employee journey roadmap

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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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.

Access your free e-book today.

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 .

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Charting unique pathways: Our expert guide to employee experience journey mapping

As the working world is changing, with remote and hybrid setups becoming more common, organizations are looking to find ways to ensure their teams still have a consistent and positive employee experience. Frameworks such as the employee experience (EX) journey map can help to guide these new processes. It’s worth investing energy into this as companies that design a great EX report lower stress and burnout, and their people are 1.4 times more likely to find purpose in their roles.* 

Still, how does mapping the EX journey work? Employee journey maps help chart and visualize the end-to-end experience of working at your company from the perspectives of your team members. Their primary purpose is to highlight the employee's point of view and uncover inefficiencies and areas for improvement. They can also provide an overview of the internal processes and roles recruiters, hiring managers, human resources leaders, and team leads play in shaping the experience.

We created a downloadable template that HR and people ops leaders can use as a starting point for their own journey maps, providing a step-by-step process you can follow to make the best use of this free resource.

* McClean & Co , 2023 ‍

🧩 Discover what pieces are missing from your current EX strategy Use our free, editable template to record employee data, map the EX journey, and make your organization an even better place to work. 👉 Download the template

What is the employee experience journey?

The employee journey encompasses all the major milestones, events, interactions, and impressions an individual experiences throughout their tenure with an organization. Some people leaders refer to the EX journey as key touchpoints or “moments that matter.” Still, this perspective might be somewhat limiting as it overlooks the fact that a positive EX journey is also about building a strong, trusting relationship between employees and organizations. Essentially, every moment counts because it influences how team members feel about you, from pre- to post-employment. ‍

Why map out the employee experience journey?

Mapping out the employee journey means creating a visual blueprint you can use to identify current areas for improvement and customize for different roles. Doing so is a worthwhile investment of time and effort that can contribute to significant cultural and operational outcomes, such as:

• Smoother, more thorough onboarding processes — Only 43% of employees say their onboarding included more than paperwork and a one-day orientation. Implementing an EX journey map to create a more in-depth onboarding experience can set your company apart and help your new hires feel more welcome from day one.
• Relevant career development opportunities — An effective employee journey map takes your team members’ unique professional and personal career goals into account. This allows you to offer better training opportunities, which 76% of professionals say has an impact on their decision to stay with a company.
• Improved productivity — An EX journey map can help you overcome productivity gaps with better technology, resources, processes, and communication. In doing so, you could become up to 1.8 times more productive than organizations that don’t prioritize the employee experience.  
• Greater recruitment success — Using a journey map can help you get a better sense of what candidates are looking for throughout their tenure. That way, you can tailor your messaging to better resonate with job seekers’ highest priority goals.  ‍

“If you’re familiar with customer journey mapping, then you may know more about employee journey mapping (EJM) than you realize. Employee journey mapping uses the same concepts and best practices of customer journey mapping to help you understand your employee experience better, provide the resources, tools, and support employees need, and align employees’ daily actions and accountabilities with the customer experience.” — Jeannie Walters , Customer Experience Speaker and CEO of Experience Investigators

Employee experience journey map template

🤔 Get inside employees’ heads  Use our template to gather team member insights at every stage and understand how their needs change throughout their tenures. 👉 Download the template

7 steps to create your employee experience journey map

Whether you utilize our editable template or create your own, mapping the employee journey in this way allows you to easily spot where your EX efforts are falling short and make an initial action plan within the same document. Let’s look at our recommended step-by-step process for strategizing, researching, documenting, and improving the employee experience for your organization.  ‍

1. Get clear about your goals for mapping the employee journey

The key question that HR and people ops need to ask themselves at this stage is, “What do we want to know about the employee journey and why?” This prevents journey mapping from becoming a cursory exercise and transforms it into a more meaningful, strategic endeavor that helps you align with your overall company goals.

If it’s your first time creating a journey map, for example, your initial goal may be to identify your current paint points, gaps, and challenges so you can better support your team members for the next 12 months. 

If you’ve mapped the employee journey before and have implemented improvements in the past, a more specific goal might be to address communication issues and improve the feedback and review processes across all touchpoints.  ‍

2. Conduct employee research

In order to get a valid understanding of the real issues, you need to first dig deeper into previous survey data, manager feedback, performance scores, and EX metrics like retention, turnover, and engagement. You should also talk to department heads, managers, team leads, and employees themselves for fresh, updated more insights. In your research, be sure to get an understanding of how team members describe their current journey as well as the ideal experience so you can identify your existing pain points and structure a better path. 

Here are a few questions you can ask employees:

• What expectations did you have at every stage of your professional journey? 
• How have we succeeded or failed in living up to those expectations?
• What were your biggest frustrations during the onboarding, training, and engagement stages?
• What competencies were you hoping to develop at every stage?
• At each stage of the process, how did you feel about communicating with your manager and leadership team?

Providing anonymous feedback channels for employees is key if you want truly valuable, candid input. You can help team members feel safe sharing their thoughts with methods such as:

• Anonymous surveys — Using a platform like Leapsome means your surveys will be anonymous by default. ‍
• Suggestion boxes or forums — This allows employees to confidentially share their input and ask questions without prompting. That’s why Leapsome offers both an anonymous suggestion box and Q&A board where team members can ask questions and get answers from leadership. ‍
• Focus groups — Organize an in-office or virtual meeting with team members, ask meaningful questions about their current experience, and use their answers to create an anonymous report. If possible, you can arrange this with a third-party research company to ensure confidentiality.

🔎 Make sure you have a tentative action plan to share with employees when asking them for feedback. This will help you overcome any survey fatigue team members may be feeling due to previous inaction and encourage them to provide more and better feedback.  

3. Determine the scope & roles your journey map will cover

Attempting to map the journey for every single role in your organization will lead you to develop an employee experience that’s too vague and irrelevant to the difficulties that specific teams are experiencing. Instead, use the data you’ve now gathered to hone in on your most urgent issues.  

For instance, as you review your research, you may notice positive reports during the recruitment and onboarding stages. However, you might uncover that your teams typically show decreased engagement around the development stage. That could mean it’s time to update your career progression framework or make it a more central part of your professional growth processes.  ‍

4. Craft your EX journey map

Now, you’ll draw on your previous three steps and bring together your goals, scope, and research to update your processes and construct your ideal employee experience journey. To do this, you can use our template, which covers these core areas:

• Touchpoints , or the places where employees come into contact with managers, leaders, and other stakeholders.
• Processes , or the ideal steps managers and employees should take at each touchpoint to give team members the best experience.
• Metrics and monitoring , so you can record your current EX data and quickly identify areas of weakness.
• Notes , where you can document feedback from employees and stakeholders.
• Next steps , where you’ll outline your solutions. 

Of course, every organization has its own specific goals, internal structure, and culture. That’s why we’ve made our entire template editable and customizable, with ready-to-use content you can use for inspiration. For example, if your company is 100% remote , you may need more processes during onboarding that promote belonging, recognition, and team integration. ‍

🔎 You can use our template to link to a fully fleshed-out process and next steps documents for each stage, which is ideal for building transparency and ensuring everyone is on the same page about your company’s specific strategies.

5. Consult your journey map to identify improvement opportunities

Use the notes section in our template to capture what you’ve learned from team member research and outline your current iteration of the employee journey. In particular, note the initial expectations and eventual frustrations team members mentioned in their feedback and prioritize specific roles or issues that need to be addressed. 

In the next steps section, summarize what actions you plan to take based on the most critical concerns. Perhaps several employees mention feeling stifled in their professional development. You could then introduce a formal learning and training budget as a next step to improve on this. ‍

6. Share your plan & implement initiatives

Once you’ve finalized your action plan for improving the employee experience, communicate your strategy with leaders and team members so you can secure additional feedback on your proposed ideas and support for your initiatives moving forward. To be as transparent as possible:

• Explain your motivation for mapping the employee journey — Reiterate why you decided to map the employee journey and improve EX from the outset. For example, your organization may have gone through a recent restructuring, and you might have noticed that engagement has been declining ever since. ‍
• Describe your approach — Share how you mapped the staff journey based on your current EX processes and employee research.  ‍
• Discuss the why behind your proposed strategy — Provide the rationale behind your action plan and clearly link it to current business goals and objectives. ‍
• Break your strategy down into steps — Be sure to offer timelines and share who’s responsible for leading each initiative. ‍
• Follow up — After presenting your plan, contact leadership and stakeholders to address their questions and concerns. ‍

7. Refine & iterate on your journey maps over time

Like customers, the needs of your employees can change and fluctuate, typically in response to industry and economic changes. That’s why you should review and update your EX journey map every six months to a year and follow the same process each time. You can even utilize an employee experience platform to support you with this

Remember: No matter how favorable your employee experience metrics are, there’s always more to learn and understand about what team members are looking for from their work environment. 

🔎 Employee experience platforms like Leapsome can help you streamline how you gather team member data, set the right EX goals, and implement strategies that allow for better communication, reduced stress, and more employee autonomy.

Measuring the employee journey

Reviewing your employee experience metrics regularly helps you detect and mitigate issues early before they become major challenges. Doing so also means you can illustrate your progress to upper management and the executive team over time, demonstrating the value of your EX programs. Here are a few key indicators you should consistently refer to:

• Retention and turnover rates — Low retention rates may signal that team members aren’t having a positive employee experience. However, you need to compare them against employee tenures to discern when the most turnover typically happens. For instance, you may notice that team members tend to quit after their first eighteen months, which could suggest they’re dissatisfied with a lack of training, development, and career opportunities. 
• Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) — The eNPS is a valuable metric because it allows you to quickly assess engagement. It only requires employees to answer one question: “On a scale of zero to ten, how likely are you to recommend us as a place to work for your family and friends?” Your final score can range from -100 to 100, and most companies have a score between 10 and 30. While it’s not a great standalone metric because it presents you with limited data, it’s a great starting point that can help you determine when it’s time to investigate the employee experience further. 
• Survey results — Take note of your highest and lowest scores on previous engagement and culture surveys and read answers to open-ended questions thoroughly. If you use Leapsome’s Surveys module, you can quickly determine which factors you need to target to drive more positive outcomes. Our sentiment analysis function also uses AI to interpret open-ended answers so you can quickly scan them before exploring further.

• Performance scores — A great employee experience often corresponds with enhanced motivation, higher engagement, and, as a result, satisfactory performance. High performance scores also speak to the effectiveness of managers and stakeholders during the onboarding, training, and development stages. ‍

How software supports employee journey mapping

As employee expectations change and business priorities evolve, EX journey maps can help you respond effectively and improve the employee experience with greater efficiency. Moreover, they provide an in-depth understanding of how team members feel about their everyday interactions and overall relationship with your business. If your organization is genuinely committed to putting its people first, you need these individual insights to create a more personalized work experience for your team members.

Still, what do you do if you lack the time, personnel, or tech to gather the requisite insights? How do you overcome resistance from leadership without the right data and tools?

Leapsome allows you to automate the operational and analytical side of the journey mapping so you can focus on finding more innovative solutions to complex EX challenges. With our Surveys and Reviews modules, you can track engagement and pulse scores, retention rates, your eNPS, and employee performance scores with charts and visualizations to show you how those metrics have changed over time. Then, use our Goals module to design EX initiatives that align with current business objectives. 

With Leapsome, you’ll gain actionable insights and drive targeted improvements across every stage of the employee experience. ‍

👣 More positive impressions and connections every step of the way Use Leapsome to actively listen, gain insights, and implement changes based on employee feedback so you can make the entire work experience more meaningful. 👉 Book a demo

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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 Experience Software: What It Is & Why It’s Important

In recent years, companies have recognized that improving the employee experience is key to retaining valued staff, increasing productivity and enhancing overall business performance. Employee experience software can…

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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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Subscribe for more content from orgchart, employee journey mapping: how to design, steps and benefits.

May 8, 2024

By OrgChart Team

An organization’s greatest asset is its employees. Understanding employees’ experiences and identifying opportunities for improvement is critical. Employee journey mapping is one way to better grasp staff needs, expectations, and pain points. It is a simple way to improve organizational operations and enhance the employee experience from recruitment to offboarding.  

What is the Employee Journey?

The employee journey encompasses an employee’s experiences with an organization from the first time they express an interest in the company until their eventual resignation and offboarding. It is like a roadmap with interconnected experiences and leadership touchpoints that shape their career trajectory and impact organizational culture. Understanding your employees’ experiences at every step of their journey is crucial. The impact of the employee journey directly influences employee satisfaction, motivation for quality work, and retention, which all influence organizational success. 

What is Employee Journey Mapping?

Employee journey mapping is a powerful tool for organizations to visualize and analyze their employees’ experiences. A journey map is a visual representation of all stages of employment. This strategic tool systematically charts an employee’s journey from recruitment to offboarding, helping organizations better understand the employee experience to make more efficient and informed decisions. 

Employee journey mapping allows HR professionals and organizational leaders to identify the pain points their team faces at each stage and develop strategies for improvement. 

The employee journey mapping process involves a few key steps. First, organizations must define the employee personas to map. Next, they map the journey, delineating critical touchpoints at each step. Then, they gather feedback at each step to analyze the experiences and adjust the journey map. Read on as we explore each of these in more detail.  

The Benefits of Employee Journey Mapping Explained

There are many benefits of employee journey mapping, including:

• Visualization allows a deeper understanding of the employee experience, helping to identify areas of necessary improvement and opportunities for value creation
• Identification of key pain points and an ability to make more informed decisions 
• Alignment of the employee journey with organizational goals
• Proactive succession planning
• Enhancement of employee satisfaction, motivation, and quality of work, which contributes to the organization’s competitive edge in talent acquisition and retention
• Alignment of budget allocation with staff initiatives

What are the stages of the employee journey?

Now that we know the benefits of mapping employee journeys, let’s explore each stage of this journey. Understanding these stages is vital for organizations to optimize the employee experience and make strategic organizational decisions. Each stage presents unique opportunities to positively influence employee satisfaction and motivation, encouraging continued retention.

The hiring stage marks the onset of the employee journey. This stage encompasses all the steps that result in a new hire, such as attraction, recruitment, and the selection process. 

The hiring stage is critical for setting the stage for an employee’s journey with your organization. As such, it is essential to attract and hire candidates who are well-aligned with the organization’s culture and values. From the verbiage in your job postings, website, and social media to your reputation in the community, there are endless opportunities to show transparency in your values and organizational goals. 

According to Gallup analytics, only 12% of employees feel their company has a robust onboarding process. Employees with positive onboarding experiences are 2.6x more likely to be satisfied with their job. During this vital period of integrating a new employee into your company, a well-structured onboarding program sets the tone for their future experience, laying the foundation for success.

• Development

Once an employee is established with the organization and has gotten into a comfortable workflow, the development stage of their journey begins. During this time, staff should feel supported as they learn new skills and build upon their strengths. According to the Pew Research Center, 63% of people who quit their jobs reported a lack of advancement opportunities as a significant reason for leaving. Supporting career development along your employees’ career journey is paramount.

• Progression

As employees develop new skills and take on more responsibilities, career progression is vital for continued job satisfaction and retention. During this stage, provide opportunities for growth with a structured career progression plan. Providing clear pathways for progression encourages employee engagement while also driving organizational success.   

• Offboarding

It is often bittersweet when an employee reaches the offboarding stage in their journey. While you’re likely happy for them to pursue new interests and opportunities, it may feel like a significant loss to the organization, especially if they were a high-performing employee. Nonetheless, it is important to maintain professionalism and create a positive departure experience. Take these opportunities to reflect upon each stage of their journey through an exit interview. Effective, efficient, and positive offboarding workflows help the organization maintain a positive brand image and support the company’s overall morale among the remaining staff.

Key Employee Journey Mapping Touchpoints

Touchpoints are the vital interactions and moments of engagement throughout an employee’s journey. They influence staff satisfaction, engagement, and retention. Identifying and optimizing these touchpoints allows HR professionals and organizational leaders to enhance the employee experiences, fostering a positive workplace culture. 

Types of Touchpoints

Pre-application: These touchpoints occur before a formal application and encompass interactions with the company’s brand, such as a potential candidate perusing job postings on career sites, social media, and the employer’s website. 

Application: Application touchpoints are the interactions after a formal application has been submitted, including interviews and assessments. 

Onboarding: The onboarding phase involves many touchpoints, including orientation sessions, job shadowing, training, and paperwork. 

Ongoing: Once an employee has completed onboarding, many touchpoints occur along their journey, contributing to their ongoing engagement and development. These include regular supervisor check-ins, performance evaluations, training and development opportunities, feedback sessions, and positive recognition. 

How to Create Employee Journey Maps in 6 Steps

Crafting a practical employee journey map requires strategic planning. Consider the following steps to develop a comprehensive employee journey map that will add value to your organization and impact employee satisfaction and organizational success. 

Step 1: Analyze your goals

Before outlining your employee journey map, you must clearly define your objectives and goals. Evaluate what is currently working well for your organization and areas for improvement. Then, consider what you aim to achieve in developing your journey map. Perhaps you want to improve employee satisfaction, increase retention, streamline workflows, or align employee experiences with organizational values. Keeping your goals in mind as you embark on the next steps will ensure your journey map and employee initiatives align with the organization’s goals.

Step 2: Define employee personas

The experiences of a new, entry-level staff are likely to be vastly different from one in a leadership position . Identify the personas or employee types within your organization and develop journey maps that are tailored to those. Consider factors like job role, experience level, department, and any other relevant information. Leaning on your org chart can help you quickly identify who falls under each category so your journey map is tailored to the specific needs and experiences of staff in different workforce segments. 

Step 3: Map the journey

Once you have identified the employee personas, map out the entire journey for each persona. Outline the key stages and touchpoints from recruitment to offboarding.

Step 4: Gather feedback

Request feedback from employees at each stage of their journey to gain insights into their experiences and pain points. Employee feedback can be collected through surveys and discussions. Ensure there is a channel for anonymous feedback for employees who may feel less comfortable sharing their feedback openly. You can also gather input from public reviews, such as those on job boards.

Step 5: Identify opportunities for value creation

Analyze the feedback and identify any opportunities to enhance the employee experience along each step of the journey. Consider changes that can create value for your team. Look for areas where workflows can be more streamlined, barriers removed, or new initiatives developed that would impact staff experience. 

Step 6: Revise the journey map

With the insights gathered from the feedback and analysis, revise and refine your journey map to incorporate necessary changes or improvements. Employee experiences are continuously evolving. Therefore, it’s vital to continually update the journey map as changes arise. When new feedback is gathered, and processes are modified, update the map to reflect these changes and evaluate the improvements they lead to. 

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Measuring the employee journey: key methods.

Measuring an employee’s journey involves gathering feedback, analyzing data, and tracking key metrics. A combination of qualitative and quantitative data ensures a comprehensive understanding of an employee’s journey and informs the journey mapping process. 

Qualitative data, such as employee feedback, provides direct insights into their experiences and job satisfaction, which is incredibly valuable for informing needed changes. Quantitative data, such as turnover rates, engagement scores, and defined performance metrics, also play a critical role. Analyzing trends in data allows organizations to identify whether changes to the employee journey map effectively target key metrics and organizational goals.

Leveraging Journey Mapping for Value Creation

Employee journey mapping helps organizations create value for their employees by identifying and addressing key areas for improvement. By systematically mapping out the employee experience, organizations can pinpoint common pain points and develop strategies to address them, increasing satisfaction and retention. Mapping the employee journey allows HR leaders to gain a deeper understanding of the factors influencing employee experiences at each stage in their journey. 

Leveraging employee journey mapping is imperative for continuous improvement and enhancement of the employee experience. Staff satisfaction is necessary for smooth operations and long-term success, as staff are your greatest asset.

Examples and Conclusion

Employee journey mapping is beneficial in guiding organizations to elevate the employee experience, resulting in meaningful changes. A 2016 study found journey mapping to highlight areas of needed improvement within the MSU Library, specifically during the onboarding stage.  

Prioritizing the employee experience is essential in today’s competitive landscape. Employee journey mapping supports organizations in gaining key insights into the employee experience, identifying areas for improvement, and driving positive change. 

To learn about other HR-related hot topics, explore more of our latest blogs, guides, and more here. 

To learn more about other HR-related hot topics, explore more of our latest blogs, guides, and more here.

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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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Employee experience journey map: A complete guide + example + template

Today, we are all obsessed with the experience of the customer. However, only some seem to care about employee experience. This makes no sense whatsoever.

It is common to think that customers are the drivers of our business. And while this is true, imagine what would happen if all employees from your company decided to take a couple of days off, stay home, and watch Netflix? This would be a disaster. Yet, many companies still don't see the importance of designing a better employee experience.

• 1 What is an employee journey?
• 2 Benefits of employee journey mapping
• 3 Employee experience journey mapping
• 4 What to map?
• 5 Employee journey stages
• 6.1 Start with employee experience research
• 6.2 Produce an employee persona
• 6.3 Map the employee experience journey
• 7 What’s next?
• 8 Wrapping up

What is an employee journey?

Put simply, an employee journey is the complete experience an individual has while they're employed at an organization, starting from the day they apply for the job until the day they leave. Such a journey includes every interaction they have with the organization, whether it's having a conversation with a manager, participating in a training session, or attending a team meeting. Think of it like a story that unfolds over time, each chapter representing a different part of the work life.

For example, consider Steve, who just got a job at a technology firm. His employee journey starts with applying for a job, getting an interview invitation, and having the interview. Then he has the second interview and receives the job offer, which moves Steve to the next stage — his first day of work, where he's welcomed by his colleagues and continues as he works on projects, receives feedback, and grows his skills. 

Over the years, Steve might get promoted, switch to different roles within the company, or take part in special programs. His journey captures all these experiences right up until his retirement party or the moment he leaves the company, capturing the entire arc of his career at the firm.

Benefits of employee journey mapping

Why is it essential to know the state of your employees’ journeys and improve them? Many smart companies all over the world are using a very effective idea. They treat their employees really well, just like they do with their customers. 

They've figured out that this is super important. In this paragraph, we'll explain why this is a big deal and how it can make companies much better in today's world.

Here are a few down-to-earth points as to why you should take employee experience seriously:

• Employee engagement means customer success. Did you know engaged employees are almost 90% less likely to leave their company compared to employees who have a low level of engagement? Leave alone the fact that engaged employees are a lot more productive.
• Employees come at a great cost . And it’s not just about money. Customers do not interact with CEOs. They interact with front-desk staff, customer support, sales, you name it. Mistakes of these people may seriously damage your company’s reputation. That alone is a good reason to start thinking about designing a better employee experience.
• Word of mouth. Finally, just like a great customer product, an outstanding employee experience gets spread by word of mouth. It becomes one of the ways you attract talented people to the company.
• Enhanced onboarding and retention. By understanding the employee journey, organizations can create a more structured and engaging onboarding process. This will help new hires become productive more quickly and feel a greater sense of belonging, which can reduce turnover rates.

Now that we’re on the same page regarding the importance of designing a better experience for employees at a company, it’s time to proceed to actionable to-dos.

Read also: Case study on improving the employee journey

Employee experience journey mapping

One of the proven approaches to analyzing, understanding, and enhancing the employee experience and employee journeys is a great technique called customer journey mapping.

Not familiar with this subject? Check out our complete guide on creating a customer journey map .

The idea behind this technique is fairly simple: you take the journey people take when interacting with your business and break it down into stages. The next step is to look at each stage from different angles to get a complete picture of what the experience of this particular person may look like. In other words, a map of your employee’s journey helps you see through the eyes of your customer or, in our case, through the eyes of employees. 

There’s another similar technique called employee experience mapping. These two techniques are often used interchangeably, but it should be noted that experience mapping takes a broader view. It goes beyond chronicling the stages an employee goes through, delving into the qualitative aspects of an employee's daily life within the organization, their experience with it. This encompasses, for example, the emotional experiences of employees at various touchpoints, like participating in daily team meetings, using the company’s tools and technologies, or during interactions with leadership.

What to map?

First, it’s important to decide which part of the employee experience journey you want to start with. At this point, there are a couple of routes you may take:

• High-level mapping. Obviously, it simply would take too much time to map the entire journey, as the employee lifecycle is way too long for one map. Unless you want to start with a high-level map and dive into details later as you dig more information. The downside of a high-level approach is that you won't get a lot out of it. The formula is fewer details = fewer insights.
• Focus on a specific part of the journey. It would be a whole lot easier to start with something like onboarding. The best part about onboarding is that if you are an HR, you have just enough knowledge to take the first steps.
• Identify the most problematic stage and start with it. However, it’s not that easy to tell which part is the most problematic without running research.

Employee journey stages

As we’ve touched the employee journey stages, let’s consider some of the common ones to give you an idea of what to include in your employee experience journey map.

• Attraction. This is the beginning of the journey, where potential employees first encounter the company brand or job opening. They form initial impressions about the company culture and values, and these impressions are often influenced by the company website, social media presence, and employer reviews.
• Recruitment. The potential employee actively considers the job opening and applies for a position. This stage may encompass submitting applications, attending interviews, and communicating with the company's hiring team.
• Hiring. This is when you make the job offer, and the candidate accepts it. 
• Onboarding. The new employee starts their job, they get oriented and integrated into the organization. They learn about company policies, may undergo training for their specific role, and start building relationships with the team and managers.
• Development. This stage involves the employee's growth within the organization. It includes receiving feedback, pursuing professional development opportunities, and potentially participating in mentoring or coaching programs.
• Advancement. This is when the employee moves up within the company hierarchy through promotions or transfers. 
• Exit. This is the final stage of the employee journey when the employee leaves the organization, whether for retirement, a new job, or other reasons. The exit process can include such substages as exit interviews, knowledge transfer, and the employee's transition out of the company.

Looking for more information about employee journey stages to add to your model of journey map? Check out our deck of cheat cards to look deeper into the stages and substages of employee journeys.

Three steps in designing an employee journey map

Now, we will cover the basic steps for creating a full-fledged, true-to-love employee journey map.

Start with employee experience research

Employee research, often referred to as employee surveys or employee feedback programs, is of paramount importance for organizations across various industries. 

It involves collecting, analyzing, and acting upon feedback from employees to gain insights into their experiences, attitudes, and needs within the workplace. Here are some key reasons why employee research is important:

• It enhances employee engagement. By understanding what engages or disengages employees, organizations can take targeted actions to boost engagement.
• It supports informed decision-making. Employee research provides quantifiable insights, allowing leaders to allocate resources more effectively and prioritize initiatives that matter most to employees.
• It helps measure progress. By conducting surveys periodically, organizations can track progress over time. They can see how their efforts to address employee concerns and improve the workplace have translated into tangible results.

In other words, employee research is a strategic tool that empowers organizations to create better workplaces, improve employee satisfaction, increase productivity, and drive overall success. It aligns the interests of employees and employers, contributing to a positive organizational culture and sustainable growth. 

So, you should always start with profound research. Otherwise, what exactly are we going to put on that map? And when it comes to interviewing employees, some really nice factors contribute to great research:

• Employees are easy to get in touch with, and such research is inexpensive compared to customer research. Imagine a situation where you have to bring a bunch of customers for a focus group or an interview. Each has a different time availability and level of involvement. Plus, chances are they might want to have something in return. Whereas, employees are almost always there and ready to share their thoughts over a cup of coffee.
• You have lots of data already. If you’ve been working in the company for a while, there’s probably enough information for you to start with employee journey mapping. And you can always talk to the HR department to get this information.
• Co-creation opportunities. There is nothing better than inviting coworkers for a journey mapping workshop . And again, it’s much easier within a company than when you’re trying to bring in real customers.

In addition to employee feedback and interviews, it may also be helpful to review internal audit reports to gain a better understanding of potential areas for improvement in the employee experience journey.

Surely, there will be a conflict of interests and ethics issues, so be ready to get creative!

Before doing any kind of research, make sure you come up with a list of sources. They can be:

• Employee feedback. If you are an HR, chances are you have a lot of info on hand that can be used for employee experience mapping.
• Interviews with employees. Trust me, they have so much to say, and chances are they wanted to say it years ago.
• Interviews with managers. They observe employees and are able to give you a whole different perspective on things.
• Polls and surveys. Those can give a lot of quantitative data. And the best part is that polls can be anonymous.

Produce an employee persona

To truly empathize with employees, it’s vital to create an employee persona. It is a made-up person that is based on real employees. It should have some basic description as well as some of the details you found during the research phase: goals, motivations and frustrations, some background, and maybe even skills.

Meet Michael, our example, a young finance professional in the heart of NYC. With a year's experience under his belt, he aspired to land a job in a prestigious firm. Living with his brother's family in their cozy apartment, he found solace in their company but yearned for his own space. His daily routine includes job hunting between work, and his mind is always set on reaching the top of the corporate ladder.

You can have one, two, or multiple personas depending on your needs. To create your own persona, here's our guide with examples of how to create a persona in 7 steps .

Map the employee experience journey

Now, after the research has been done and personas have been created, it’s time to put everything on a map. The way you map an employee experience journey is the following:

• Define the stages you need for your map

If we talk about the journey part that covers a new employee onboarding, there will be stages like awareness, research, first contact, phone screening, job interview, the hiring process, the first day, the list goes on. It is very likely that some stages will have multiple substages (especially the hiring process and job interview).

• Decide on map layers or sections

These are layers of data you want to have on your map. Some of the commonly used journey map layers include employee goals, employee expectations, emotional experience, process, channels, touchpoints, and problems.

For each stage you defined, fill in the map sections with data about this stage. For example, write down the goals of the employee persona as well as their expectations or describe the process the employee persona goes through at each stage.

Feel free to add anything that can benefit you in the search for employee experience insights. If you feel like adding some quotes from real employees — it's great. Want to add a photo of the workplace for a new employee? Go ahead! 

In fact, if you're mapping employee experience in our journey mapping tool , multiple sections will help you capture all the details you might want to have in your map!

• Find flaws and come up with solutions

Once you see the whole picture, you can start looking for roadblocks that prevent employees from, for example, getting the best onboarding experience.

Once you put roadblocks on the map, you can come up with ideas and solutions. In the end, you will have a map that looks somewhat like this:

What’s next?

Once the journey map has been created, it serves as a valuable foundation for a positive employee experience. To ensure that their experience continually improves and stays aligned with the evolving needs of your company, consider the following actions:

• Collect ongoing feedback. Encourage employees to provide feedback throughout their journey. This can be done through surveys, one-on-one discussions, or anonymous feedback channels. This feedback should be used to identify pain points and areas for improvement.
• Regularly update the map. As processes and procedures change within your organization, update the map accordingly. This ensures that it remains an accurate reflection of the journey and can guide improvements effectively.
• Implement quick wins. Identify low-hanging fruit or quick wins based on the map insights. These are small, immediate changes that can significantly improve the experience without requiring extensive resources or time.
• Prioritize key touchpoints. Focus on the most critical touchpoints in the journey that have the greatest impact on the employee experience. Allocate resources and efforts to improve these areas first.
• Involve cross-functional teams. Collaborate with HR, IT, training, and other departments to address issues and implement changes. A cross-functional approach ensures a holistic perspective and comprehensive solutions.
• Set clear objectives. Define specific goals and objectives for improving the employee experience. This provides a clear direction for change initiatives and helps measure their success.
• Training and development. Invest in training and development programs for managers and mentors involved in onboarding. Equip them with the skills and knowledge needed to support the company’s employees effectively.
• Leverage technology. Use technology to streamline and automate parts of the onboarding process. This can reduce administrative burdens and create a more seamless experience for new hires.
• Monitor progress. Continuously monitor the impact of changes on the employee experience. Key performance indicators (KPIs) should be tracked and analyzed to ensure that improvements are achieving the desired outcomes.
• Employee involvement. Involve new employees in the co-creation of their onboarding journey. Seek their input and preferences to tailor the process to individual needs.
• Celebrate successes. Acknowledge and celebrate successes and improvements at different stages of your employees’ journey. Positive reinforcement can motivate teams to keep making enhancements.
• Stay compliant. Ensure that the onboarding process remains compliant with all relevant laws and regulations. Regularly review and update documentation as needed.
• Communication and transparency. Maintain open and transparent communication with employees regarding changes in the onboarding process. Provide clear explanations and expectations to manage their experience effectively.

Remember, journey mapping is not a one-time activity; it should evolve alongside your company's growth and changing needs. By actively listening to employee feedback, making data-driven decisions, and continually refining the onboarding experience, your organization can create a positive and impactful journey for new employees from day one.

Wrapping up

Mapping the employee experience is undoubtedly a challenging undertaking, one that demands a significant amount of effort, time, and resources. However, the rewards that come with creating an exceptional workplace environment and a satisfied workforce are simply too compelling to ignore.

Good news: we have a library of free templates, including employee experience map templates, which you can use for high-level mapping. Either download a PDF file and print it out or create a map in our Journey Mapping Tool, tweak it as you like, and then export it to show all the insights you came up with! 

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Thanks for the map. It’s a great template to start with for my company’s employee journey.

You’re welcome, Chris! We also have templates for remote employee journey and an employee journey mapping whitepaper with expert advice. Be sure to check those out and happy mapping!

Thank you for these employee journey mapping examples. Our problem is not so much with onboarding but with keeping people from leaving after 6-8 months. Do you have any advice on how to improve retention in the long run?

Hi Tarik, you’re welcome! We do have some employee experience examples you could use for better retention, and a detailed breakdown of common stages people go after the probation period is over: annual performance evaluation, office events, paternity leave, skill upgrading, etc.

You can find them all in our filled-out template called “End-to-end employee journey map” right here: https://uxpressia.com/templates/education-and-career

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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 Mapping: Ultimate Guide

By: Grace He | Updated: September 06, 2023

You found our ultimate guide to employee journey mapping .

Employee journey mapping refers to the process of charting an employee’s tenure with a company, beginning from when the individual applies for the job and concluding when the employee leaves the organization. Examples of milestones include onboarding, feedback, and training. The employee journey encompasses the experiences between the beginning and the end of an employee’s tenure. Employee journey mapping allows you to provide the groundwork for a satisfying work experience for your staff.

These ideas are related to  employee engagement best practices , employee satisfaction , professional development best practices , and worker retention tips .

This article includes:

• definition of employee journey mapping
• employee journey mapping stages
• employee journey map examples
• employee journey touchpoints

Here we go!

Definition of employee journey mapping

Employee journey mapping is a strategic process companies use to understand, analyze, and optimize the entire lifecycle of an employee. This process involves creating a visual representation of the employee’s experience, from the initial contact during recruitment to their exit or retirement. This map highlights key touchpoints, interactions, and emotions experienced by employees at each stage of their journey.

The primary goal of employee journey mapping is to identify pain points and areas for improvement in the employee experience. By visualizing this journey, organizations can gain valuable insights into how to improve employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention. This process also helps align HR with organizational goals, ensuring the employee experience supports the company’s mission.

To create an employee journey map, firms collect data through surveys, interviews, and feedback from employees at various stages of their employment. This data is then used to create a detailed and actionable roadmap for improving the overall employee experience. Employee journey mapping is an ongoing process, helping organizations adapt to changing employee needs. In addition, this process lets firms regularly refine their strategies to create a more positive and fulfilling work environment.

Employee’s journey mapping stages

he employee journey map helps companies better appraise the value of an employee’s work and the time spent at an organization. The following are the stages of an employee journey map.

1. Recruiting and Sourcing

When an applicant applies for a position, it is the first time they interact with the organization. Therefore, this stage is one of the most critical steps that demand proper planning and recording. An employer should try to provide the best image to potential candidates and create a more favorable environment for new hires to begin their careers.

The company writes up a thorough job description, including any prerequisite skills or experience, and applicants who follow the proper channels know precisely where they are at any time throughout the hiring process. Since this point of contact may mark the final stop on the trip maps for many workers, the touchpoint must be engaging. Such workers may keep an eye out for opportunities in the future and reapply if they are a good fit.

2. Onboarding

As a result of the efforts put into the onboarding process, employees have a better experience throughout their journey with the company and are more productive. Employees’ first few months on the job are crucial to their overall experience. The mapping helps ensure that employees fit right into the organization’s culture, get all the tech and accessories they need for work, and be able to ask questions when confused. Companies can improve the employee onboarding process to improve their interaction with new staff members.

​Here is a list of  onboarding best practices .

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3. Employee Development, Education, and Training

The practice of investing in employee training and development is ongoing. However, employees may express dissatisfaction due to a lack of opportunities to improve in their careers and learn new skills. Although the firm may try to provide a pleasant working environment for its employees, if it fails to provide adequate training and orientation, those workers may seek better opportunities elsewhere.

Many businesses have coordinated strategies for the first 30 to 90 days of a new hire, but such firms still have much to offer over time. The most successful businesses provide employees with a clear path to promotion and growth at every stage of their employment.

​Read about the  importance of professional development .

4. Career Progression

Career progression refers to employees advancing and growing within an organization. Members will likely move from one role or position to another, typically with increased responsibilities, authority, and compensation. This process is an important piece of employee development and retention, as it provides a clear career path. Career progression involves various elements, including promotions, lateral moves, skill development, and mentorship. Organizations that effectively support and facilitate career progression retain top talent and create a motivated and engaged workforce.

5. Engagement and Communication

A business should ensure employee journey touchpoints maximize productivity, encourage consistency, and keep workers engaged. The organization should establish a reliable communication method that allows employees to voice their opinions and concerns. Employees need a safe space to discuss topics that affect their output, such as feelings of isolation and despair, workplace politics, and personal matters.

​Examples of these channels include:

• ​one-on-one meetings
• ​performance reviews
• ​employee surveys
• ​peer-to-peer reviews
• ​water cooler chats

In addition, it helps when management devises tactics to motivate employees and maintain a personal and physical connection to the business.

6. Rewards and Recognition

Most employees like appreciation. Employee recognition is an integral part of the employee journey to maintain a loyal and productive workforce. Recognitions often include personal milestones like anniversaries, birthdays, or any professional success. The acknowledgments motivate employees to demonstrate good conduct, consequently helping to strengthen the overall work culture.

Workers also like recognition for a job well done. Rewarding workers with a meal out, bonus, cake, basket, or gift card can be useful when plotting out an employee’s journey within the company.

​Check out this  list of employee recognition program ideas .

7. Performance Evaluation and Feedback

Regular employee performance evaluation and feedback are essential in any business. An employee’s performance evaluation should highlight both strengths and areas for development. Unfortunately, many companies are behind the times when it comes to their feedback culture. Some firms conduct performance reviews merely as a necessity or fail to be thorough with the process.

Multiple studies show that workers look forward to receiving positive feedback from their bosses. With this information, employees may evaluate the quality of their output. The who, what, when, where, how, and why of an employee’s performance should also be at the center of a feedback form.

​This phase of the journey map should answer questions like:

• Who is offering feedback?
• Where will employees get the review and feedback?
• What is the effect of the feedback on employee output?
• What is the nature of the feedback?
• How often is the performance evaluation?
• Why the feedback?

When mapping the employee journey, it is vital to include specifics about how and when employees will get feedback on their performance.

​Here is a  list of tips for giving employee feedback .

8. Offboarding

The time eventually comes for every worker to leave every organization through termination, retirement, or resignation. By managing this transition properly, companies can ensure their former employees return to work for the company or promote it to their contacts. For example, if an employee had a good offboarding experience, they are three times more likely to promote the company to others than if they had a neutral or bad one, as reported by Gallup .

Many departing workers often desire to get acknowledgment from their employer and to discuss their experiences there openly. This information can help you develop a plan for improving the experience of the replacement employee. For instance, if the worker’s hopes for the position differed from the job’s realities, this information can help you create a more detailed job description.

Various employees will reach different destinations at the end of the road. For example, a worker who has spent decades with the same company may be thinking about retiring. A departure might also be in search of a new position. At this point, you should consider how the worker’s departure affects the workforce. This aspect of the employee journey mapping ensures that the departing worker’s knowledge gets passed to other staff members. You will also think of ways to share the news with other workers.

9. Alumni Engagement

Alumni engagement involves maintaining relationships with former employees or “alumni” of an organization. These individuals may have left the company for various reasons, such as retirement, pursuing other opportunities, or life changes. Despite leaving the firm, these former workers can still play a valuable role in the organization’s network. Alumni engagement programs aim to keep these individuals connected to the company’s community and brand. This step can include activities like alumni newsletters, events, networking opportunities, or even rehiring initiatives. Engaging with alumni fosters a sense of belonging and goodwill well beyond employment. This process can also lead to potential rehires, referrals, or even business partnerships in the future, making it a strategic element of talent management.

The importance of employee journey mapping

For big firms, an employee’s story may go through the cracks easily since supervisors and team leaders are either too busy or uninformed of the possible difficulties that might arise at crucial points in the employee’s career. For instance, a direct supervisor may not know that one of their new hires needs additional help as they begin their career path. The following are some of the importance of employee journey mapping.

1. Better Knowledge of Pain Points

Identifying pain points means finding the parts of an employee’s journey where they face problems or feel unhappy. These problems can workers them frustrated or dissatisfied. When organizations find these pain points, they can figure out what is wrong and work toward improvements. This process helps employees have a smoother and happier experience overall. Organizations need to gather information and feedback to discover these issues and fix them. This way, employees will be more satisfied and want to stay in their roles or come back.

2. Increased Employee Satisfaction

One of the most critical factors in creating a successful business is making sure your employees are happy. Having employees that treat their jobs as a calling is a sure sign that you are on the right track. If workers believe their bosses care deeply about them, they are more likely to find satisfaction in their work. Showing your employees that you appreciate them by mapping their journeys and enhancing their experience at work is a way to earn their loyalty and devotion.

​Here are  job satisfaction statistics .

3. More Positive Work Culture

Running a business is not about the individuals but the teams. If any of its workers start thinking about improving themselves alone, this might signal a red flag. The success of every business depends on the quality of the relationships between its management and its employees. The employee journey mapping keeps your employees tight-knit and helps create a positive work culture.

​Read this guide on creating a  positive working culture .

4. Lower Employee Turnover

When workers are happy in their jobs, they do not consider looking elsewhere. Studies show that turnover is lower in companies that invest in their employee’s professional development and look out for their staff. Employee journey mapping might assist a company in deciding when and what training its staff needs. Management might use maps to plot out training programs for employees.

​Learn about the  reasons for employee turnover .

How to create employee journey maps

When looking for employee journey map examples, it is important to understand the steps that go into this process. The following are the stages of developing an employee journey map.

1. Determine the Map Type

Due to your pivotal position in ensuring a positive employee experience, you should also oversee the mapping process. You should first decide what type of map you want to make. It is necessary to determine your motivations for using employee mapping. You can get managers’ input to create a comprehensive strategy.

An excellent way to start is to draw a rough outline and then consider how you may proceed with the actual mapping. The map can be flexible enough to make changes as you go along. For example, you can ensure the map includes all the key places employees interact with the company. After deciding on the touchpoints you want to include, you can return and make the necessary adjustments to the template.

2. Develop the Persona

To begin creating the employee journey map, you must first divide your workforce into subsets. The experiences of workers in different departments, in particular, will vary greatly. You can find out what works and then make a template for it. For instance, the journey of a sales team will vary greatly from that of the IT department. Further, a new hire will have a distinct set of experiences than a long-tenured worker. Thus, it is crucial to make subsets before developing templates. It is not necessary to create a unique map for each worker. However, you can sort employees by personas to make the process easy.

3. Determine the Measurement Metrics

Part of the employee journey map is settling on a set of measures to evaluate the collected qualitative and quantitative information. Due to the large number of teams involved, individual workers will get feedback from different groups. Team roles may include recruitment, orientation, or training. Accordingly, there has to be a standard unit of performance metrics. The feedback method may be either numerical or free-form, requiring workers to answer questions.

4. Gather Data

Gathering data is the crucial first step in creating an employee journey map. The process involves collecting information from a variety of sources. This data helps companies gain insights into the experiences, perceptions, and needs of employees throughout their tenure in the organization. Firms can collect this information through employee surveys, interviews, focus groups, HR records, performance evaluations, and feedback mechanisms. By collecting and analyzing this data, organizations can uncover patterns, pain points, and opportunities for improvement. This information helps organizations make informed decisions and design effective solutions that improve the overall employee experience.

5. Design Solutions

Designing solutions is the phase where organizations develop strategies, interventions, and initiatives to improve employee experiences. These strategies aim to address the pain points and challenges identified in the employee journey. Finding solutions involves brainstorming creative and practical approachesto enhance the employee experience. These solutions may include improvements in HR policies, training programs, communication channels, work processes, and employee benefits. Effective solution design requires collaboration among various departments and stakeholders. This communication ensures the proposed changes align with organizational goals and are feasible to implement. The goal is to create tangible and actionable plans that will improve employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention.

6. Keep the Map Updated

The employee journey map is a continuous process. Many changes will occur over time, and your map should reflect them. For instance, if there is a major disruption across an organization’s primary touchpoints, then it is important to monitor developments and include any necessary adjustments into the map.

An organization may handle in-process adjustments, infrastructure development, improved communication, and policy modifications with employee data. Employers may better understand their employees’ needs and develop strategies to meet them by mapping out the whole employee experience. The purpose of creating an employee journey map is to document the worker’s experience as they go through their employment.

Open conversations about workers’ experiences and pain points are a great way to lay a strong groundwork for the future. You can use the employee’s persona to map the employee’s path within the business. Establishing the organization’s core values is the first step in developing a comprehensive picture. Next, you can find out what resources are available to workers and use that information to inform your mapping process.

Next, check out these lists of  employee engagement statistics  and books on the employee experience .

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FAQ: Employee journey mapping

Here are frequently asked questions about employee journey mapping.

What is employee journey mapping?

Employee journey mapping is a visual depiction of the events that occur during an employee’s time working for a company. The map shows the complete scope of your employees’ interactions with your business.

How do you map the employee journey?

You can map an employee journey by establishing the objectives of the process and creating an outline. The process includes developing personas, discovering critical touchpoints, and getting employee feedback. Then, you can use the information obtained to update the map continuously.

Why is employee journey mapping important?

Employee journey mapping helps to improve employee experience, boost satisfaction in the workplace, and build a positive work culture. The map also increases retention rates and lowers employee turnover.

Author: Grace He

People & Culture Director at teambuilding.com. Grace is the Director of People & Culture at teambuilding.com. She studied Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, Information Science at East China Normal University and earned an MBA at Washington State University.

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People & Culture Director at teambuilding.com.

Grace is the Director of People & Culture at teambuilding.com. She studied Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, Information Science at East China Normal University and earned an MBA at Washington State University.

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Employee roadmap: why & how to engage your staff in 3 steps (with template).

A resigning team member is no manager's dream. And no leader wishes to be caught off guard by an employee's overthought, final decision to quit.

Besides, we can't possibly stress enough how the cost of replacing employees is immense. For your reference, it can ascend to twice an employee's annual salary .

But the hard truth is that the best companies have the means to prevent employee turnover. We're talking about the employee roadmap and its contribution to positive employee experiences.

Gartner points out that only 13% of staff members are fully satisfied with their employee experience. But fortunately, improving employees' feelings about their overall experience at work by addressing psychological, motivational, and social needs is 64% effective.

Stick with us as we explain what an employee experience roadmap should look like. We'll:  

• Explore the importance of an employee roadmap. 
• Provide a step-by-step guide to crafting one. 
• Share a template to kickstart your journey.

🗺️ What is an employee roadmap?

An employee roadmap—short for "employee experience roadmap"—is a strategic plan that outlines the key touchpoints in an employee's journey within an organization , from being a candidate to becoming an alumnus. 

Its objective is to create positive and meaningful experiences at every stage of the employee lifecycle, fostering engagement, satisfaction, and retention (extending the time between being a candidate to being an alumnus).

The employee roadmap defines the organization's directions for interacting with its potential and current staff members , starting as early as sourcing and recruitment.

That's when your future personnel begins building a perception of your company. 

And you know, first impressions matter and might draw the line between attracting top or otherwise average workers.

In other words, your employee roadmap has an early impact on your people's careers. And it contains, for instance, guidance for your organizational culture and workplace environment.

Don't confuse roadmap with strategy, though! 

An employee experience strategy is an approach to creating positive employee experiences. On the other hand, an employee experience roadmap is the plan to get you there within a certain timeframe.

Employee experience roadmap vs. employee experience journey map

First, the "employee experience roadmap" isn't the same as the "employee journey map."

Remember the employee lifecycle we just talked about? Take all the employee lifecycle stages and a worker's set of employee experiences throughout those stages. And there you go—their employee journey!

Now, employee journey mapping is a form of evaluating employee experience at each stage of the employee journey. For instance, employee journey mapping allows you to measure how a team member feels about the performance review process.

Employee journey mapping encompasses creating and analyzing the employee journey map. And helps HR personnel pinpoint improvement areas, from recruitment and onboarding to development and retention.

🗺️ Get Zavvy's Employee Journey Map template to understand what these maps look like. 

🧭 6 Stages to include in your employee roadmap

Your employee experience roadmap must cover the points below. It must also clarify how to address them to elevate your company's employee experience.

1. Recruitment

What's your plan to hire top talent? These are a few examples of what you can do—that you must state in your employee roadmap:

• An employer branding program
• A regular, valuable social media presence
• Job descriptions with clear explanations of what your organization and the role are about
• A simple application process with prompt, straightforward, and objective communication with candidates

Example: Add a guideline to your employee experience roadmap saying that the hiring team must be warm and friendly with candidates so they feel excited rather than skeptical about joining the company.

2. Onboarding

Onboarding is another process you must carefully plan and outline in your employee roadmap. Organize it into clear steps, and don't forget to list moments for new hires to give you feedback on their employee experience.

Example: Plan for preboarding in your employee experience roadmap so candidates don't experience unnecessary anxiety.

👀 Learn how Alasco has slashed time-to-productivity rates by 50% thanks to a fun, structured onboarding plan.

3. Training & career development

Set the expectations for upskilling in your employee roadmap from the company and the worker's perspectives.

Not only do you know that learning programs and courses contribute to a positive employee journey, but some are also required by law.

Plus, the employee experience roadmap is the perfect document to clarify that you expect the organization's leaders to ensure staff takes on the expected training at the right time.

Lastly, setting training milestones in the employee roadmap frees up time for career development. That'll help keep your training ROI high and leverage the constant improvement that modern employees seek.

Example: Specify training milestones in your employee experience roadmap for different stakeholders. You may even specify the type and topics of the training programs you'll deliver to the entire company, a particular department, managers, or new hires.

State different activities and events that allow employees to grow their careers. And unless you're building a role-specific employee roadmap, those apply to any worker and entail, for instance, learning new skills, setting career goals, and reviewing performance.

Example: Mention that your personnel will lean on a learning experience platform to grow new knowledge at their own pace and convenience.

4. Retention

Retaining talent revolves a lot around the manager-employee relationship. And managers must nurture the health of that relationship by

• Setting responsibilities clearly.
• Defining relevant yet attainable goals.
• Offering appropriate compensation and benefits.
• Recognizing excellence with promotions and rewarding it accordingly with raises.
• Addressing issues identified in regular employee engagement surveys and feedback obtained from team members.

Example: Define that a talent management system will help you pinpoint opportunities to challenge your people and keep them happy with their jobs.

5. Transition and exit

When employees leave the organization for retirement, a career move, or other reasons, the offboarding experience should be respectful and supportive.

Exiting employees might be more open to sharing feedback, as there is no more perceived risk of retaliation. 

Example: Conduct exit interviews to gather insights. Identify any trends in employee departures to improve the employee experience for future employees. For a shortcut, use our exit interview survey template .

Keeping in touch with former employees can benefit potential re-hires and create a strong employer brand.

👀 Check out how BCG runs a "Return to BCG" program as part of their L&D arsenal.

✅ 5 Extra elements to include in your employee roadmap

• Performance management

How will you celebrate the accomplishments of your people? 

One thing's for sure: It won't be without performance management on your employee roadmap!

That's the starting point for managers to outline performance goals. But it's also a baseline for workers to know how to raise their game and hold themselves accountable.

Example: Include performance review milestones in your employee experience roadmap. For instance, instruct managers and employees to have biannual performance reviews.

🙌 Before adding performance management directions to your employee roadmap, read our article on handling performance management challenges effectively. 

• Work-life balance

A healthy work-life balance is super-duper important for your staff's well-being. And that's not only at the workplace. That's in their personal lives, too!

Luckily, there are a lot of directions on workplace environment you can establish in your employee roadmap, such as

• A flexible schedule policy
• A no-meetings day per week
• Open chats about work-life balance struggles

Example: Include a well-being service in your employee experience roadmap and state that you'll offer anonymous consults with a professional.

Could you work for a manager whom you didn't trust? We couldn't either, especially in a remote work setting. Otherwise, we'd underperform and even consider leaving the company.

Managers must be approachable and available when we need them. They must be active listeners, act on employee feedback, recognize their team's efforts, and take action when required.

For instance, micromanaging is terrible for remote workforces. On the other hand, enabling them with the conditions and tools they need for an outstanding performance is splendid!

You can't monitor performance and unfold improvement areas without trust in leaders. And frequent informal conversations with teams and their members individually are pretty effective ways to build trust in the workplace .

Example: Specify that video conferencing tools help employees feel more comfortable raising red flags they need their managers to act on.

Having an employee roadmap indicates that your company has a positive culture. But let's get down to the details of the organizational culture guidelines your roadmap must contain.

• How will you welcome your new hires into the company culture?
• Is onboarding a smooth process?
• Do you have a diversity, equality, and inclusion program in place?
• Do you promote employee enablement ?
• Do you advise open, kind, and honest communication among everyone?

Example: Define that each new hire will have an onboarding buddy, and everyone must use inclusive language in the workplace.

• Team building

There are two mandatory ingredients for building cohesive teams: collaboration and teamwork. And there's no sense of belonging to a group without them.

Example: Establish in your employee experience roadmap which collaborative tools are mandatory company-wide.

🪜 3 Steps you cannot skip when launching an employee roadmap

Now that you know what an employee experience roadmap contains, you're good to learn to build one. Roll up your sleeves and follow these steps.

1. Create the roadmap and prepare its execution

Define goals. Run engagement surveys and stay interviews, but most importantly, talk to your staff about their experiences at work.

Find out the barriers they face to achieving their career goals (as long as those goals align with the company's mission and vision).

And determine the business outcomes you aim to get from an enhanced employee experience and supporting your personnel's goals.

Define metrics. List the criteria you'll use to evaluate the organization's employee experience. These numbers will clarify how close you are to reaching the goals previously defined for the roadmap:

• absenteeism rate;
• employee turnover rate;
• employee net promoter score (or eNPS) ;
• offer acceptance rate;
• employer reviews (from employer review websites such as Glassdoor);
• revenue per employee;
• employee goal achievement rate;
• promotions per quarter or year;
• time to fill open positions;
• average employee tenure;
• employee satisfaction rate (from satisfaction survey results).

Add elements to the roadmap. Include the roadmap components discussed in the previous section, ranging from recruitment to performance management.

Specify directions, timelines, and stakeholders. Your employee roadmap is an action plan per se. And so, it contains the steps to implement the employee experience you seek to provide to your people. 

For instance, outline the steps to build a healthier office space and how often employee feedback sessions must take place.

2. Launch the plan and monitor its impact

Once you create the employee roadmap and define metrics to evaluate the employee experience, it's showtime! This means executing the action plan and measuring its efficacy.

Rely on specialized software to efficiently monitor progress towards your employee experience goals. Track the chosen metrics and address negative employee experience trends in a timely fashion.

Tip: Research industry benchmarks to compare your employee experience metrics against.

3. Collect employee feedback

There's no employee experience without employees. This means you must know their opinion about the employee experience they get at your company.

Gathering employee feedback is essential to assess how effective your employee roadmap is. And it also allows you to adjust the roadmap accordingly in an ongoing effort that must be part of your employee engagement program .

📝 Employee roadmap template

Any template is about laying the foundation for consistency. And your staff craves a consistent employee experience!

You, too, crave the consistency of offering a positive employee experience to your entire workforce. That's why we designed an employee roadmap template with detailed explanations and events suggestions. 

🏆 6 Best practices for improving your current roadmap

If you already have an employee roadmap, these are the success tips to keep top of mind:

• The elements of your employee experience roadmap are interrelated, just like your people strategy pillars. And so, your roadmap must account for that. For instance, leadership training and upskilling play a role in performance management.
• Collect feedback from your staff to address employee experience areas in which your company is lagging. For instance, a fancy new office building won't do the trick if your employees want more flexibility.
• Design career paths to support your workforce's inevitable desire for career growth . And include the development of a career progression framework in your employee roadmap. 

• Hold your leaders—not just HR personnel—accountable for the change required to enhance the organization's employee experience. Support their continuous learning by contemplating a leadership development plan in your employee roadmap. And measure their success in performance reviews.

• Don't forget to add recognition tactics to your employee experience roadmap! Any worker loves to obtain the recognition of their peers. For instance, with performance management as an element of the roadmap, you'll define that praising staff's accomplishments must be a common practice. 

💡 Discover a large collection of employee recognition ideas .

• Face the process of building your employee roadmap as continuous improvement. And update the document to reflect your company's business goals and priorities whenever they shift.

🕵️‍♀️ 5 Reasons why you need an employee experience roadmap

Boosting employee engagement might be the most well-known benefit of employee roadmaps. 

After all, you can't underestimate the effect of engaged employees on any company's bottom line.

A highly engaged staff member is 18% more productive . They also stay at the organization longer—18–43% do.

Workers with a positive impression of their employer and work environment likely engage deeper with their job, peers, managers, and the business. And they bring an extra 23% profit and 10% more loyal customers to companies.

But let's focus now on the less-known perks of an employee experience roadmap.

First, the employee roadmap promotes a shared understanding of employee experience across the organization. And that levels the expectations of workers, team managers, and HR staff towards the employee journey.

But an employee roadmap is also an excellent opportunity to assess your workforce's impression of the company. That information drives the creation of the roadmap and, later on, the evaluation of its effectiveness.

Lastly, while building the roadmap, you figure out how to align staff's career goals with the organization's mission (if possible).

An employee roadmap settles clear milestones for different sets of stakeholders . It also states the business outcomes for the overall employee experience and each period of the employee journey.

And this transparency lets your people know what they're working towards. As a result, they experience a more positive journey at work.

Prioritization

The activities and events listed on an employee experience roadmap are ordered by priority. And that helps reduce the overwhelming effect of improving your company's employee experience.

Plus, the employee roadmap is a statement of how employee experience is a priority to your organization . Recognizing how important employee experience is demonstrates how committed HR is to your success, not just the company's.

Accountability

The employee roadmap contains a full picture of what the employee experience should look like. And knowing w hat employees, managers, and departments must do for employee experience makes them accountable for it.

For instance, one of the elements in an employee roadmap is performance management. You must clearly outline business outcomes, milestones, activities, and events tied to performance management. That's how you'll hold everyone accountable for the success of your performance management strategy.

Strategic outlook

An employee roadmap is a strategic plan. It tells the activities and events you plan to implement to offer a positive employee experience to everyone in the organization.

But it also says what business outcomes you expect from implementing the plan . And those outcomes are nothing more than the benefits or impact of remarkable employee journeys.

➡️ Automate the key processes on your employee roadmap with Zavvy

Zavvy's people enablement platform allows you to automate the many processes in your employee experience roadmap.

• Employee engagement —measured by engagement surveys that give you strategic insights into key metrics over time for targeted engagement initiatives
• Career pathing —to create career frameworks with clear requirements for every role and level, sustaining career growth backed by unbiased data
• Learning experience —supported by a library with thousands of training courses from dozens of providers, matching all sorts of development goals
• Performance reviews —centralized and streamlined in a platform that allows you to customize the process, run it, and analyze the results, whether that's a 360-degree, 180-degree, rating scale, or anonymous answer review

📅 Schedule a demo today to see firsthand how Zavvy is the solution to make your employee roadmap come to life!

What is an employee roadmap?

An employee roadmap is a strategic plan to raise a company's employee experience levels within a specific timeframe.

How do you create an employee roadmap?

• Plan —the goals to achieve with the roadmap, the metrics for evaluating the roadmap's efficacy, the employee experience guidelines and timelines to follow, and the involved stakeholders.
• Execute —the action plan with the assistance of dedicated platforms capable of efficiently tracking the metrics and drawing conclusions on employee experience trends.
• Revise —continuously, based on the feedback obtained from staff.

What should an employee roadmap include?

An employee roadmap must contain directions on:

• Recruitment
• Career development

Alex is a marketer at Zavvy. On this blog, he mainly shares insights gained from discussions with selected experts and from helping our customers set up and improve their onboarding or learning programs.

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Last updated January 30, 2023

A guide for mapping your employee experience

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From the moment a candidate becomes attracted to your business, you have the opportunity to engage them in a unique and fulfilling experience. But the journey from interested candidate to fulfilled employee doesn't just happen – instead, it should be deeply considered and intentionally mapped.

Planning what your company’s employee experience (EX) looks like brings structure to each stage involved in an employee’s journey, leading to a consistent and equitable experience for each team member. 

By prioritizing a structured approach to creating an employee experience, you can develop a process that keeps you, your team, and other people leaders accountable for ensuring every employee has the best possible experience at your organization. Tracking the employee experience (through surveys and other touchpoints) confirms that the experience you're providing is fair across the organization.

In this article, we introduce our approach to mapping the employee experience and provide you with a guide for evaluating your existing employee experience and a step-by-step process for optimizing the experience for everyone involved. 

Why and how we created the employee journey mapping guide

The employee experience directly impacts your team’s performance, engagement , and well-being , and has a tremendous influence on your customer satisfaction and even profits. So to help your company streamline the employee journey mapping, we created a guide to optimize your existing EX and/or create a new approach that will work better.

In our experience working with over 5,000 diverse companies – with workforces ranging from 100 employees to 100,000, from bra makers to bread makers, from Melbourne to Milan – we've noticed there are a few things that are constant. All employees experience a typical set of stages in their journey, with specific key moments that make or break their experience. We created our guide for mapping the employee experience to help you make those key moments exceptional. By tapping into what makes your employees and company unique, you can supercharge engagement and retention at your organization.

Start mapping your employee experience

How an employee journey map can help you .

Mapping your employee experience offers multiple benefits to all parties involved in an employee’s journey, including:

• Helping HR teams effectively track an employee’s progress during their time at your company
• Enabling managers to better guide their direct reports through the employee journey
• Provide individual employees with a consistent and fair path toward success.

“With this guide, you’ll learn the common stages of your employee’s journey and prioritize the places where you could have the largest impact,” says Fresia Jackson, the Culture Amp People Scientist behind the design of this worksheet. “By putting yourself into your employees' shoes, you can see whether your values show through during key moments that matter and where you may be falling short. But since insight is nothing without action, we’ll also guide you through transforming what you learn into unique and impactful actions.”

Four steps for mapping the employee experience 

First of all, it's crucial to understand each individual stage of an employee’s journey. 

After you understand each stage, there are four steps you can take to map your employee experience:

• Moments that matter
• Organizational context
• Employee lens
• Prioritize.

Below, we discuss each stage briefly, but if you want to learn more about each stage in detail, check out the full guide to mapping the employee experience .

Step 1: Moments that matter

Within each stage, there are moments that will especially (and uniquely) matter to the employees at your organization. For example, within "Attract," a "Moment that matters" is "Receiving their office letter."

Although every stage is essential, there are specific stages that will drive particularly outsized results in your workforce. By identifying and focusing on the particular moments that matter to your people, you can help boost engagement, performance, and more.

Step 2: Organizational context

The employee journey map is incomplete without organizational context. Factors such as your company mission , vision, and values are crucial aspects of your employee experience. How your organization exhibits and lives these will directly impact an employee’s experience working with your team . As such, defining and prioritizing the key moments that demonstrate your values is crucial.

Step 3: Employee lens

In addition to the company’s ability to live its values, the employee’s lived experience also shapes how they will interact with their work. For example, are they new parents? Where are they in their career? It's important to consider how an employee’s unique (and intersectional ) identity or circumstances could impact their journey at your company. 

Step 4: Prioritize

The final step of the employee journey mapping process is to choose what stage and moment to focus on. It's a good idea to be narrow, as it will be hard to measure whether your actions are effective if multiple changes happen simultaneously.

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How to Build an Employee Experience Roadmap

Performance Management, Supercharged

Today’s post is by guest author Grace Lau, the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad.

Employee engagement means a lot to a business. Happy, engaged employees are more creative and up to 13% more productive . Companies with high engagement scores report better outcomes , including increased customer loyalty, reduced employee turnover, and fewer safety incidents. So, how can you boost engagement levels and achieve similar success?

According to McKinsey research, it’s all about the experience — employees are 16 times more engaged if they reported having a positive employee experience. Learning opportunities, career paths, and other long-term objectives make it easier to recruit and retain talent, and it also facilitates positive customer interactions and increased customer loyalty.

With this being the case, you’d think that every company would plan an engagement-driving employee experience. However, we often see businesses that develop a workplace culture without considering the entire employee journey. 

Find out how your HR team can build an employee experience roadmap that keeps your employees engaged through their entire journey at your company, from application to exit interview.

What is an employee experience roadmap?

First, let’s talk about employee experience and employee journeys. The employee experience is how employees perceive your organization during their employee journey, which is the time from the beginning of the recruitment process and their onboarding experience to the end of employment. Their interactions with your business impact their feelings toward it and make up their employee experience.

For example, an employee’s experience was positively affected by the thorough training they attended before starting their role. But it was negatively affected when they learned there was little room for growth in the department.

When you look at it this way, you can see that employee experience and the employee journey go hand-in-hand. Designing a roadmap keeps your organization focused on delivering a positive work experience throughout the employee journey. 

Now let’s explore the stages of the employee journey in more detail.

“At each stage of the employee journey, it’s key to keep listening and learning what matters most to employees over time, and to use that employee feedback as your guide for creating a strong foundation — a culture of interconnectedness that results in great retention for your company and long-term satisfaction for your employees.” - Curt Steinhorst, speaker, author, and founder of Focuswise, via Forbes.

The 6 stages of the employee journey

The employee journey is a constant process. From the moment a candidate responds to a recruitment ad, their experience is already being shaped. 

To improve your employee experience, you first need to create an employee journey map.

1. Attraction

The journey begins with your recruitment material. How you brand your company and how you convey your culture in job listings is vital. Consistency across channels will help you to maintain a positive image. 

A straightforward application process is also a key factor. Software options such as applicant tracking systems can help recruiters to streamline the application process.

2. Recruitment

Being open and communicative during your recruitment process promotes a positive image, even with unsuccessful applicants. Collecting feedback from candidates can help you refine the process for the future.

3. Onboarding

Once the hiring process is complete, onboarding is your chance to make a new hire’s first experience a positive one. Training is important, but so is welcoming new employees into your company culture. 

Again, collecting feedback during and after the onboarding process will help you improve the experience. Creating a training proposal template can help you make incremental changes to improve onboarding over time. 

4. Retention

Retention of employees comes down to whether or not they’re satisfied in their role. You can facilitate this by empowering them to succeed. Having regular progress meetings with managers and setting achievable goals helps keep employees engaged.

There are other factors that affect employee satisfaction, of course. The first thing that comes to most people’s minds is compensation. However, personal factors such as work-life balance and employee wellbeing are becoming bigger determining factors as far as employee retention is concerned.

5. Career development

Giving your employees the chance to develop helps both employees and employers. If you want employees to stay engaged with your business, you need to give them the opportunity to learn new skills. 

Recognizing achievements, skill development, and promotion from within will help you build a core of highly-engaged staff.

6. Separation

Regardless of how great your company is to work for, employees sometimes leave. Take the opportunity to conduct exit interviews. These can provide you with valuable insights into how employees view your business from an internal perspective.

Look to identify both the reasons that employees have stayed at your company and the reasons they’ve chosen to leave. Both sides will give you an idea of how to improve the experience of current and future employees.

How to build an employee experience roadmap

An employee experience roadmap will give you a clear plan for consistently engaging your employees. 

Here are the key steps you need to take in order to start the mapping process at your organization:

1. Launch surveys to identify your starting point

To start out, you’ll want to discover how your business is perceived by your current staff. You want to know how your employees feel about your business. Surveying your employees or conducting informal chats can be a good starting point. Your HR team can also conduct stay interviews to find out what it is that keeps employees at your company long-term.

Ask questions like, “Do you feel you get the support needed to succeed in your current role?” More detailed and subjective questions like this can yield open and insightful responses. You can assess this along with more concrete figures such as turnover rates for a complete picture.

2. Define your objectives

The data from these surveys will give you an idea of your current standing. It’s down to you to determine where you want to go from there. Whether you’re looking to boost recruitment numbers or increase your Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS), you’ll need to set your objectives. Define what you want to achieve from improving your employee experience. You’ll need a clear idea of your goals so that you can measure your progress.

3. Determine your metrics

Your objectives will help you determine the best metrics to measure the success of your roadmap. You can think of employee satisfaction much like customer satisfaction and measure it in similar ways. 

Remember that your employee’s own opinions are central to the process. Therefore, collecting direct feedback should be an integral part of your roadmap, whether you opt for a data-driven or more holistic approach.

4. Determine your course of action

Your roadmap should include a plan of action and the steps to implement it. That could be new employee well-being programs or plans for a healthier office space. It could be more regular employee feedback sessions. Whatever your goal, a roadmap will help you visualize it.

You might choose to focus on new hires and onboarding or on your employee retention, but it’s likely that you’ll be combining several of these steps into one plan. 

Plan your actions the same way you would if you changed your business cloud phone system , for example. Making several changes to your business at the same time can be a huge challenge. As a result, you should use your roadmap to avoid spreading your resources too thin.

5. Launch your plan

Once the planning phase is over, it’s time to put it into action. Refer back to your roadmap as you go to keep your goals in focus. Collecting feedback during and after implementation will help you smooth out any areas that need improvement.

6. Evaluate and improve

Using the metrics you determined earlier, evaluate the overall success of your changes. This may take time and the collation of a lot of data. Give your changes time to take effect. Learn from any mistakes and refine your process for continuous improvement. 

Engage and Retain with a Roadmap

In the rush toward a data-driven business, employee satisfaction can often get overlooked. Plenty of businesses are aware of the value of customer satisfaction, but not as many consider employee experience to be of the same importance. 

However, disengaged staff will cause an increase in employee turnover. This will bring down your ROI on training and recruitment. In addition to that, staff members who are less engaged won’t provide the same level of customer experience. The knock-on effect of this will damage your business’s revenue in the long run. 

On the other hand, a good employee experience promotes positive customer experiences. Happy and motivated staff promote the kind of positive and proactive environment that customers enjoy, so it’s vital that each business utilizes an employee experience roadmap.

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Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad, an AI-powered communication platform providing cloud collaboration solutions for better and easier team collaboration through products like Dialpad's enterprise call center software. She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content. Grace has also written for other domains such as VMblog and nTask.

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Home > Neocase Blog > How to Build an Employee Journey Map (With Template)

About the Employee Journey Mapping Template

An employee journey map is a visual overview of how your employee interacts with your organization, it's tools, and people at each step of their journey with you, whether that be their first impression on their first day with onboarding, crossboarding into a new role within the organization, or even offboarding as they transition into the next chapter of their career.

Employees are at the heart of your organization, so it’s important that you empathize with their pain points, wants, and needs so you can design and build an employee experience that is personalized and human.

It’s important at each step to connect with the employee experience, so we keep the “human” in Human Resources.

Why use an Employee Journey Mapping Template?

Some of the significant reasons HR teams use employee journey maps to visualize the employee journey is to better understand:

• How the employee interacts with different members of their team, the organization, and tools.
• To better communicate processes and experiences internally to their teams and leadership.
• To understand the various steps at a deeper level, and to identify gaps that need to be filled and areas that could use improvement.
• Mapping out employee journeys helps HR understand what an employee is going through at each step of a journey, so they can better empathize with the employee on a human level.
• It’s also an easy way to communicate the process and keep all stakeholders aligned on how it works.

Employee journey mapping helps you figure out:

• How and when to update your processes.
• When are where you may need to add new touchpoints.
• Identify where you can automate more of the processes to make it more efficient for both the employee, the HR team, and managers.
• It helps you focus each of the steps and touchpoints that are most important to an employee, so you can better understand how to build the process in a way that will benefit them the most.

With this understanding, you will be better equipped to create different pathways within your journey and provide a more personalized experience for your employees.

Finally, by helping you understand employee needs, an Employee Journey Mapping Template will help you to identify the points in the journey where your employees need the most help and then target your employee support efforts towards those specific parts of the process to develop a more seamless experience.

When to use an Employee Journey Mapping Template

You can map out an employee journey whenever you want to understand the employee’s perspective, solve a specific problem, or improve cross-functional collaboration inside your organization.

Before building your employee journey map, think about what you want the employee to accomplish. Is this their first impression of the company with new employee onboarding? Are they transitioning into a new role within the organization and need support transitioning into this new role and department? There are many different journey’s that an employee will take during their time with you.

Make sure you understand the challenges they’re facing, then write down your goals and objectives and follow the steps below throughout each phrase to create your ideal employee journey:

What does the employee do? What are the actions they will take in this step of the journey?

For every step of the employee journey, add what your employee is supposed to accomplish, what is the end goal for them to be able to move to the next step?

Imagine if the employee is onboarding and this is their first introduction to the organization on a larger scale since the interviews, what does your employee need to accomplish? Do they need to sign any documents or provide any additional information? If they have questions, how do they get a hold of you, or how can they find the answers themselves? Where do they click?

What tools do they interact with? Who on the team are they going to be connecting with?

Touchpoints are all the places where employees will interact with the company, the various tools you use, and different people (like the employee's manager).

You can start by interviewing current employees and listing the touchpoints they are already using. Next, list the ones you would like them to use in an ideal world. This will give you a great baseline to work from to understand what is working, what could be improved, and what is available.

Employee thoughts + feelings

What is the employee thinking? What is the employee feeling?

Build the full picture of the employee whose journey you will capture on your map. Use all the demographic and psychographic data available to you to put yourself in the point of view of the people you’re building this process for. This is an important step because this is what can help you create an experience that is more personalized and conversational, rather than transactional.

Process Ownership

Who is leading and responsible for making this step happen?

Name who is responsible for and leading each employee journey research and findings.

Employee journey maps can be as zoomed-in or zoomed-out as you need them to be. Working with your team and the necessary stakeholders, decide whether you want to plan out an idealized version or the current state of the employee journey, a day in your employee’s life, and how your organization can create those “WOW” moments for your employees.

Opportunities

Once you start mapping, you’ll begin to see gaps in the employee journey that you may not have otherwise considered. As you develop the map, use Neocase’s Employee Journey Mapping Template to draw up a list of what you will need to fill in those gaps.

To finalize, work through the Employee Journey Map and see if you can answer the questions you started with at the beginning of the process. Then, you can better visualize how to meet your objectives.

Now it’s time to take it for a spin!

Make any necessary changes. You may want to repeat the process over time to add new touchpoints or automations to improve the experience.

FAQ about the Employee Journey Map template

How do i use an employee journey mapping template.

You can create your Employee Journey Map with Neocase’s free Employee Journey Mapping template and customize it according to your employee needs and internal processes. When creating your own template, remember to define the actions, what touchpoints you want to analyze and keep track of, and who at your organization has ownership of which step.  

How do I put my employee journey mapping template into action?

Once you’ve shared your employee journey map with your team and received internal buy-in, it’s time to put the plan into action so your employees can experience the benefits of this new personalized journey. Use Employee Journey by Neocase to drag and drop each step of your process into an automated workflow builder. This will help you keep track of the success of your new journey with advanced reporting at each step of the employee journey.

For more information on how Employee Journey by Neocase works, reach out to our team today and we’ll be happy to show you around the tool.

Happy mapping!

Noah Mithrush

Noah Mithrush manages the North American digital marketing initiatives at Neocase. Noah focuses on providing Human Resource professionals with valuable resources to continually learn and grow in their expertise, and stay up to date with the latest HR trends and innovations. She resides on the west coast in Vancouver, BC, Canada where she enjoys the outdoors with running, biking, and hiking.

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FigJam Explore your coworkers’ experiences with an employee journey map

Trace colleagues’ company paths from their recruitment to their next promotion and collect valuable insights along the way.

Employee journey map template

Employee journey mapping is beneficial not only for performance management but to also gain insight into internal communications and company culture. Chart every employee’s trek to the top with this collaborative template.

This compass points toward satisfied coworkers

Check in with teammates to understand the different pathways to progress and clarify the climb ahead.

Chart the course: Visualize each employee’s journey from preboarding to onboarding.

Stay en route: Improve upon hiring and training processes based on coworker feedback.

Rate the trail: Gauge the challenges that come with each step in your onboarding process to support new hires and current team members.

FigJam Reach the summit without scrambling

Teammate staring down a fork in the road? FigJam’s employee journey maps reveal stepping stones and danger zones so everyone can reach the peak. Whether you’re innovating the onboarding process or carving out a growth opportunity, easily source feedback and support from your trusted spotters through Lil’ Notes, Emoji, and Anonymous Thoughts.

All roads lead to Community

Make inroads with an employee journey map that guides your team’s growth. Then, take a beautiful, productive detour with templates from the Community.

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What is an employee journey map?

An employee journey map follows a team member’s path at a company, from their recruitment to their offboarding. These charts cover every stage of employee life cycle and growth in the company in order to reveal where they are on their career trajectory, point out where they’re going, and shine a light on their experiences along the way. For employers, these maps can uncover trends and areas for improvement and inspire employee-centric thinking—especially when they contain feedback from team members. Employee journey maps are also beneficial for gaining insight into company culture, employee experience, and engagement.

How many steps are there in the employee journey?

While each employee experience and journey is unique, most pathways include these five major steps:

1. Recruiting

2. Onboarding

3. Development

4. Retention

5. Offboarding

As you create your map, you’ll fill in touchpoints, recommendations, and employee experiences for each of these distinct stages. FigJam’s collaborative employee onboarding journey map template makes it easy to analyze each moment of the journey and solicit insights from your fellow travelers.

What is the employee onboarding journey?

The onboarding stage of the employee journey follows your colleagues’ experiences from their hiring through the end of their training period. During this time, the employee can expect to meet their coworkers, learn company procedures, enroll in benefits, and maybe field some questions at a get-to-know-you lunch.

Suppose you were to unpack this step on an employee journey map example. In that case, you might note the expectations at this time (understand HR policies), touchpoints (one-on-one with supervisor), and the employee’s experience (big fan of the company lunch, not so keen on the thermostat setting). FigJam's employee journey mapping templates make it easy to track everything.

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Employee Journey Map

Analyze, improve, and capture an employee journey, study and observe the employee experience at different phases of the employee journey..

• Professional templates to visualize employee interaction and engagement
• Wide range of shapes and shape settings to easily create and segment employee personas
• Video-conferencing to connect with teams and peers in real-time

Visualize an Employee’s Journey in Minutes

Templates library to plan data-driven employee journeys in the organization . Edit, customize, or extend the template intuitively.

Drag-drop and Plus create to map the starting point, career progression, and the employee’s journey until the resignation.

Color palettes, shapes, and imported images to create unique employee personas. Map out and color code employee journeys for personas in different departments.

Infinite canvas to map out the employee journey using shapes, tables and connectors . Create an employee journey map to understand the process and identify key areas or issues.

Connect with Peers in a Single Platform

In-app video conferencing and whiteboarding to collaborate with any number of participants . Get feedback from the team and interact with ease while working on Creately’s visual platform.

Real-time commenting to share feedback on the different employee journeys, personal experience and start discussions via comment threads. Async!

Multi-cursors to find the participants on the canvas editing and viewing; practice seamless team collaboration on a shared visual workspace.

Workspace statuses Draft, In Progress, In Review, Approved, or Final to mark the different team’s work on the employee journey and let the project managers track and determine the deadline for smooth deliveries.

Discover Opportunities and Insights

Tables and charts to arrange data . Segment your employee journey maps according to the departments, designations, and timelines to analyze relevant datasets easily.

Global search aggregate information on a complex employee journey map via search queries.

Full-version history to find the changes done by other collaborators. Name the versions according to the date, iteration, or by the name of the collaborator. Revert to an iteration as required.

Help Enhance The Employee Journey

Use multiple perspectives with organizational charts and data models to design plans and strategies . Find effective ways to improve organizational performance by taking employee interaction into consideration.

Context-aware shapes that store the relevant information and switch according to frames; timelines, organization charts, and many more.

Multiple access and role levels to streamline sharing, reviewing, and editing employee journey maps with clients and external stakeholders.

​​ Embed on any site, share with anyone via email, or send an invitation to collaborate.

Add-ons to easily embed in Google/Microsoft documents, slides, and sheets.

What Is An Employee Journey Map?

An employee journey map is a graphical representation of the key stages of the employee experience that helps the HR and the senior management to analyze and understand the overall satisfaction and issues that help implement improvements and growth opportunities for the careers. It can also be used to depict the employee journey from the onboarding and hiring process, right up to the resignation of an employee.

How To Create An Employee Journey Map?

• First define the reasoning and goals of your employee journey map with a cross-functional team. Gather any relevant data, statistics, feedback, or research. Start drafting your plan on Creatley’s visual platform with your team in real-time. This approach will help understand your employees and their experience, and figure out the goal of the employee journey map. You can also interview specific employees from different departments to understand employee experience.
• The next step involves segmenting your employees according to their department, team, etc. Create employee personas to help gain more insight, by using shapes and specific colour palettes for each department or formats based on your requirements. You can also easily edit employer persona templates from Creately’s templates library.
• Once you have narrowed down your employee personas, you can start tracing the employee journey for each of them right from the first contact to the final offboarding process. Consider employee interactions that have occurred, such as those who have rejoined or retired from the organization.
• Start mapping out the employee journey, taking into consideration the data you collected. Identify the effects of touch points such as performance reviews, first interviews, promotions, training etc.
• Get feedback from your employees.
• Combine your employee journey with your feedback. Look at where the organization can make improvements to improve the employee experience. Export your PNG, SVG, JPEG, and PDF for sharing with different departments of your organization, or invite them to work on shared workspace via an email or invite link.