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The employee journey map: A guide to creating great EX for a multigenerational workforce

The world of work has never been more exciting — and unpredictable — than it is now. Not only have remote and hybrid setups become the new normal, but the workforce has changed, with five generations coming together to collaborate daily. As critical as diverse perspectives are to business success, this intergenerational convergence has introduced complications; only 6% of organizational leaders feel ready to manage multiple generations. (1)  

Thankfully, frameworks like the employee experience (EX) journey map can help businesses through this transition. Overall, companies that design a great EX report lower stress and burnout, and their team members are 1.4 times more likely to find purpose in their roles. (2) 

But how does mapping the EX journey work? Employee journey maps help chart and visualize the end-to-end experience of working at a company from the perspectives of its team members. The primary purpose of these maps 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, as well as the roles that recruiters, hiring managers, human resources leaders, and team leads play in shaping the experience.

We’ve created a downloadable employee journey map template that HR and people leaders can use as a starting point for their own journey maps. This article also provides a step-by-step process for making the most of this free resource.

• Deloitte , 2021 ‍
• McLean & Co. , 2023 ‍

Our free employee journey map template

Our customizable template is a great place to start if you’ve never explored employee experience journey mapping. It allows you to document your company’s processes across key EX touchpoints (from recruiting and onboarding to offboarding). Then, use the notes and next steps section to start brainstorming and drafting how you’ll make improvements.

Check out the employee journey map example below to see how this can look for your organization. ‍

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

What is the employee journey?

The employee journey encompasses all the 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 , influencing how team members feel about your organization — from pre- to post-employment.

“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 ‍

Why map out the employee journey?

Mapping out the employee journey means creating a visual blueprint to identify current areas for improvement and customize for different roles. What’s more, it allows you to stay in touch with changing professional priorities and career paths, which no longer look like they once did. 

‍ “Traditional career paths, where employees rise up the ranks and retire at the peak of their career, are going away,” write HR experts and analysts Emily Rose McRae, Peter Aykens, Kaelyn Lowmaster, and Jonah Shepp in their collaborative article for HBR . 

“Some employees don’t retire at all or do so after a career shift or break, including performing different or less lucrative work. For example, Pew research found that 19% of Americans aged 65 and older worked in 2023, which is nearly twice as many as 35 years ago. More employees are stepping out of the workforce mid-career, shifting across industries or embracing contingent work and other nontraditional employment models at some point in their careers.”

When you consider how quickly the professional landscape is changing, mapping out the employee experience journey should stand out as 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 considers your team members’ unique professional and personal career goals. This allows you to offer better training opportunities , which, according to 83% of HR professionals, impacts employees’ 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 — A journey map can help you better understand what candidates are looking for throughout their tenure. That way, you can tailor your messaging to better resonate with job seekers’ highest priority goals. ‍

7 steps for creating your employee journey map

Whether you utilize our customizable employee experience journey mapping template or create your own, outlining the employee journey lets you easily spot where your EX efforts fall short; then, you can 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 within your organization. ‍

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

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

If this is your first time creating a journey map, your initial goal may be to identify current paint points, gaps, and challenges so you can better support your team over the next 12 months. 

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

2. Conduct employee research

To get to the core of issues, you must 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 other employees for fresh, updated insights. In your research, be sure to understand how team members describe their current journey and ideal experience; this way, you can identify existing pain points and structure a better path. 

Here are a few questions you can ask employees:

• What expectations did you have at each stage of your professional journey? ‍
• 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? ‍
• How did you feel about communicating with your manager and leadership team at each stage of the process?

Providing anonymous employee feedback channels is crucial if you want 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 — These allow employees to confidentially share their input and ask questions without prompting. That’s why Leapsome offers 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, 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 due to previous inaction while encouraging your team to provide more and better feedback.  

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

Use the gathered data to hone in on the most urgent issues. 

For instance, you may notice positive reports during the recruitment and onboarding stages as you review your research. However, you might uncover that 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 organization’s professional growth processes.  ‍

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

4. Craft your EX journey map

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

• Touchpoints — where employees come into contact with managers, leaders, and other stakeholders ‍
• Processes — 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 solutions

Of course, every organization has 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.

🔎 Use our template to link to a fully fleshed-out process and next steps for each stage!

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 should 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. ‍
• 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 link it to current business goals and objectives. ‍
• Break your strategy into steps — Be sure to offer timelines and share who will lead each initiative. ‍
• Follow up — After presenting your plan, contact leadership and stakeholders to address questions and concerns. ‍

7. Refine & iterate on your journey maps over time

Like customers, the needs of your employees can change and fluctuate — often 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! 

🔎 Employee experience platforms like Leapsome can help you streamline how you gather team member data, set the right EX goals, and implement strategies 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 Leapsome supports employee journey mapping

As the workforce's demographic makeup changes and career paths evolve, EX journey maps can help you be more strategic about the insights you gather and improve the employee experience more efficiently. If your organization is genuinely committed to putting its people first, you need team member input 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 Leapsome Surveys and Reviews , you can track engagement and pulse scores, retention rates, your eNPS, and employee performance scores with charts and visualizations to show how those metrics have changed over time. Then, use Goals 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’s AI-powered survey summaries to actively listen, gain insights, and implement changes based on employee feedback to make the entire work experience more meaningful. 👉 Book a demo

Leapsome Team

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Employee journey mapping: How to get started (includes template)

Improve your employees' experience with our employee journey mapping guide. Includes a free template and tips for mapping touchpoints and gathering feedback.

Joris Luijke , Co-Founder & Co-CEO

An Employee Journey Map helps define and prioritize the work that needs to be done to ensure that the employee experience is top-notch. It encompasses all of the experiences of an employee, including the moments that matter , from before their first day on the job until after their last day.

This blog explains the stages of the employee journey, what exactly an employee journey map is and why it’s important, and of course, how to create your own employee journey map. I’ve created this guide with learnings from my own experience, and I’ve included tips from John Foster, who led the People Function at brands like IDEO, Hulu, and Truecar and used Employee Journey Mapping as a key component of the employee experience. 

We have just launched our Employee Journey Designer that will allow you collaborate with your team to make your own Employee Journey Map!

After reading this guide, and with Journey Designer, you’ll be set up for success when it comes to creating your own employee journey map.

Let's get started!

What is the employee journey?

The employee journey is made up of all of the moments that matter across the employee experience. 

One way to think about it is in contrast to the employee lifecycle, which is often presented in a linear way like this: 

• Development

While this tidy employee lifecycle can be a helpful tool for envisioning the employee experience, what it misses is the moments that matter. It’s built to account for and track the traditional pillars of HR. 

The employee journey, in contrast, is built to capture the moments that matter and to embrace that the employee journey is not linear. In the journey, the focus is on the individual and mapping experiences that they may encounter at any time, regardless of if they’re a new or tenured employee. 

Employees face a stream of challenges at work as they navigate their onboarding, daily work, and eventual departure. Employee Journey Mapping helps improve their overall experience.   

What is an employee journey map?

An Employee Journey Map lists many predictable experiences of an employee, from before their first day on the job until after their last day.

The Journey Map helps companies define and prioritize the work that needs to be done to ensure that the employee experience is top-notch.

Visually, an Employee Journey Map is made up of the following: 

• Category - a moment or collection of moments that make up the employee experience (e.g., onboarding)
• Moments - detailed parts of a Category that employees would recognize as a unique experience (e.g., offer accepted, pre-onboarding, the first week), usually time-bound
• Touchpoints - any direct or indirect transaction with the employee (e.g., sending a welcome letter or instructions for a new hire onboarding buddy )

Categories across the employee journey

Unlike the linearity of the employee lifecycle above, the categories of the employee journey are best thought of in a non-linear fashion - they could occur at any time and often in parallel. 

A few categories that would be beneficial to include in your employee journey that are often not present in the employee lifecycle include:

• Manager development
• Life events ( work anniversaries , parental leave)
• Holidays and observances  

An important note is that you can’t predict all of the stages of the employee journey because you can’t predict all moments in someone’s journey. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try for as much coverage as you can, or that employee journey mapping is unimportant. In fact, it’s critical. 

Why is employee journey mapping important?

Employee Journey Mapping allows you to proactively shape the employee experience and give people the support and guidance they need at the right time. The more proactive you can be, the better your performance will be as a company because people are not struggling to find basic information or understand expectations, they’re able to focus on performing their duties. 

In addition to the impact on the employee, Employee Journey Mapping helps your HR team as well. Your Human Resources or “People People” genuinely want to be there for people at the right times, but we can’t be everywhere at once. Employee Journey Mapping allows us to understand what moments could possibly happen and gives us a tool to track what's happening across the organization and then we can proactively deliver the right information.

John Foster, who led the People Function at brands like IDEO, Hulu, and Truecar and used Employee Journey Mapping as a key component of the employee experience. At IDEO, a design company with human-centered design at its core, John learned the fundamentals behind experience design.  

He explains that Journey Mapping is an essential first step, “When I start in a company - I introduce my team to the Journey Map in our first meeting.” He defines the People function around the idea that there is an employee journey and that designing and managing employee experiences is what the People function does.  

“Employee Experience goes beyond the regular services HR that generally provides. With the journey map, we outline all the touch-points when an employee interacts with the company - and how they perceive those interactions. Once the journey map is complete, it's amazing! You can take a rookie new HR hire and say, this is how things work around here. Follow the map! It's like going into the Tube in London; you can get where you need to go because there's a tube map," John adds. 

How to create your employee journey map

Creating an Employee Journey Map from scratch may feel like a big project. And it would be, if you didn’t have tools or resources to lean on. 

This is why we created a powerful (and free) online tool to make creating your map simple, collaborative, and fun! It’s the tool I wish I’d had as an HR practitioner. 

Here are the six steps to create your Employee Journey Map:

• Log in to Pyn’s Employee Journey Designer
• Select Categories in the Employee Journey Map that you’re interested in designing first
• Customize Moments by adding or removing Touchpoints
• Review each Touchpoint. For each, add Priorities and Owners
• Filter to parts of the journey that you need to work on first
• Ensure you’ve invited your teammates to work on the Map together

1. Log in to Pyn’s Employee Journey Designer

Your email address is all you need to log in to Pyn’s Employee Journey Designer for free today . 

Our free Journey Mapping tool provides you with a fast track to a usable Journey Map. It provides you with hundreds of possible Moments and Touchpoints already visualized across the Journey Map categories. 

In the past, most teams initiated their journey mapping process with an (in-person or virtual) whiteboard session, using sticky notes to jot down all the Moments that Matter in the employee journey at their company. Imagine having to keep track of hundreds of Moments and associated Touchpoints in your head!

With Pyn’s Journey Designer, you can simply customize what’s provided on the template. You can also invite other team members to co-create your ideal employee experience using your Map.

2. Select Categories in the Employee Journey Map that you’re interested in designing first

In Pyn’s Employee Journey Designer you begin with a sample map that includes eleven Categories across the employee journey like ‘Onboarding,’ ‘Manager Development,’ and ‘Exit’.

When creating your Employee Journey Map, you likely won’t focus on eleven Categories all at once. Instead, we recommend selecting those Categories where you want to start designing your employee experience first.

For example, when cybersecurity company Exabeam started their Employee Journey Mapping exercise, they initially focused on the Candidate and Onboarding journey and decided on Moments that Matter collaboratively with Talent Acquisition, People Operations, IT and Legal.

3. Customize Moments by adding or removing Touchpoints

Once you've determined the Categories you want to prioritize, you can customize the Moments that Matter within each Category—those instances that employees would distinctly recognize as significant experiences. For instance, Onboarding moments that matter may include the ‘day the job offer is accepted’, and ‘pre-onboarding’,and the ‘initial day or week’, and ‘the 90-day review’.

For each of these Moments, you have the flexibility to add or remove Touchpoints - the direct or indirect interactions required with employees to guide them through that Moment. 

For instance, on a new starter's first day, instructions are directed to the new employee, to their manager, and potentially to their assigned new hire buddy. Each of these interactions is an important Touchpoint in shaping the overall experience.

4. Review each Touchpoint and add Priorities and Owners

In order to improve the employee experience, you need to know who will be improving what parts of the journey. So, once you've identified the Touchpoints for each Moment, it's important to assign owners and establish priorities. Touchpoints requiring immediate enhancements can be labeled as 'high priority.' You have the option to designate your colleague(s) as the "owner" of specific Touchpoints, inviting them to collaborate on your Employee Journey Map.

For Touchpoints demanding more ongoing work, consider including additional details such as a comprehensive description and associated "Actions" pertaining to relevant activities linked to that Touchpoint, such as messages, checklists, tickets, etc.

For instance, a moment like 'pre-onboarding' may involve Touchpoints with both the Hiring Manager and IT. Actions tied to IT instructions might involve the creation of a JIRA ticket, while actions related to Hiring Manager instructions could include sending a Slack message with information on how to develop a new Hire 90 Day Plan.

5.  Filter to parts of the Journey that you need to work on first

Filtering allows your HR team to tailor your view based on specific properties, such as Team, Owner, Priority, and more. It’s also useful for refining what you’re sharing to different stakeholders.

For instance, if your focus is on elevating high-priority moments within the Onboarding experience, you can apply filters as follows:

• Category: Onboarding
• Priority: High
• Current State: Needs Improvement and/or We don’t have this yet

Or, for an overview of all Touchpoints owned by your Learning & Development team marked as high priority, you can utilize the following filters:

• Team: L&D

6. Ensure you’ve invited your teammates to work on the Map together

If you haven’t already, make sure to invite your team and other stakeholders to work on the Journey Map collaboratively. 

Collaborating with others on your employee journey map is important because it: 

Takes into account diverse perspectives: “The more diverse the group of stakeholders that we involve in the process of developing our map, the more diverse the group of employees the map will work for,” says DEI Consultant Natania Malin Gazek. Different team members may have unique insights into various stages of the employee journey, contributing to a more comprehensive and accurate map.

Builds cross-functional alignment: To be an effective tool, your Journey Map should be relevant across different departments and functions. Collaboration ensures alignment between teams, leading to a more unified understanding of the employee experience.

Boosts buy-in and engagement: When employees contribute to the mapping process, they are more likely to be invested in the outcomes and committed to the work needed to get there. 

Encourages knowledge sharing: Members of an HR team can sometimes work in silos. Collaboration helps to break down those barriers and encourage the sharing of knowledge and expertise. Team members can provide valuable information about specific touchpoints or stages of the employee journey that others may be less familiar with.

Improves accuracy and quality: Errors or oversights are more likely to be identified and corrected when there is a collective effort to review and validate the map. 

Start building your Employee Journey Map today

Get a head start on your Employee Journey Map and log in to Pyn's Employee Journey Designer today. You'll go through the same steps outlined in this article within the product, and be well on your way to building a better employee experience.

Joris dreamt of having Pyn as Head of People at Atlassian and Squarespace. Now dreams of getting a sleep-in on Sunday.

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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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.

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.

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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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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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Your Comprehensive Guide to Employee Experience Journey Mapping [With Template]

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To understand and improve the overall employee experience, many organizations are turning to a powerful tool called employee experience journey mapping. This guide provides a comprehensive overview of the mapping process, including the benefits of creating one from scratch or using existing employee experience journey mapping templates. It also shares the best practices for successful implementation and a map template you can use.  

Happy and engaged employees are not only more productive, but they also contribute to a positive work culture and lower turnover rates. To understand and improve the overall employee experience, many organizations are turning to a powerful tool called employee experience journey mapping.  

In this guide, we will explore what exactly an employee experience journey map entails, its benefits in improving engagement levels within your organization, and the key components of an effective map template. You will also learn the steps involved in creating one from scratch or using existing employee experience journey mapping templates available online as well as best practices for successful implementation.  

Understanding Employee Experience Journey Mapping  

Employee experience journey mapping is a strategic process that allows companies to visualize and analyze every touchpoint throughout an employee's journey with the organization. From recruitment to onboarding , daily tasks to career development, this comprehensive map provides valuable insights into how employees interact with different aspects of their work environment.  

By understanding each step along the way, employers can identify areas for improvement, foster engagement at critical moments, and ultimately create a workplace where employees thrive. Here are the benefits you can expect from this activity:  

Know what’s causing disengagement

Employee experience journey mapping helps identify the pain points and obstacles that lead to disengagement among employees. By understanding these challenges, organizations can take targeted actions to address them and improve overall employee satisfaction.  

Drive retention by engaging at key points of the experience

Journey maps highlight critical touchpoints where employees are most likely to become engaged or disengaged. By focusing on these moments, companies can implement strategies to enhance engagement, increase loyalty, and ultimately retain top talent.  

Unearth insights into your company’s culture

Journey maps offer valuable insights into an organization's culture by showcasing how employees navigate through different stages of their employment lifecycle. This understanding allows leaders to make informed decisions about cultural changes that will positively impact employee experience.  

Speed up onboarding and productivity

A well-designed journey map provides a roadmap for effective onboarding processes, ensuring new hires feel supported from day one and are set up for success in their roles more quickly. This leads to increased productivity and reduces time-to-competence for new employees.  

Learn more: What Is Employee Experience? Explained With Statistics and Examples  

Components of an effective employee experience journey map  

A well-designed employee experience journey map consists of several key components that help organizations gain valuable insights into their employees' experiences. These components work together to create a comprehensive and holistic view of the employee journey, allowing businesses to identify pain points, areas for improvement, and opportunities for engagement.  

Touchpoints

These are the critical moments or interactions that occur throughout an employee's journey with the company. Touchpoints can include recruitment processes, onboarding procedures, performance evaluations, training programs, and even exit interviews. By identifying these touchpoints and understanding their significance in shaping the overall experience, organizations can focus their efforts on enhancing those specific areas.  

Personas represent different segments or profiles of employees based on demographics, roles, goals, and motivations. By developing personas that align with your workforce diversity and understanding their unique needs and preferences at each stage of the journey, you can tailor your strategies to meet their specific requirements.  

Correlations

This is another important component in mapping the employee experience journey. They involve analyzing data from multiple sources such as survey feedback, performance metrics, and HR analytics to uncover patterns or relationships between different touch points or stages in the journey. This helps organizations pinpoint which factors have a significant impact on overall satisfaction levels among employees.  

Data visualization

Visualizations help to transform complex data into easily understandable and visually appealing representations, enabling organizations to gain valuable insights about their employees' experiences.  

By using data visualization techniques such as charts, graphs, and infographics, companies can effectively communicate the different touchpoints and stages of the employee journey. This visual representation allows stakeholders to quickly grasp the overall employee experience and identify areas for improvement.  

Visualizing data also helps in identifying patterns or trends that may not be immediately evident when looking at raw numbers or textual information.  

Employee experience journey mapping templates provide a structured framework that guides the mapping process and ensures consistency throughout. With an employee experience journey mapping template, you have a starting point that helps organize your thoughts and identify key touchpoints. Using an employee experience journey mapping template saves time and effort as it eliminates the need to start from scratch. They also serve as collaborative tools by enabling teams to collaborate on one document simultaneously.  

Learn more: 19 HR Analytics Metrics You Should Track  

Steps to Create an Employee Experience Journey Map  

To create the map or fill out an employee experience journey mapping template, organizations need to:  

Step 1: Define the employee personas  

The first step in creating an employee experience journey map is to define the different employee personas within your organization. This involves understanding the unique characteristics, needs, and expectations of each persona. By segmenting employees into distinct groups based on their roles, responsibilities, and demographics, you can gain valuable insights into what motivates them and how they interact with various touch points throughout their journey.  

To gather insights about employee personas, you can conduct surveys or interviews with employees from different departments or job levels. Additionally, analyzing HR data such as turnover rates and performance reviews can help identify common patterns among different groups of employees.  

Step 2: Identify touchpoints in the employee journey  

Once you have a clear understanding of your employee personas, the next step is to identify the key touchpoints that they encounter throughout their journey with your organization. Touchpoints are interactions between employees and various aspects of their work environment such as recruitment processes, onboarding programs, training initiatives, performance evaluations, communication channels, and career development opportunities.  

To identify these touchpoints effectively, consider mapping out each stage of the employee lifecycle - from pre-hire to retirement - and pinpoint where significant interactions occur. Conducting focus groups or workshops with employees can provide further insights into which touchpoints are most impactful for them.  

Step 3: Gather employee feedback and insights  

Gathering feedback from employees is crucial for gaining a deeper understanding of their experiences at each touchpoint. Implement regular pulse surveys or feedback mechanisms that allow individuals to express their opinions openly regarding specific stages in their employment journey.  

Additionally, maintain open lines of communication through platforms like town hall meetings or suggestion boxes so that employees feel empowered to share ideas for improvement. Leveraging qualitative research methods such as interviews or focus groups can also provide rich insights into individual experiences.  

Step 4: Analyze and prioritize touchpoints  

To analyze touchpoints, start by gathering data from various sources such as surveys, feedback sessions, and performance metrics. This will provide insights into how employees perceive different interactions throughout their journey. Consider factors like ease of use, level of support provided, and emotional impact.  

Once you have collected data on all touchpoints, it's time to prioritize them. One approach is to use a matrix or scoring system that considers both the importance of the touchpoint (how critical it is to overall satisfaction) and its current performance (how well it currently meets employee needs). This allows you to focus your efforts on high-impact areas that require improvement.  

Another method is to involve employees in the prioritization process through workshops or focus groups. Their input can help identify pain points they believe are most important to address. Remember that prioritization may change over time as new information emerges or organizational goals shift. Regularly review your analysis and update priorities accordingly for continuous improvement.  

Step 5: Design and implement improvements  

Once you have identified the critical touchpoints in your employee journey, it's time to design and implement improvements that are employee-centric. The goal is to enhance the employee experience at these key moments and create a positive impact on engagement and satisfaction.  

To start, gather a cross-functional team comprising HR professionals, managers, and employees themselves. This ensures diverse perspectives that can lead to more effective solutions. Brainstorm ideas for each touchpoint based on the insights gathered from Step 3.  

Next, rank the improvements based on their potential impact on employee experience. Consider factors such as feasibility, cost-effectiveness, and alignment with organizational goals. This will help you focus your resources where they are most needed.  

When designing the improvements, keep the needs and preferences of your employees in mind. Tailor them to address pain points or areas for growth identified during earlier stages of journey mapping. Ensure that any changes align with your company culture and values.  

Implementing these improvements requires clear communication and change management strategies. Engage employees throughout the process by explaining why changes are being made and how they will benefit everyone involved. Provide training if necessary to ensure successful adoption of new processes or technologies. Monitor the effectiveness of implemented improvements through ongoing feedback loops with employees.  

Learn more: The Ultimate Guide to HR Automation  

Best Practices for Employee Experience Journey Mapping  

In order to create an effective employee experience journey map, it is important to follow some best practices that can help you maximize its impact.  

Involving employees throughout the process

By seeking input and feedback from employees at every stage, you can ensure that their perspectives and needs are taken into account, resulting in a more accurate and valuable map.One way to involve employees is by conducting focus groups or one-on-one interviews to gather insights about their experiences. Another important step is to form cross-functional teams that include representatives from various departments or job roles.  

Using visual representations and storytelling techniques

Visual elements such as infographics, diagrams, and flowcharts provide a clear and concise way to present information, making it easier for employees to understand their journey within the organization. Visual representations allow employees to visualize different touchpoints in their experience, helping them identify pain points or areas for improvement. They also make it easier for HR teams and managers to communicate complex concepts and data in a visually appealing manner.  

In addition to visual elements, storytelling techniques can be employed to create a more engaging employee journey map. By weaving narratives into the map, companies can bring the employee experience to life by highlighting real-life scenarios and challenges that employees may face at each stage of their journey.  

Continuously updating and iterating the journey map

The employee experience is dynamic, with new touchpoints and challenges emerging as the organization evolves. By regularly revisiting and refining the journey map, companies can stay attuned to their employees' changing needs and expectations.  

A key aspect of continuous updating is gathering ongoing feedback from employees. This can be done through surveys, focus groups, or one-on-one conversations. By listening to their experiences and insights, organizations can identify gaps or pain points that may have been overlooked initially.  

Another strategy for keeping the journey map up to date is by monitoring trends in employee engagement and satisfaction. This could involve analyzing data from employee surveys or tracking metrics related to retention rates or productivity levels.  

Aligning the journey map with business goals and objectives

By aligning the journey map with the organization's goals and objectives, companies can ensure that their efforts to improve employee experience are directly contributing to overall business success.  

Start by identifying key touchpoints that have a direct impact on achieving those goals. These touchpoints should be prioritized based on their significance in driving desired outcomes for both employees and the organization. For example, if one of the company's main objectives is to increase employee productivity, then touch points related to onboarding, training, or performance management may take priority.  

Another aspect of aligning the journey map with business goals is considering how improvements in employee experience can support broader organizational strategies.  

Learn More: AI in HR: Revolutionizing the Future of Human Resources  

Tools and Resources for Employee Experience Journey Mapping  

Tools and resources play a crucial role in creating an effective employee experience journey map. These tools help streamline the process, gather data, analyze insights, and visualize the entire employee journey. Employee experience journey mapping templates are among the most common resources used for this purpose – here’s one you can easily recreate on Excel to get started:  

Platforms like Notion provide a collaborative space where multiple team members can work together to create and update the employee journey map. It allows real-time editing, commenting, and sharing of documents, ensuring everyone is on the same page.  

HR software like Darwinbox offers features specifically designed for HR professionals to analyze employee experiences at various touch points throughout their journey. These tools integrate with existing HR systems to collect relevant data and generate meaningful insights.  

Dedicated journey mapping platforms such as Smaply enable you to visually represent the employee experience from start to finish. They provide employee experience journey mapping templates, drag-and-drop functionality, and customization options to create comprehensive maps that capture every stage of the employee's interactions with your organization.  

Using these tools will save time and effort while enhancing the accuracy and effectiveness of your employee experience journey map creation process. Remember to choose tools that align with your specific goals and requirements for optimal results.  

Learn more: 70 Ways to Improve Employee Engagement for HR  

Conclusion  

With disengagement rising – as seen in the Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting trends -- companies cannot afford to overlook the importance of employee experience. As employees become more discerning in their career choices, organizations that prioritize and invest in improving the employee experience are more likely to attract and retain top talent.  

Employee experience journey mapping provides a comprehensive framework for understanding and enhancing every touchpoint along an employee's journey within an organization. By visualizing each stage of the employee lifecycle, from onboarding to offboarding, companies can gain valuable insights into what drives engagement or disengagement among their workforce.  

While there are tools available for creating digital maps like Notion or Smaply, HR analysis software such as Darwinbox can also provide valuable insights into how different touchpoints impact overall organizational success. Schedule a demo with Darwinbox to learn more!    

Recommended Reading

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End-to-end employee journey + mapping template

Experience. Whose experience business strives to improve more often? Their customers. But what about employees? No CX will be great with poor EX. It’s simple like that. If you already got it and want to figure out an end-to-end employee journey in your company with mapping, keep reading, and we’ll show you how to do it in the most efficient way. 

For the record, employee experience mapping is not much different from customer experience mapping. But there are nuances. You can read about those in our latest whitepaper , while in this article we are going to walk you through the employee persona’s creation and mapping of each stage of a fictional end-to-end employee journey. And we’ll do it using a detailed example with multiple steps, problems, and ways of experience’s improvement of an employee persona. Finally, at the end of the article, you will find a full-fledged and downloadable end-to-end employee journey map template to create your own map upon it.  

• 1 Employee persona creation
• 2.1 Stage 1: Attraction
• 2.2 Stage 2: Recruitment 
• 2.3 Stage 3: Onboarding
• 2.4 Stage 4: Development  
• 2.5 Stage 5: Retention 
• 2.6 Stage 6: Exit
• 2.7 Stage 7: Advocacy
• 3 The template 
• 4 To sum it up

Employee persona creation

It all starts with research. Collect complete, reliable, and varied data as a foundation for your personas. You can take the easy path and use the job role or the time spent in the company to divide your team into groups to form personas, but it doesn't guarantee that those will be really homogeneous in their journey with your organization. Imagine that one of the two top managers has been working in your company for several years and started their way as a trainee while the other is recently hired as a CFO. Similar job roles, different journeys. Think of using behavioral patterns instead of age and gender only for creating employee personas. Then spice up created profiles with more details (demographics included).

For this article, we created a persona of a young professional with no work experience who is willing to make a career in the financial sector. His name is Michael and he wants to separate from his family, marry his girlfriend, and have a child. Therefore, in addition to interesting job tasks, our persona is interested in material benefits. Michael also values communication and a friendly team since he’s nourished by strong social ties.

Let’s finally meet him.

As you see, we also wrote down Michael’s motivations, frustrations, the technology he’s used to, a few demographics, among other things. All to make him feel real and add an empathetic perspective. Be sure to do the same for your employee persona to sympathize with them when mapping and analyzing their journey.

Once you’ve done with the persona, the journey mapping comes into play. 

Creating an end-to-end employee journey map 

First of all, you have to scope. Like really. Mapping any end-to-end journey is quite challenging, but mapping an end-to-end employee journey may burn you out—there are lots of events during an employee’s life, even if they don’t spend a very long time in your company. Let alone people who’ve been working at the same place for decades. Just imagine what an event-rich journey they have. 

Yet if your team is ready to take the challenge, let’s see how to map such a long journey on Michael’s example. We’ll follow his path from the decision to find the job to resignation and further actions. Technically, it’s not the end-to-end employee journey since we skip some stages like the awareness one, but aside from that, we’re going to nail it. 

Stage 1: Attraction

At this stage, your future employee starts looking for a job. And it’s a non-linear process. No matter when and how you and your future employee find each other (recruiting cold emails, online brochures , third-party hiring platforms , etc.), they may well have had interviews with other companies. Therefore, already at this very early substage, it’s essential to hook your future hiree with a good experience. If you involve a third-party HR, be sure they represent your company correctly as they form the first impression. When you do it yourself, try to choose the right channels for communication, and the same applies to timing. If you write to a person in an informal messenger on Saturday night, most likely, communication will not work out. When you offer remote jobs , make it clear in the ad.

And remember that once you catch the eye of a person you’d like to hire, they start to collect information about you as an employer. Does your website provide comprehensive data about the company? Is the description of your vacancy exhaustive? What do former and current employees say about you on the Internet and offline? How easy is it to reach out to you and ask for details? 

• Awareness & First contact 

We divided Michael’s Attraction stage into two parts as it's action-intensive. First, Michael is trying to look for jobs at different websites and asking friends for help. Until he gets the message via Linkedin from a recruiter hired by a famous company to find an aspiring financier. Michael’s pleasantly surprised since his profile is almost empty and is worried, too. How did the recruiter find him? Maybe it's a prank? The job title looks unfamiliar. And Michael doesn’t believe that such a well-known company could have chosen him and that he can pass the interview. Besides, the recruiter doesn’t give him enough information about the position and work conditions. So he continues to consider other options. 

The first contact is a significant moment in your relationship with a soon-to-be hiree. When entrusting this task to another person, make sure that they have comprehensive information about your company and vacancy and fully disseminate it. 

Also, think about your job description. Is everything clear about it? Try not to use internal terminology since a person from the outside will not understand whether they fit the position with unusual wording. 

Michael takes things into his own hands and starts researching the company. Truth to be told, even if you tell the candidate your company’s entire history since its inception, they will scrutinize you. What do your competitors say about you? What is the impression of your social media? Or maybe an acquaintance of an acquaintance of a future employee works in your company and can share something? You might think that reputation is something that’s out of your reach, but in fact, it’s a reflection of your employees’ experience. One or two controversial opinions will not affect anything, but if disgruntled workers leave you en masse, rest assured, this will be reflected in the subsequent hiring process.

So Michael reads job review sites and looks for additional information about skills that the position supposes. After talking with the recruiter and personal research, he decides that he has nothing to lose and wants to meet the HR. 

Stage 2: Recruitment 

Okay, the candidate is in your metaphorical bag, and the next stage begins. During recruitment, you will meet them for one or a few interviews, give them a test task, make your choice, and let them make theirs.

To begin with, how are you going to meet a candidate: in person or via video call? If the latter, offer several options that work for the candidate and time slots to choose from. The point is not even to demonstrate flexibility, but that the first meeting is already a very anxious event, so the platform should definitely be familiar for both parties to reduce problems with communication. If you want to talk about something specific, send the applicant a list of topics or questions. It’s soothing to prepare and collect their thoughts in advance for people whose work doesn’t involve public speaking.

Interviewing is stressful too, but you can call on a colleague to support you while the candidate doesn’t have that luxury. A comfortable environment will be more than welcome. One of the possible problems can be a weak internet connection. If you both can’t fix it, renegotiate for another time so as not to spoil your conversation. When it comes to offline, prevent your candidate from getting lost on the way to your place by telling them in detail how to find the office. And meet them at the entrance if that’s possible.

Is it a match? Make the offer. But make sure your candidate knows how long the decision-making process takes. Otherwise, they may accept another offer before you will make yours. 

Michael gets the invitation for the interview that will take place in the office. He’s glad that he’ll immediately see his possible office. Before the meeting, Michael searches the company’s website and stumbles upon a vacancy he likes and the recruiter never mentioned. At the same time, he doesn’t see the vacancy they were talking about. Michael is confused. Can he mention his interest in another position during the interview? Why didn't the recruiter tell him about it? What if the recruiter messes up the vacancies and the interview will be devoted to another job position? Of course, most likely, the site was simply not updated on time. What about yours? Does the information on it mislead future employees?

Michael quickly finds the office and is greeted by the HR and CFO. He’s confused again as the recruiter said that today the meeting would be with the former only. Michael is treated with coffee and the women are walking him to a cozy meeting room, yet his nervousness grows. In your case, be sure to inform a candidate and notify about the changes in advance.  

After the interview, Michael leaves the office in a good mood, but he gets no feedback and his excitement soon gives way to anxiety. It’s clear that you need time for other interviews and to consider the candidate, but a couple of general phrases about how the meeting went will be great and indicate the time when you will give your answer.

Michael has fallen into the trap of long waiting that no one had told him about in advance. He even starts looking in the direction of other vacancies when he finally gets a call from the HR. She tells him the company wants to hire him and asks to receive the offer on an online platform they use via the link from the email she’s going to send to Michael. It seems to be joyful, but ugh. In addition, the candidate doesn’t remember everything the HR said over the phone, and the follow-up email only contained a link to the offer. You have to keep in mind that everyone perceives information differently and it’s better to duplicate important details in your emails. In addition, the candidate may not be familiar with the platform you have chosen for making the offer, so attach instructions to it just in case.

Stage 3: Onboarding

We move on to the next stage of the end-to-end employee journey. Here, the new hiree goes through the paperwork, understands in practice what they have to do, proves to colleagues and top management that they can handle the position, and draws conclusions regarding the team and working conditions. This is a kind of honeymoon period, in which sometimes there’s not enough honey. Yet everything’s in your hands.

What happens to the new hiree before the first working day? This varies from company to company. Some prefer to do all paperwork before day X, while some include it in the onboarding process. Somewhere an internship for adaptation takes place, while somebody invites an employee on an office tour. Certain employers send a letter with useful links related to the job and the company or treat their newbies with branded sweets. Never done anything like this before? It might be worth a try. 

What else should you pay attention to? The process of signing a contract. If it’s digitized, make sure the candidate knows how to use the specific software. Even better, add some fun to the process. Come up with a quiz so that in a playful way you can check if the hiree’s ready to join the team. 

Once the work starts, the employee dives into the ocean of new information, people, and tasks. Provide a buddy to break the ice. Give them detailed instructions, tell who and with what questions they may contact. This will help the employee navigate in the beginning in the company and reduce stress. And once the probationary period is over, share the fullest feedback. Something went wrong and you want to stop working together after probation? Do it with empathy and explain your reasons. Is everything okay? Forget the routine phrases and better share your plans for further cooperation and ask what the employee would love to improve or change in the work process. 

Let’s see how Michael goes through onboarding…

• Pre-boarding

Too bad, even lovely things may not be in your favor. For example, Michael gets an invitation to the office to meet the team while the team has not been warned or relieved of duties. As a result, the meeting doesn’t go very well, and Michael sees that he’s not very welcome. It’s likely that people would react differently if they were not worried about the tasks they were distracted from. Think over such initiatives, taking into account not only the new employee’s interests but also those of the rest of the team.

Michael is doing well, but he worries that no one gives him feedback. Does he manage? Do colleagues enjoy interacting with him? It may seem obvious, like, no one scolds, so everything’s fine. But it's vital to remember that without feedback, an employee can feel lost and lose motivation. Michael also finds it difficult to navigate the office, which is huge. He is supposed to contact the HR for all questions, but she's always busy and it’s difficult to find her on the spot. This could have been avoided by distributing onboarding questions among the entire team. It will help the hiree get to know everyone in the process and won’t distract the rest of the team from their work too much.

• End of probation

Michael works hard. He thinks he’s lucky with the job and wants to establish himself and get a promotion. He’s always ready to help colleagues, stay after work and even do something on a day off. However, in the bustle of the work, no one pays attention to this. And it’s a dangerous moment since the employee can burn out at the beginning of their journey with you. Overworking your staff brings mutual losses for both them and the company. If working extra hours necessary, be sure to pay for additional hours or taxis if the employee returns home late. It will sweeten their experience and prove you to be a fair employer. 

Stage 4: Development  

We’ve come to the longest stage of the end-to-end employee journey, Development. As part of it, the employee develops skills, gains new knowledge, improves as a professional, grows up the career ladder, etc. 

First, you need to set the right direction for the employee journey. For example, not all employees strive for vertical skill development and more responsibilities, some would love to raise their competence level, perform more complex tasks and become the best within their niche. You have to note what’s more appealing for the worker and help them along the way. For instance, not everyone has the courage to ask their boos to pay for a course or an industry-related conference. Make the first move when you see that the employee’s ready.   

Sometimes top managers quit, retire, or the company grows and new positions open. If you exclusively hire outside executives, your employees find themselves hitting a ceiling that they can't break, which diminishes motivation. So if you have a fitting candidate from the current employees, don’t hesitate to promote and support them after that (e.g., help with the relocation or new skill development). 

There are more that can take place during this stage of the journey—parental leave, office events, wage increase negotiations, business trips, and so on. Michael’s example will shed some light on some. 

• Development & career planning

Michael volunteers to help his boss in almost every project. This way, he distinguishes himself from others and tests the boundaries of his skills, identifying gaps and points for growth. But he makes mistakes every now and then because there are many things he has never done before. If you see that some employees take the initiative, want to grow, and positively affect your business, help them. Pay for their studies, if possible. Offer to buy the tickets for a job-related conference they’d love to attend. Entrust interesting projects. All this will have a positive impact on their experience and motivation.

• Skill upgrading

Michael is eager to improve his skills. He goes to the HR, but she’s not aware of how the company can help him. Yet the HR is ready to collect the information for him, which is already good. You can always anticipate such a thing. For example, send emails to employees with training options, exciting industry hybrid events , and various workshops. Motivated employees will seize the opportunity.

• Annual performance evaluation

Michael understands that some evaluation of him as an employee takes place only once a year and that’s too rare to get the promotion sooner. Think about the ways to give your employees feedback on an ongoing basis. Send emails upon completion of projects, highlight employees’ achievements at meetings, make little everyday notions, and such. Since an employee who knows how useful they are and what professional advantages they have will be much more effective than those who just go with the flow.

Michael gets the promotion, but his joy quickly gives way to fatigue. He can’t expand the team while the pile of tasks can beat the Eiffel Tower. Employers often miss this point. When somebody gets a promotion, their previous job and tasks don’t dissolve in thin air. Are you sure your teams have enough members to work efficiently? Notice that when an employee ups the career ladder, it’s like yet another onboarding for them and they need as much support as at the beginning of their work with you.  

• Office event

Michael works so hard that he doesn't communicate informally with his colleagues. One day he comes to an office party and realizes that he’s all alone in the crowd. After propping up the wall, Michael goes home. In fact, this is terrible. If a person doesn't fit into the team, there’s a high probability that you will lose them for good. You can't force people to be friends, but you can create situations where communication and networking flourish. Well-coordinated teams work more efficiently since people in good relations find it simpler to turn to each other for help, discuss issues and come to compromises. 

• Paternity leave

Michael takes paternal leave and falls out of the life of the company. He sometimes communicates with a few colleagues, but very superficially. During this time, he loses contact with the organization and even thinks he should quit since he spends too much time at work yet has no friends there. If such an employee has the opportunity to sometimes participate in the company’s life, invite them to your events, ask how they are doing in an informal chat, make them feel that they are still part of the team and are expected to come back. Consider sending them weekly letters with major events in the organization to stay informed and don’t feel overboard. This also will make it easier for them to get back to work.

Stage 5: Retention 

In fact, this stage has no strict boundaries, it lasts in parallel with other stages throughout the entire end-to-end employee journey and concerns the employee's interest in work. Money alone can’t stipulate motivation, so businesses need to look for alternative solutions and individual approaches. Some workers crave challenges, while others want comfort and a friendly environment to do their job with joy.

And there will always be a moment of doubts and the desire to change their job. Some employees will overcome this crisis, others will quit the company. The problem is that this moment is difficult to foresee. In order not to miss it, maintain a good relationship with your team and not only give them your feedback but collect their feedback too. And do it regularly. Did you notice a decrease in satisfaction? Take action.

• Doubts 

After the paternity leave, Michael is in disarray, as he has been able to look from the outside at his career and get horrified at how much time and energy he gives to work, where he’s not heard and no one’s eager to help him. The team doesn’t grow, in contrast to the number of tasks that become routine. Michael receives a good wage, but every day he’s less and less happy about it. Do you see that the employee has slowed down or stays up late? This won’t affect your business and not in a good way since the performance level of such a worker drops. Talk to them confidentially and try to solve their problems. It’s always easier and cheaper for you to prevent your employee’s burnout than squeezing all the juices out of them and looking for a replacement.

Stage 6: Exit

Employees quit, it happens. And this is not a bad thing, teams need fresh blood, and old employees need new horizons. But why do they leave your company? This is an interesting question, and no one will answer it better than the employees themselves. Reach out to those who have already left, speak with those who have decided to do the same. Their feedback may be the most sincere you can have. 

And here it's important to note the interconnection of all stages of the end-to-end employee journey. Not only take into account the information received from those who leave your company but also turn it into an action plan and initiatives that will improve the experience of current employees and prevent their premature resignation. 

• Offboarding 

Michael spends his last days in the company in the hustle and bustle because of paperwork. As a result, he has no time to say goodbye to his colleagues properly. All because he has to figure out how the letter of resignation should look like, what he must do before leaving, and other essential things.

To smooth the goodbye experience, you may throw your colleague a little party or organize a collective farewell so that the leaving person doesn’t go away in silence.

Nobody asks Michael what caused his resignation, but he has something to tell. Former workers’ experience is a great help in enhancing the experience of your current employees. Even if an employee leaves you with a smile on their face and is eager to conquer new peaks, learn more about their experience throughout the journey with your company. Be prepared for possible unpleasant details, as well as to fix those in the future. 

The template 

So, we listed the possible stages of your end-to-end employee journey, but feel free to tweak those, cutting some off and adding more relevant ones when you will map your own case. Our end-to-end employee journey map looks like this:

Above, we outlined what Michael went through, who he interacted with, and what challenges he faced. The map itself has more details, possible problems that many employees encounter on their paths with different companies, ideas on how to improve their experience. You’ll see the internal processes inside the company, channels the persona uses, their emotions, and thoughts. Everything’s visual and ready for further brainstorming, ideation sessions, and updates. 

This template and the employee persona’s profile are free to download and apply to your mapping initiative. 

To sum it up

As you can see, the end-to-end employee journey can be simply huge, and each of its stages is wrapped in many vital nuances and points worth underscoring. We hope that such a detailed example of the journey will help you highlight the necessary stages in your particular case and make the life of your employees comfortable, efficient, and positive. And happy employees will undoubtedly bring success to your company.

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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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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 Sr. Content 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 journey mapping: How to guide

Last updated

26 June 2023

Reviewed by

Miroslav Damyanov

As the Great Resignation continues to inspire employees to leave their jobs, companies must learn how to retain their best employees and attract top talent. 

Discovering why your employees are jumping ship to other companies is key to creating a fresh, compelling experience for current and potential employees. 

Let’s learn how employee journey mapping can help your business. 

• What is the employee experience journey?

An employee's experience with your company is their journey, starting before they even accept a position. 

It begins with scrolling through job opportunities on your website. The journey continues through the hiring and onboarding process and extends throughout their employment. 

The journey involves engagement, training, and development, finalizing at the exit interview.  

Mapping their journey can help you enhance their experiences, allowing you to eliminate any hurdles along the way. Issues an employer perceives as minor events may be significant to employees.  

Employees often begin their employment journey with excitement and expectations. HR and management must learn what makes employees happy to keep excitement high and provide more positive experiences. 

This can ensure a productive, long-term employee versus an employee who does not contribute or leaves shortly after hire. 

Mapping the employee journey allows employers to expand on positive experiences and minimize negative ones.

• What is an employee experience journey map?

Employee journey experience mapping tracks the key experiences during a worker’s entire employment.  

It allows leaders to pinpoint the areas of concern and optimize the positive experience for future hires. The ultimate goal is to attract top talent, motivate them to do their best work, and retain those employees for long-term employment.

An employee journey map works chronologically, starting with the hiring process and examining other vital steps along the way. 

Finessing each step on the map helps employers make changes to: 

Increase employee satisfaction

Improve job quality

Gain a competitive edge in attracting top talent

Employers can use the information from employee journey mapping to identify the most critical experiences for employees and allocate resources to enhance the experience.  

It can also clarify an organization's critical roles and responsibilities and emphasize the most important moments.

• Benefits of employee experience journey mapping

Employee experience journey mapping can help a company attract top talent, boost productivity, and reduce attrition. But that’s not all. 

Understanding what matters most to employees and how their experiences impact their employment can deliver some essential benefits along the way:

Clarify job descriptions

Dissatisfaction and confusion can occur when managers ask employees to do tasks outside their job description.  

Imagine you hire a server for your restaurant and want them to clean the restrooms at the end of the shift. Not including that task in their job description could lead to annoyance when you ask them to do it.  

Effectively allocate resources

Once you determine the areas in the employee journey that need revision or restructuring, you can put time and money into improving them.  

Simple solutions like providing the right tools for the job can improve productivity and how your employee perceives their worth.

Improve employee engagement

An engaged employee is a productive employee. If you discover employees are disengaged with their supervisor or team, journey mapping can help you identify and remedy their experience.  

Team-building exercises or outings could help when employees lack a positive experience. You can also see how engaged employees are experiencing the workplace and replicate that. 

Here are ways to improve engagement:

Find and improve experiences

Everyone sees things differently, and mapping helps you uncover and improve experiences.

Cultivate equity and inclusion

Eliminate bias and inequities within the employee's journey by closing gaps and offering training and support.

Collaboration and teamwork 

Top employees thrive in an environment where their work is meaningful. 

Highlighting touchpoints where different teams can work together effectively can address pitfalls in teamwork and foster collaboration.

Support and recognition

Offering employees the right amount of support and recognition can bring out the best in them.  Journey maps can determine if your recognition programs optimize engagement and lead to greater productivity.  

Continuous improvement

An employee experience journey map will give you a perspective on iterative improvements based on employee feedback. This ensures your company can drive a culture of ongoing enhancement.

An employee experience journey map can determine areas to build upon and define your company's goals and values. It can help you reduce recruitment costs by attracting talented applicants that will thrive within your company's positive environment.

• Stages of the employee journey

An employee's journey generally has four stages:

Recruitment and hiring

Development

Offboarding or exit

Each stage is important to the employee and employer, and mapping determines how to optimize these steps to everyone’s advantage.

You need to draw in top talent before your company can even make an offer.  

During the process, consider how long it takes from application to offer:

Is it taking too long?  

Are you getting the desired amount of qualified applicants? 

Once the process begins, the applicant should get to know your company and what they can expect when working there.  

The candidate should receive quality communication on:

The hiring stages

Their application status 

The job description

The expected salary

A qualified candidate should feel comfortable, informed, and valued.

Onboarding isn’t just filling out benefit information and getting a key card. It also includes getting up to speed with their new team, manager, systems, and processes.  

The employer needs to retain the new employee’s enthusiasm throughout the process.   

Development  

The development stage of the journey includes everything an employer can do to help the employee upskill, get promoted, or become a stronger team member. 

This is usually accomplished through performance appraisals, raises, and constructive feedback .  

During the development phase , employees expect to expand their skill sets, learn how to be promoted, or gain recognition for meeting their goals.

Offboarding

While every employee leaves a company at some point, your goal is to retain them as long as possible.  

Some leave for reasons like an out-of-area move or retirement, but if an employee leaves to join another company, find out why.  

Exit interviews are a great way to learn if there are areas you can improve upon.

• Steps to create an employee journey map

1. Define the scope

Before you begin your employee journey map, define the scope of the map.  

Larger companies will have many positions, resulting in complex maps, so you may want to single out one department or position. Focus your efforts on areas with issues like lower productivity, higher turnover, or other areas of concern.  

Start simply and branch out until you get the information you need. Once you determine the scope of your employee journey map, you can move on to research.

2. Conduct research

You may already have some of the data you need to identify a problem area, such as turnover rates, productivity issues, or information from exit interviews.  

Interview employees in the area you’re mapping. Learn about their problems, expectations, and goals to create employee personas , segmenting employees by role, not demographics.

3. Establish the journey 

Once you’ve selected the role you’re mapping, determine the journey they take and the most important moments along the way.  

If you’re mapping different departments or roles, their journeys may look different.  

Include areas such as recruitment, benefits packages, compensation, and training.

4. Create the map  

Use employee research to craft your journey map, visualizing it from their perspective. Include information from current employee interviews alongside data on turnover, productivity, and exit interviews.  

Include the touchpoints for each stage and highlight the problem areas. Look for similarities and transitions that may point to a problem. Highlight points of frustration, stress, or dissatisfaction. 

Focus on things that worked well, too. Identify moments of delight, satisfaction, or success to replicate and reinforce those experiences. 

Try to be as detailed as possible to determine what to do at each stage of the journey.

5. Take action  

Your employee journey map can pinpoint a mismatch between employee and employer expectations and experiences:

If a pain point is the drawn-out hiring process, find and fix the bottleneck. 

If an employee feels disconnected from the team, encourage team building. 

If a department sees few promotions from within, determine causes and remedies.

6. Refine the journey  

Now you’ve created and implemented your journey map, revisit the process to measure the impact of the changes:  

Has employee turnover decreased?  

Has departmental productivity increased?  

If the results don't reflect your actions, you may need to expand the map to find other causes and solutions.  

• Employee experience journey map template

You can create an employee experience journey map template, or you can invest in a digital tool that creates easy-to-use maps that are shareable with stakeholders. 

How do you measure employee journey?

Employee journeys are somewhat different, but measuring them usually includes the following:

Satisfaction levels indicate how employees feel about their job and workplace.  

Employee net promoter score (eNPS) is a satisfaction and loyalty metric that indicates how many employees would recommend your organization to others as a workplace.

Employee productivity indicates how adept and proficient an employee is at their job and may indicate roadblocks to productivity.

Retention rates measure the number of people remaining in their jobs versus the number of employees who have left.

Employee absenteeism or illnesses are often a key indicator of lack of engagement, dissatisfaction, or problems that may cause an employee to call in sick.

Recognition frequency could indicate that employees aren’t meeting their goals or that management is not recognizing employee achievements.

Internal referrals indicate that employees are happy at their jobs and want to share that job satisfaction with friends or family. 

What are examples of employee journey key moments?

A hiring process that is too lengthy or complex.

Equipment and training are unavailable for new hires.

Promotions are not occurring from a certain department.

Benefits packages are not comparable to those of other employers.

Should you be using a customer insights hub?

Do you want to discover previous employee research faster?

Do you share your employee research findings with others?

Do you do employee research?

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Employee Journey Map Template

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

• 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.

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How to Map Your Employee Experience (Guide + Free Template)

by Katy French

Your employer brand is influenced by many things: your culture, your values, your industry, etc. But it is your employee experience that will ultimately make or break you. Whether or not you realize it, the way you treat your employees trickles into every part of your business, from your product development to your customer service. Unhappy, unappreciated, and overworked employees aren’t interested, willing, or able to give their best to anyone. And with no incentive to stay, constant turnover makes it increasingly harder to cultivate a healthy and happy culture. 

[bctt tweet=”96% of talent professionals say employee experience is becoming more important.”]

—LinkedIn 2020 Global Talent Trends report

Thus, it’s important to ask yourself: Are you delivering the best employee experience possible? And how do you know what that looks like? Luckily, there’s a simple way to get that insight. Simply map your employee experience and you’ll get the blueprint you need to create a better journey from end to end.  

Why Your Employee Experience Matters

To cultivate a strong employer brand, you need to provide a positive, consistent, and cohesive employee experience at every touchpoint—from the first time a potential candidate encounters your brand (even if they’re not looking for a job yet), to the moment they accept the offer, to their final exit interview.

Just like a buyer journey , an employee experience map is a simplified visualization of that employee experience, helping you understand every stage of the journey. At its core, mapping your employee experience is an exercise in empathy, helping you understand what your current employee experience is like, along with key touchpoints, messaging, and insight you need to transform your experience, attract the most talented people, and keep them on board as contributors. Ultimately, it’s the secret to building a better employer brand. 

How to Map Your Employee Experience

The good news is that mapping your employee experience journey isn’t as intimidating as it sounds. Here, we’ve broken down the steps and tools you need to get through it as painlessly as possible. ( You can probably do it in less than a day if you have the right people and access to the right data.)  

Step 1: Identify Your Personas

Your workforce is not a monolith. There are a variety of different people who come to work for you for different reasons. Depending on their unique positions, they will experience your employer brand in different ways. When you go through this process, it is important to complete the mapping exercise through the lens of these different groups. 

To do this, create 3-5 personas to represent these different groups, identifying key factors, such as: 

• Job function
• Specialized skills

You’ll also want to distinguish personas by level of leadership, department, or specific subgroup within the company (e.g. Senior Front-End Software Developers). 

See our guide to creating marketing personas for relevant tips to build your employee personas. 

Step 2: Download the Employee Experience Map Template

To walk you through each phase, we’ve created a free  Employee Experience Template . Make a copy for each persona, then work through the following steps with each persona in mind. 

Step 3: Analyze Each Stage of Your Employee Experience

The employee journey mirrors the buyer journey. But in this case, people aren’t looking to buy your product; they’re looking to join your company. Still, many of their needs and considerations are the same. Here, you’ll analyze their experience at each stage of the journey, answering questions to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses throughout.  

Stage 1: Awareness

Whether they are proactively searching for a new job (an “active candidate”) or fielding a LinkedIn message from a headhunter (“passive candidate”), this is the stage where candidates are exploring their options, learning about open positions, considering the companies they might want to work for, or responding to recruiters. 

• Am I as engaged/fulfilled at my current job as I could be?
• Am I ready for a change?
• How do working experiences/growth opportunities at other companies compare to mine?
• What do I want in a job/career?
• What companies are similar to mine?
• What brands do I admire or would I like to explore?
• What else is out there? 
• Brand/product marketing
• Broadcast (TV/radio)
• Outdoor (billboards, bus stops)
• Social networks
• Job search platforms
• Direct contact
• Experiential/guerrilla
• What formats are most dynamic?
• How can you highlight your Employer Value Proposition ?
• Company profile views (on job search sites)
• Ad click-throughs
• Social followers
• Website visits

Stage 2: Consideration

At this stage, candidates are researching your brand to see if it might be the right fit for them. Beyond your industry, they are looking at what makes you unique: your values, culture, philosophy, track record, etc. 

• Is this role/department a good fit for me?
• Am I qualified for this open position?
• Am I inspired by this type of work? 
• Would I fit in at this company?
• What is the direction of the company?
• Who in my network might have insight about the company?
• What is it really like to work there?
• Website (About Page, Culture Page, Job Page)
• Job search and review sites (LinkedIn, Glassdoor, etc.) 
• Application
• Confirmation email
• Phone screener
• Office visit
• Brand Heart (purpose, vision, mission, values)
• Benefits highlights (on website)
• Culture content (employee spotlights, explainers, initiatives)
• Number of applicants
• Number of qualified applicants

Stage 3: Decision 

During this stage, candidates are making the decision to join the team and go through the onboarding process. Note: What they observe and experience during this phase is especially crucial. It’s important to establish trust, consistency, and transparency from the jump—and to maintain it going forward. Otherwise, they may jump ship quickly. Your interactions at this phase, as well as the expectations you set up, will affect whether or not they can see themselves at the company long term. 

• Am I ready to leave my current position/situation?
• Does the compensation match my value, needs, and/or future needs (e.g., starting a family)?
• Can I grow with this company? 
• Do the work parameters fit around the constraints/demands of my life?
• Does this company seem honest and transparent?
• Offer letter
• Offer follow-up (negotiation, feedback, etc.)
• Orientation
• Training materials
• Team intros
• Personalized welcomes from leadership/coworkers
• New hire swag (t-shirts, water bottles, etc.)
• Personalized items (business card, note pads, etc.)
• Welcome kits (for remote hires)
• Acceptance rate
• Time to hire
• Quality hires
• Diversity of candidates

Note: Regular retrospectives help you learn from both your recruiting failures and successes. T ake a look at how many qualified candidates you took in, how many you talked to, how many you had for final interviews, how many had the correct skill level or background specified. The more insight you have, the more effective you can be.

Stage 4: Retention

It takes work to bring people into your organization, but this is where you really need to deliver on your employee experience.

[bctt tweet=”Employees with positive experiences are 52% less likely to want to leave their organizations.”]  —The Employee Experience Index

Nurturing your people is an ongoing effort, and it requires alignment from top to bottom. Cultivating a healthy culture, promoting your values, and encouraging productive communication are all key to retention. 

• How does this work environment compare to what I expected?
• Do I like and appreciate my immediate team?
• What are the basics of my role?
• What does success here look like for me?
• How can I support the direction of the company?
• Who will support me in reaching my goals?
• What skills am I able to further develop here?
• Would I recommend a friend work here?
• Do I feel a sense of belonging?
• Do I have unmet needs (growth, engagement, compensation, geographic)?
• Am I properly valued (seen, heard, compensated) by my superiors and peers?
• Performance evaluations
• Team-building
• Culture events
• Email, chat apps, intranet
• Initiatives
• Surveys and feedback
• Referral programs
• Employee engagement
• Retention and turnover (voluntary/involuntary)
• Average tenure

Stage 5: Post-Employment

The employee relationship doesn’t end once someone leaves your company. Depending on their experiences, they will remain an advocate for you (and, ideally, send you their high-quality referrals), or they will actively steer people away from you. Thus, the way you handle their exit is just as important as the way you welcome them. 

• Am I making the right choice to leave? 
• What legacy or impact did I leave?
• What skills and relationships will I bring with me?
• Can a continued relationship with this company support my career goals?
• How can I continue to support the company and the people there?
• Exit interview
• Company newsletter
• Review sites (Glassdoor)
• Alumni network
• Goodbye celebrations
• Parting gifts
• Check-ins post-exit
• Departures (voluntary/involuntary) 
• Willingness to refer 
• Alumni referrals

Note: It’s also important to consider where your employees go on their journey when they separate (e.g., freelance, travel, startups, a more challenging role). This data can be useful to identify patterns or figure out why you may be faltering with retention. 

Step 4: Turn Your Insights Into Action

Once you’ve documented your employee journey for each persona, you may notice some similar themes, both good and bad. Analyze each journey individually and as a whole to look for areas of improvement. 

• What are the strongest and weakest parts of the employee experience journey? You may be good at the decision stage but lackluster in the onboarding stage. Remember: Consistency is key.
• What content works especially well? You may be able to translate success in one area to success in another. If your job descriptions are known for their heart and personality, you may want to revise your onboarding materials to reflect the same.
• What key messages are missing? You want to answer a candidate’s questions before they even have them, but you also want to make sure you’re leading with the right messages. For example, if health and wellness are integral to your culture, how can you infuse that sentiment into your website? 
• What content can be improved upon? For example, you might want to add videos to your People page to give candidates a real behind-the-scenes look at your team. 
• Are your values consistent throughout the journey? For example, if your product is all about making communication more efficient but you wait three weeks to get back to an applicant, you aren’t following through on your brand promise. 

With these insights, you can methodically work to strengthen your employee experience and, by default, your employer brand. To do this effectively, focus on your weakest points first, then work to improve your process as a whole. 

The work doesn’t end there, though. Your employee experience is just one part of your employer brand, and there are more things you can do to strengthen it at every level of your organization. For more ideas to get started…

• Clarify your Brand Heart. Your Brand Heart  (purpose, vision, mission, values) is the true core of your employer brand. Make sure you have these elements clearly documented and shared with your employees.
• Write your Employer Value Proposition. No matter what the position, you should have a well-defined EVP that communicates your unique benefits and inspires people to learn more. Try these tips to create a more compelling EVP .
• Learn about the keys to a strong employer brand. You can’t just say who you want to be; you have to cultivate the right traits to support your brand.
• Conduct a brand audit. To get valuable feedback about how to improve your employer brand, find out what to ask your potential, current, and former employees .
• Scope your competition. If you want to stand out, you need to know who you’re competing against. Try our simple guide to do a competitive hiring analysis and figure out how to best position yourself.
• Do more culture marketing to bring your brand to life. For more helpful content ideas, find out how to highlight your culture through content .  

We realize this is a lot, of course. If you’re overwhelmed, short on resources, or need a little more strategic insight, a creative agency can help you clarify your employer brand story. Follow these tips to find the right one for you , or  hit us up . We’re always happy to chat.

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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.

Senior Content Marketing Manager, Culture Amp

Alica Forneret

Writer, Culture Amp

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Employee Experience Journey Map

What is the employee experience journey map.

The template is designed to create an employee experience journey map within the HR/People Team. It answers questions at all touchpoints of the employee lifecycle and could benefit a people team to collaborate with each other well and create meaningful products and initiatives for people.

Who can use the Employee Experience Journey Map

Employee experience professionals and People Teams will benefit from this framework.

How to use this template

Reference the guidelines section within the template. It will help you navigate through the board effectively.

What the Employee Experience Journey Map helps you achieve

An overview of the Employee experience products and initiatives across the People team so that HR/People team members are well informed internally, are able to communicate the offering to the organisations and collect feedback from employees to continuously improve people products at all stages of the employee journey.

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Key Moments of The Employee Journey Map: Template

An employee journey map portrays your employees’ experiences at every phase of their tenure with a company. They can view the journey map as a storytelling tool across the various stages of the employee lifecycle . Employers should make every experience better and portray expectations from the very beginning of the journey.

We have drafted an employee journey map template . You can download our free employee journey map template right here:

What is the Employee Journey Map?

The employee journey map is a visual representation of employees’ interactions with their employer throughout all the stages of the employee lifecycle. Employee journey mapping helps businesses step into their employee’s shoes. They do so in order to acquire an employee experience perspective .

Every employee journey with an organisation starts with the application period and recruitment. It concludes with the exit from the organisation, Offboarding . Preboarding & Onboarding are also critical stages. You can build strong strategies by using an onboarding plan . Yet, even after offboarding, the journey could resume. This is valid in cases of returning to work for a former employer, hence, Reboarding .

There are multiple tools that employers can use to manage their time inside a company. We publish some of these tools on our blog HR. For example, you will find articles on the HR lifecycle and the employee life-cycle model . An employee journey map is a similar tool.

How an Employee Journey Map Can Impact the Employee Experience

An employee journey map is a graphical tool that painstakingly describes the moments that matter to employees.  Undoubtedly, employees react emotionally to different moments.

You can maximise the key moments that improve employee engagement and minimise those that result in disengagement. Employees with emotional satisfaction will stay engaged with the job and enhance the productivity of the company.

This is why we created the ‘Moments of Power’ framework. It is essential that the employer acknowledges the most important moments at the start of the employee journey. Check out the moments of power below.

Moments of Power

The Four Benefits of Employee Journey Mapping

Pinpointing the employee journey’s important moments helps build a strong foundation for a positive employee experience . Furthermore, a thorough examination of the employee journey will show that each stage presents different challenges and opportunities. This is valid for both employees and employers. Let’s review some key benefits of employee journey mapping.

1. Get Different Stages that Bring Specific Experiences

Let’s take the case that you would like to measure employee engagement. It might be tone-deaf to treat the entire workforce as a single unit with a shared experience. After all, different employees have different experiences and they are many times linked to the stage in their journey. Furthermore, is it not intuitive that a new employee might not share the same experiences as an employee who is about to leave the company?

Thus, employee journey mapping will help differentiate between each stage of the employment relationship. Once the employers define the stages, they can proceed with identifying areas that need intervention.

2. Take the Opportunity for Insights and Anticipation

Employee journey mapping offers valuable insights into the employee journey with an organisation.

For instance, the way new hires start this journey matters . It can set you on a positive work journey with the employer. However, if new employees start on the wrong foot due to errors from the employer side, they might never build the desired engagement and connection with the job. Thus, there is no second chance for making a good first impression.

Other notable essential moments in the journey of an employee are the first one-on-one with the direct manager, or the first full performance review. Moreover, onboarding process activities, training, and team events are also highly relevant. These events shape their experience as an employee in an organisation, minimising their time to performance.

An employee journey mapping exercise helps the employer better prepare for those crucial moments. If having access to training is important to employees then also your journey map will contain this critical stage.

3. Get the Insights for a Better Hiring

Maybe it’s not the most intuitive benefit, but employee journey mapping can also offer an opportunity for better hiring.

Actually, understanding journey mapping can help companies understand the organisational core values. By doing this, they get a better understanding of who will fit well and thrive in the organisation.

This clarity can contribute to attracting and hiring competent and happy candidates compatible with a company’s experience. This enables HR to select the candidates that best suit the company’s operations and that will thrive in the company.

4. Improve Your Employee Engagement

The employees’ experience with an organisation impacts their productivity and the organisation’s success. Positive experiences lead to engagement and longer tenures within a company. The essential moments of the employee journey map should aim to create a memorable experience that can have a lasting impact on employers’ opinion of the workplace.

Moreover, the employee journey provides useful insights on engagement due to the countless feedback from employees. With this, employers will know what motivates and inspires them. Regardless if you work in a small company, or a large enterprise , employee engagement is crucial.

Employee Journey Map Insights

You can maximise the key moments that improve employee engagement and minimise those that result in disengagement.

Best Practices to Create an Employee Journey Map

We have compiled a set of best practices to help create an employee journey map.

Listen and Collaborate

Creating an employee journey map is not a task that a single person can ful-fill with no additional input. Collaboration and listening are key for gathering enough data and insights. After all, the journey map has to portray employee’s needs and perspectives.

However, HR should not assume they know it all, even if they are also employees. Of course their personal experiences are relevant and can be a starting point. But HR also has to encourage feedback from others at various levels and functions. This will ensure having access to multiple perspectives.

Develop Employee Personas

We already discussed that employee experiences vary across the various stages of the journey. The employee personas would be a way of differentiating between the experiences specific to different stages.

Personas are used frequently in the user experience field. The goal is to identify different types of customers, pain points, goals and needs . In our case, the customers are the employees.

So, when doing employee journey mapping it is essential to identify all the key employee personas. Some  criteria to differentiate between personal could be personality, demography, and career line, department, and of course, stage of employment.

Thus, some example of employee personas are: the candidate, the onboardee, the integrated employee, the career ladder climber, the departing employee, the returning employee.

Additionally, the onboardee employee persona can be further split into: the manager onboardee, the junior onboardee, the technical onboardee and so on.

Map the Employee Journey

Mapping the employee journey follows right after identifying employee personas. This involves deciding on the key employee lifecycle stages.

For example, we have selected 6 stages: Recruitment, Pre & Onboarding, Integration & Performance, Development, Exit: Offboarding and Post-Exit. A few mentions should be considered about these stages. Buddy Onboarding is a complimentary process to Pre & Onboarding. Moreover, the Development stage could also include a crossboarding process . This occurs when you switch to a completely new role.

Additionally, it is essential to identify what experiences are specific to each stage. In this context, an employee engagement survey can help collect quantitative and qualitative data. The data has to reflect which experiences are specific for each stage.

By starting with a solid foundation, by talking with current employees, by identifying their values, and the steps of your organization’s employee journeys, you can begin to map out what yours will look like, and how to integrate it with your organization. The survey will also identify the specific pain points, goals and needs.

Define Possible Interventions

Data collection has revealed pain points and additional employee needs. After knowing what is working and what is not, the opportunity for interventions and improvements arises.

For instance, a key feature of the employee onboarding journey map is effective communication between the new employees and the current workforce. Hence in the onboarding process, organisations should leverage effective communication properly while bringing new employees on board.

Employee Journey Map Examples

We have developed two employee journey maps. They detail the Preboarding Journey and Onboarding Journey respectively.

If you are curious to read more about preboarding vs. onboarding , we have devoted an entire piece on it.

Employee Journey Map Template

The employee journey map template is a tool that unites the employee experience across the lifecycle. Thereby it provides a holistic view critical to identifying and prioritising areas of focus. Then, the company can identify organisational actions, as well as the elements that will enable employees. This will establish the right impression in them and spur you to build the right engagement with the jobs.

You can download the employee journey map template for free and start your mapping process right away.

The first step for employee journey mapping is evaluating the employees’ experience to identify issues and opportunities to grow. Subsequently, all the information informs the creation of the employee personas. Once the personas are identified, the employee journey map template is an instrument that can easily customise this information.

The Six Essential Elements For the Employee Persona on This Template

Our employee journey map template highlights six essential elements for the employee persona. These are: 

• Goals & Needs : What are employees trying to achieve?
• Touch Points : What people, things, or organisations do employees get in contact with?
• Organisation Actions : What does the organisation do at this step?
• Barriers / Pain Points : What barriers come in the way of achieving their goals?
• Enablers : What helps employees achieve goals?
• Desired Impact : What is the desired impact?

Employee Journey Map Template: A Concrete Example

An employee experience journey mapping template is a tool that an organisation can use to showcase the worker’s entire journey in its establishment. It is an easy-to-use tool that can be edited and shared easily with the relevant stakeholders.

Let us take a concrete example using the candidate persona.The candidate persona seeks employment in a new organisation.

The touch points are: the application portal, the company’s social media accounts, recruiters, job boards, etc.

The organisation actions are: reviewing the application and if relevant inviting the candidate to an interview. The organisation will have to ensure that the applicant matches the role and the organisation as a whole. Additionally, the recruiter would make him/herself available to the candidate in case of questions regarding the application process.

Some barriers for the candidate persona would be: insufficient information regarding the application, unresponsiveness from the recruiter, misleading information regarding the role, negative reviews of the employer.

Some examples of enables are: friends or family already working in the company and referring the candidate, a very responsive recruiter that provides comprehensive answers to any curiosities & questions.

The desired impact for the candidate persona is receiving an employment offer and signing a contract.

This is a general and simplified example. It can be further customised. For example, designing a journey for a senior level candidate and an entry level candidate. Or for example, for a sales candidate or a business development candidate etc.

Employee Journey Map

Globally, only 20% of employees declare themselves as being engaged at work.

Employee Experience Journey Map

An employee experience journey map helps track the key stages and experiences in the employee journey. It creates a chronological chart that visually captures and examines each step of the employee experience. Although prevention is better than cure, business organisations should aim to improve the employee experience and not wait until issues spring up.

When employees have a positive experience, it translates into increased engagement, greater productivity, reduced recruiting cost, and low employee turnover.

The employee experience journey map of an organisation offers a unique way of representing the company’s goals, values, and processes. Again, it helps bring the company’s core values to life and build a strong culture.

Globally, only 20% of employees declare themselves as being engaged at work, according to Gallup. Thus, the vast majority of employees worldwide are having unpleasant work experiences and very little connection to their employing organisation.

Don’t Overlook Employee Mapping: Concluding Remarks

No doubt, the major challenge confronting most business organisations is getting their employees to feel engaged with their work. This is additionally coupled with a need to achieve better work efficiency.

However, the employees could have some underlying experiences hindering their capacities to perform optimally. This is why employee mapping is a useful tool for gauging the experiences of the workforce of an organisation.

Employee mapping starts when you gather everyone involved in the process of an organisation. Besides, it defines every step in executing the process. This helps in achieving rule compliance, business process improvement. Additionally, it helps boost employee effectiveness.

Hence organisations should leverage the right employee onboarding solutions tools like Introdus, employee onboarding software to bring onboard the new employees. Due to onboarding automation , new employees have access to a platform that ensures social integration with their employers from day 1.

Also, it has useful multimedia content that will empower new employees and build the right engagement with their jobs.

In conclusion, an employee journey map is a great asset in achieving employee engagement if properly harnessed. In addition, it will aid organisations in building their workforce with the right morale and motivation, thus resulting in enhanced productivity and profitability.

Remember that you can also check a Return Work Plan, by clicking here.

Benefit from a successful employee journey map with the proper tool.

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Understand and improve employee journeys., achieve better customer experience through better employee experience., this template will help you....

• Understand your employee experience better
• Provide the resources, tools & support  your employees need
• Align employees’ daily actions and accountabilities with the customer experience
• Brainstorm ideas and opportunities to improve employee journeys
• Prioritize which opportunities to pursue first

More than just a template, this resource includes  step-by-step instructions and tips to guide you through the employee journey mapping process.

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