What is Employee Journey Mapping? – Ultimate Guide to Understand

Technically, employee engagement is among the top pointers in organizational priorities. Companies, with better financial backing, may engage employees to derive customer satisfactory results.

However, according to a recent concept, employee experience encompasses the motive of engagement. Precisely, it is the sum of involvements, interactions, perceptions, and discussions that an employee shares with the employer, playing multiple roles in perceiving a company. According to Gartner's research, more than 51% of HR executives have identified employee experience as the key concept behind company success.

According to various management researchers, many companies are lacking in providing care and nourishment to the employees. The research studies carried out by Jacob Morgan, companies that invest in uplifting employee experience, generate four times more profits.

With growing recognition and popularity of the importance of employee involvement, organizations are acquiring skill and knowledge on enhancing experience. They are applying tactics like journey mapping to optimize worker experience, which may help in creating positive and productive collaborations.

Employers who understand the importance of proper projection of employees’ achievement are termed as the finest boss in the world! Professional recognition or employee journey mapping not only helps the company chart out success but also resonates with workers in bringing out the best.

The employee journey is receiving an increasing amount of recognition from management practitioners all around the world. In this write-up we will discuss what employee journey mapping is, and how does it leverage both the bosses and work personnel.

» What is an Employee Journey

Employee engagement or employee journey in a company is all about events and achievements that represent important milestones in an employees’ life. There come to the most memorable phases, which turn into an integral part of their work life. Competently, certain employees experience quite an exciting escapade during their professional life. These stages may include the nervousness of the first interview to a successful day at work, promotions, or bonuses.

Identifying important stages of professional life is called as Employee journey mapping. The time spends by an employee, from joining to the time, he/she quits the organization addresses not one but many such events that play a vital role for both the employer and the employee.

Employee journey mapping is a discipline that helps in commemorating the positive experience of the workers. Mapping requires the visual plotting of end-to-end experiences of the staff members during the tenure of business.

Employee mapping not only aids in charting out employee experience but also identifies areas of improvement helps in planning management exercises, delegating appropriate tasks to each staff according to their experience.

Stages that help in jotting out employee journey are;

• Experience on interview
• First day of joining
• First experience of team meeting
• One to one meeting with a manager
• Onboarding management activities
• Successful projects
• Promotions and bonus
• Birthday celebrations
• Team success parties
• First performance reviews
• Company reviews
• Resignation letters
• Quitting the company

» What is the Purpose of Journey Mapping?

The main objective of journey mapping is to identify the chronological list of moments for the employee. An Employee journey map is a visualization technique to record the worker’s experience during his entire work journey in the organization.

Recording staff experience helps in evaluating how the employee feels about their encounter with the management. It helps the management owners in monitoring and measuring worker’s involvement and experience gained by them.

Here are some questions that get answered through employee mapping;

• What does an employee trying to do?
• What does an employee feel?
• What are the barriers that stop an employee grow?
• What are digital and human supports provided to the employee?
• What better techniques must be followed to bring out improved performance?

» What are the Steps in the Employee Journey?

Employee journey mapping helps in understanding and visualizing staff contribution and their experience in a company. Here are steps that help in creating an employee journey map;

Employee journey steps

› Recruiting and sourcing

An employee’s first connection with the company is established when he/she applies for a job interview. Hence, this step is one of the crucial stages that require intricate planning and noting. To provide the best persona to your candidates and establish a better working stage for the new employees, an employer has to work hard.

The employer prepares a detailed job description, with required experience; following the channels, candidates know where they stand during the recruitment process. There might be many employees for whom this touchpoint will be an end to the journey maps; hence the touchpoints should be strongly appealing for the employee. This will allow them to consider future openings and apply them once again.

› Pre-boarding and Onboarding

What does an employer do when the job offer is accepted? Do they send an email asking them when to come? Well, pre-boarding is an important stage for employee journey mapping. The step is valuable to ease initial anxieties. Employers may organize team lunch, casual meetings among new employees and allow them casual visits to the departments before the actual job begins. There is no doubt, preboarding is a magical stage between the paperwork is signed and the actual job begins.

Simultaneously, Onboarding delivers the best employee journey experience along with improved productivity. Initial days, weeks, and months are an integral part of an employee journey. Did they arrive early and felt awkward? Was there a computer ready? Are they feeling lost and don’t know who to approach? Are they felt welcomed? There are a lot many questions that remain to be answered while charting an employee journey map.

Improving the employee onboarding process is a core step followed by employers to beautify their relationship with the new staff members.

› Employee progress, training, and learning

Investing in staff training and learning is a continuous process. Most of the complaints that an organization faces from its workers are the lack of career advancements and development facilities. The company may be trying out hard in offering a friendly workplace to the staff, but if they are lacking in onboarding learning and training, employees may look for better prospects elsewhere.

Undoubtedly, certain companies have synchronized plans for the initial 30/60/90 days for the new entrants, however, they have quite a little to offer in the future. The best companies are the ones that have a steady plan for development and advancement throughout the employee journey.

› Benefits, compensation, and funds

When it comes to effective and positive employee journey mapping, a company has to divulge into compensation and employee benefit plans. Never, ever expose your employees and justify poor salaries. As a progressive organization, you might be forward-thinking and may allow remote work, however, salaries and bonuses are an important aspect of an employee journey map.

Imagine, your employees are unhappy with the payments they receive at the end of each month. Not only the productivity gets affected but also they are forced to quit the company and look outside the wall. A young organization with a budget is justified, but an established company cannot skimp on this. Make sure to time revise the benefits, and focus on the well-being of the personnel.

› Engagement and communication

An organization should consider employee journey steps that pay off productivity, is persistent, and keep employees engaged. The company must well-establish an effective communication strategy that helps the staff in conveying their suggestions and feelings. Workers' loneliness, depression, company politics, personal issues are a few topics that should be discussed to help them relieve emotions and focus on work.

Additionally, management must plan out various strategies to engage staff and stay connected with the company both emotionally and physically.

› Rewards, recognition, and accolades

Who doesn't like a little appreciation? As per research, employee recognition is an effective employee journey step for staff retention and steady productivity. Recognitions may be tied with personal moments like anniversaries, birthdays, or any professional achievement. The acknowledgments encourage staff to display positive behaviour, hence helps in improving the overall work culture.

Additionally, work personnel are gratified when they receive accolades for their hard work. Paying them off with appreciative dine-out, bonus, cakes, hampers or a gift card might turn out beneficial in mapping an employee journey.

› Performance, feedbacks, reviews, and planning

Employee Feedback and reviews should be practiced more frequently and positively. The feedback is not only about how an employee is doing, but should also reflect where the employee is lacking and how to improve. Most organizations have lagged with feedback culture. Either they carry out reviews only as a system essential or just to finish their work abruptly.

Researches reveal that 61% of employees look forward to positive feedback from their employers. This helps them to get a sense of their performance. A feedback form must also focus on questions like who, what, when, where, how, and why while identifying employees' performance. Few sample questions are;

• Who is giving feedback?
• What type of feedback is been given?
• When is the performance evaluated? Is it yearly, quarterly, or monthly?
• Why are they receiving feedback?
• Where can they find reviews and feedback?
• How will it affect staff performance?

» How to Create an Employee Journey Map

• Segment each employee differently. Categorize them according to various departments. Consider their interactions with the company rather than concentrating on demographic segmenting.

• Gather a cross-functional team for segmentation. The journey of each staff member is special, hence take help from digital collaborators to work efficiently.

• List down an individual’s interaction with the company. The record consists of moments the workers joined the company till they quit.

• Chances of returning to the company are minimal, however, there are times when employees chose to come back.

• Usage of quantitative data, such as exit interviews is helpful in the mapping employee journey.

• Establish an open conversation with your employees. This helps in understanding their journey in-depth. Additionally, you can also interview past performers or top directors who have already left the company.

• Based on the map, set up a virtual plan to improve the employee experience.

• Share the map with the HR department, stakeholders, and managers for inputs.

» What are the Advantages of Employee Journey Mapping?

One of the common questions that arise majorly in the minds of young employers is why map employee journey? Couldn’t they spend that time on something more creative and useful?

Apprehensions around employee journey mapping can still be observed around conventional workplaces or young entrepreneurs who lack experience in working with a huge staff. So why is the employee journey important?

The answer is simple but involves a lot of understanding and maturity. A company cannot run alone, neither can the profits be made without efficient workers. A successful organization is that which understands employee prospectives and emphasizes in keeping them happy and satisfied.

Employee journey mapping is a visualization of the timeline of the employee experience from the date of joining till they quit. The mapping helps in gaining a deeper, holistic understanding of the person’s journey, level of experience. This helps the organization in creating an overall employee-friendly workplace by gradually improvising work culture.

Advantages of Employee Journey Mapping

› Better employee experience

Employee journey mapping came under HR’s spotlight after the success of customer journey mapping. Embracing similar techniques and concepts, this method proved to be a success in increasing employee experience, loyalty, and satisfaction.

An employee journey map helps in a better understanding of employee situation and their encounter at various stages of the career. Hence, it helps in becoming aware of various operations that should be carried out to upbuild the employee’s career path.

› Employee Contentment

Employee satisfaction is one of the major goals that help in building a successful business empire. When you have workers who take their work on a personal level, you know you are on the right path. Employees who feel that their employers are always concerned about their welfare are more satisfied with their jobs.

Mapping staff journeys and working towards improving their experience at the workplace ensures that you respect them and value their contribution.

› Positive Work Culture

A company is not about any single worker, but about a team. When your employees begin to think about their enhancement, this raises an alarm. Establishing a better employer-employee relationship not only ensures positive work culture but also motivates staff in delivering their best.

› Decreased Employee Turnover

When employees are content, they overlook the need to shift to other companies. According to researches, an organization that looks after its staff, train them well, invest in skill enhancement has lower employee turnover than their counterparts.

Employee journey mapping helps the business in determining when to provide training, what kind of training to provide. Mapping enables business management to plan staff development accordingly.

» What are Employee Touchpoints?

Customer experience and employee experience are the two keys to success. However, this simple touchpoint technique is often overlooked by the managers. An organization has to invest time and money in building strong relationships with customers and employees.

Employee journey touchpoint is about techniques adopted by the leaders, prioritizing in building relationships, by taking an interest and communicating with your staff. An employee journey touchpoint is simply where the employer and the staff have virtual or face to face communications.

Examples of Effective Employee Touchpoints are;

• Wishing the day like good morning or good day
• Asking for a work-related opinion
• Following up on the employee about a project or a pending task
• Brief inter-personal or professional conversation
• Keeping a check on how the staff is doing
• Giving informal feedbacks on tasks
• Formal one-to-one conversation on projects, overall performance, or employee goals
• Acknowledging the employee and sharing personal feedback

» What are the trends in the Employee Journey Map?

Employee journey design is a windy road that starts from one side and ends on the other side with lots of trips, ups, and downs. If you ask any staff to graphical represent their employee experience, the person can never draw a straight line. Either they will draw a pyramid or a jigsaw puzzle with a diversity of experience.

An employee journey map is not only about professional relationships, but it also includes personal trauma, issues, and happiness that affect their stance in the company. Usually, an am employee journey map is a one-way road, when the worker joins only to quit at the end. But few have a roundabout journey, never wanting to quit and offer their best to the organization.

So what does it take to change the employee journey? What are the trends that are now followed to enhance employee experience, establish employee brand?

As per the researches done by leading companies, focus on staff engagement and work culture is an age-old practice that needs to be revised. The top employee journey trends include taking a lifecycle approach to experience, concentrating on capturing feedbacks, providing important insights. This not only makes a positive impact on employee experience but also boosts attrition and productivity.

Top Employee Map Trends

• Offering integrated service tools to enrich the employee experience. Catering to transactional needs, collating content management, mobiles, and web portals.

• Integrating tools that help in engagement and boosting productivity. Offering team-centric collaborations like Microsoft Skype, Facebook’s workplace and G-suite are few examples for enhancing learning platforms.

• Embracing the unconventional way for feedbacks and reviews is a major trend changer. Jump to customized feedback survey platforms with automated employee prompts for better employee journey analytics.

• Performance management products incorporate work guidelines, policies, performance reviews, and survey platforms. These solution tools are first aid for the organization looking to map employee experience.

The main objective behind agreeing on new trends is;

• Designate focus team
• Consider individual growth and experience
• Design and develop journey map
• Enlist senior management support
• Measure and track feedback
• Look and learn from industry peers

» Conclusion

An employer is armed with employee sentiment and alumni data that helps in-process changes, develop infrastructure, establish better communication, and modify policies. Employee journey mapping enables companies to define, pinpoint, and understand every moment that matters in employee’s graph. The main objective behind designing an employee journey map is to capture all the moments and actions observed by an employee during their work tenure.

Employee journey analytics can be done annually or bi-annually feedback regime, channelizing employee experience using smart HR analysis software’s trending on web portals. This structured, yet simple technique will ensure that the company easily identifies problems, and helps them find optimal solutions to achieve business goals.