I’ve tried to step back and think about when I’ve left jobs in the past. It was because I was making my own decision. I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something new. I certainly didn’t think of it like, I’m leaving because of my boss in those situations. But when you’re on the other side of that table, and if there’s somebody who you’ve really invested in and you feel strongly about, and you’ve done what you can to make that job great for them, it’s really hard to be like, okay, well, this is just a business decision and there’s no personal connection here that matters. And I think as I’ve progressed in my own career, I’ve had to realize…I’ve had to remind myself that this is a job, and it’s not always about you. It’s not always personal.

NICOLE SMITH: I heard a phrase a couple years ago that really stuck with me in that, you can’t put a changed person back into an unchanged environment. So, if I’m responsible for changing that person, for developing that person, for growing that person, I also have to be mature enough and broad thinking enough to recognize that person is now changed, and,that means that environment may not suit that changed person anymore. And that soothes me when I think about the person coming and saying, I’m moving forward, I’m moving on.

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, there was an idea that came up, both in the story from the person who leads in the private sector in London, and the woman who is based here in the U.S. and is in a government role, which is that it was very hard for them to pick up signals, particularly now since we’re not all together. We don’t see each other, we can’t observe each other. How did that hit your ears, Maureen?

MAUREEN HOCH: It’s something I’ve been reflecting on a lot lately. The ability to really listen to what someone’s telling you, it is hard in the best of times, and it’s even more I think just complicated in our hybrid world. Because it’s harder to get a read on people sometimes when you’re talking through a screen. I think that is still something that requires time and patience and attention on your part as a manager. So, I have tried to prioritize that. I think I always have, but especially through the time that we’ve been working at home. And I have quite a few direct reports, so it’s something that takes up a lot of my time. But no, I really felt like the ability to communicate and stay connected was going to be critical to my ability to manage people.

NICOLE SMITH: So, Maureen, you said part of it is listening. How do you become a good listener? How do you know that you’re doing that well?

MAUREEN HOCH: I think to be a better listener requires asking good questions. I think that’s part of being a good leader, is not always trying to come in with the answer or the solution to everything, but asking people good questions and not trick questions or questions to get them to be like, so have you’ve been on any interviews lately? It’s not that, but it’s more trying to really probe not just how they’re doing what their work, because they could be doing a great at their work, but it’s more like, how are they feeling about where they are in their career? What do they want to do? How are they thinking about the next three to five years? Are you taking the time to ask them those questions or are you focused on the work you’re trying to get through that day?

AMY BERNSTEIN: So, one of the things that eventually occurs to you, if someone on your team tells you that they’re leaving, is you got to tell your boss. And for me, there’s always a moment where I wonder, is this going to somehow bruise my reputation? Have you ever thought about that, Nikki? Do you think about that?

NICOLE SMITH: Well, I have selfishly thought about that. The succinct answer is yes. Anyone who I work for knows my employees equally as well as me, and I’m usually giving updates to my manager. So, by that time I’m hoping that I feel comfortable to say this person quit. This person said, this is why they’re quitting. And maybe even beforehand, when I’ve talked to my manager, we’ve walked through that, maybe we’ve detected that, maybe we’ve tried to do something ahead of time to prevent that. So, usually I don’t think it’s a surprise by that point, because my manager and I have had that conversation. I will say if someone needs to be on alert and he or she knows that by that point. And keeping that openness has helped make that conversation a lot easier. It’s also opened the door for my manager to talk to my employee and see if they can have them open up in a way. Maybe they don’t want to open up to me because I am their direct manager. So, it’s usually a little bit more collaborative by the time I’ve gotten to tell my manager, this person’s quitting.

AMY BERNSTEIN: How about in situations when you didn’t see it coming? Where you were blindsided and now you’re going to have to blindside your manager, your boss?

MAUREEN HOCH: I’ve had to do that. I remember there was one time I had to call my boss, and I think he was technically on vacation, I remember he was driving somewhere. And I said, “I’m sorry but I have to tell you some bad news.” I almost wondered if I should tell him to pull off the side of the road, but I didn’t need to do that. But I was so fortunate. I’ve been so fortunate in these situations I’ve been through where my manager has been totally like, we knew this person was a risk. We knew that this is something that might happen, and immediately pivots to, okay, what do we do from here?

AMY BERNSTEIN: I’ve been on the receiving end of that phone call. Not your phone call. I have to say that my first response, my first instinct was to take care of the person who was calling me, because I knew how painful a call that was. And then, how do we take care of the team? Because one thing I worry about a lot when someone leaves is the fabric of the team left behind. How do you guys think about that?

MAUREEN HOCH: I think you need to manage, ideally with the person who’s decided to exit, how they want to communicate to people on the team. And hopefully, if they’re telling you, they haven’t already told also their 10 closest friends, you know what I mean? Hopefully you’re one of the first people to get the news so that you can understand, are there people they want to tell themselves? And then I think with the team, you want to be a leader in that moment and you want everyone to feel confident like, yes, this is a change, but we’re going to see it through. I’m the driver’s seat. We’re going to get through this. But on the other hand, you don’t want to act like this is no big deal. It’s like saying, hey, I know this is hard, but let’s think about where we go from here. I think especially when the news is fresh… I think once people have some time to digest the news, then you can move forward. When that news is fresh is the hardest line to walk as a manager. I don’t know Nikki, how have you handled that?

NICOLE SMITH: Honestly, first of all I think people have told their 10 closest friends that they’re quitting.

MAUREEN HOCH: You’re probably right.

NICOLE SMITH: I think that if you are open and honest and conversational and not overly corporate, quite frankly. Not overly structured in expressing how you feel, I think people get it, that people decide to move on. It’s not necessarily a reflection of the culture or the boss or something like that.

MAUREEN HOCH: One thing I’ve always believed in is really recognizing someone’s contributions and acknowledging that in front of your team, is so important. Even if you’re feeling very blindsided, upset, discouraged. If you show that to the team and you don’t recognize and thank that person for all the ways that they’ve made a difference, that’s going to hit your team wrong. At that point, you need to put a little bit of whatever your personal feelings are aside and recognize that person for all they’ve done and celebrate them a little bit as much as you can.

AMY BERNSTEIN: And also, you want the person leaving to feel good about their time here, and to feel proud and to feel appreciated. And you want everyone else on the team to know that people are valued, no matter what. Nikki, Maureen, thank you so much for joining me.

NICOLE SMITH: Thanks for having me.

MAUREEN HOCH: Pleasure to be here.

HANNAH BATES: You just heard Maureen Hoch, editor of HBR.org, and Nicole Smith, HBR’s editorial audience director – in conversation with Amy Bernstein, Amy Gallo, and Emily Caulfield on Women at Work .

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from the Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

When you’re ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world’s top business and management experts, you’ll find it all at HBR.org.

This episode was produced by Amanda Kersey, Anne Saini. and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Elainy Mata, Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.

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This article is about leadership.

• Managing people
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• Implementing and Using Journeys

How You Use Journeys

Journeys is a one-stop place that's meant to guide workers step-by-step as they transition through changes such as getting married, being promoted, or onboarding. You can use the Journeys app to go to the Journeys landing page.

Here's what you can see and act on when you access the Journeys app, based on your role.

In addition to the Journeys app, you can also use the Assigned Journeys quick action to open a standalone page that displays all the journeys assigned to the selected worker. To use the quick action, you need to turn on the Workers List of Values (LoV) that's enabled with the Oracle Search feature. The quick action is hidden by default and you need to enable it by using the Structure menu.

By default, the search on these tabs displays results with the Starts With operator. This is controlled by the ORA_PER_JRNY_SEARCH_STARTSWITH profile option that is set to Y by default.

Your Task Actions in Assigned Journeys

All tasks display two most relevant actions Done and Not Applicable on the task. Based on the task type, the actions that display will vary. Actions that are common to most tasks such as Add to Calendar, Save as Draft, Start (for OPA task type), and See Status (for both OPA and I-9 task types) appear under the More Actions drop-down list. This table lists the task actions you can perform:

Go to application task in an Application task

Go to website in an External URL task

Go to website in an I-9 Verification task

Go to website in a DocuSign task

See document in a Native Electronic Signature task

See document in a Report task

• Launch learning community in a Learn Community task
• Start learning in a Learn Enrollment task

Navigation to Journey Pages from Notifications

• Task Assigned and Reassigned Notification (BIP and Alert)
• Task Updated Notification (BIP and Alert)
• Task Assigned Combined Notification (BIP and Alert)
• Reminder Notification (only Alert)
• Task performers who don't have access to the person are directed to the My Tasks tab in Journeys from the notification.
• Line managers and HR specialists are directed to the specific assigned journey in the Assigned Journeys tab in Journeys from the notification.

These examples describe the pages that the user is redirected to based on their role.

Ravi Chauhan is the journey assignee and task performer. In this case, when Ravi clicks the link in the notification, they are redirected to the My Journeys > Journey details page.

Sandeep Shetty is the journey assignee and Pooja Kapoor is the task performer. Additionally, Pooja has access to Sandeep’s assigned journey. In this case, when Pooja clicks the link in the notification, they are redirected to the Assigned Journey > Journey details page.

Anjali Varma is the journey assignee and Anil Thomas is the task performer. Anil doesn’t have access to Anjali’s assigned journey. In this case, when Anil clicks the link in the notification, they are redirected to the My Tasks page where they need to search the task that they need to work on.

When the user clicks the link in the notification of a contextual journey, they are redirected to the My Tasks page where they need to search the task that they need to work on.

When the user clicks the link in the notification of a personal journey, the journey assignee is redirected to the My Journeys > Journey details page. Other users are redirected to the My Tasks page where they need to search the task that they need to work on.

Related Topics

• Set Up Oracle Search for HCM