Want to improve the employee journey? This is how you start!

Optimizing your organisation’s employee journey offers many advantages: the organisation becomes more attractive on the job market, the employees’ creativity and productivity improves, and absenteeism and turnover rates are reduced. The result: improved customer appreciation and stronger financial earnings. As HR, would you like to optimize the employee journey? Here are three ways to go about it.

Every organisation has an employee experience. How do employees experience working at their organisation? The employee experience consists of experiences, thoughts and emotions, which is very expansive and can pertain to the organisational culture, management style, physical workplace or IT. The employee journey is also part of the employee experience. The employee journey starts the moment a person decides to apply for a job with the organisation. Part of the employee journey is how the organisation is perceived as an employer, and its recruitment, onboarding, performance, development and ultimately offboarding.

If you want to improve the employee journey, and hence the employee experience, you don’t start with a blank sheet of paper. You can however improve on the existing journey, which subsequently elevates the employee experience to a higher level. But to achieve this you need a compelling vision: what will the employee experience in your organisation in future? Is that future perspective expressed in an inspiring and distinctive manner? Are there people who want to take the lead in this endeavor, and do they have the space to operate? Do you know where the priorities lie? If so, you can start. But where?

Large study?

An oft-held belief is that before you can start, you must first study every aspect. For example, an HR manager of a major corporation recently told me: “We’re thinking of conducting a large-scale study in which we’ll analyze the entire employee journey from recruitment to offboarding. We’ll ask all employees – national and international – about the important moments in their employee journey, and then start working based on the findings.”

“Better no do that,” I replied. “A large study means lots of work, high costs, and often many starting points for getting started. Moreover, the employees’ expectations are high, because otherwise why did you ask for their opinions? Getting started with so many starting points also requires a large team and large budget, and the organisation must also have a high absorption capacity. Many organisations don’t have those things. And, after conducting such a large study, if you then take a smaller-scale approach, there’s a good chance the employees will be disappointed. That’s going to work against you. Or, by the time you can tackle an area for improvement, the world may have already changed and you’ll have to redo your research. Not one organisation that conducted such a large-scale study would do it again. There are better alternatives.”

So what do I recommend to HR managers? This partly depends on the quality of the existing employee journey and the priorities associated with it. But generally you can start with these three methods:

Variant 1: chronological

You can improve the employee journey by approaching it chronologically. You simply start at the beginning: first, labor market communication, then recruitment, onboarding and so on. This works if the experience level is approximately the same everywhere, with no extreme low points, and thus no distinction made in terms of priority. This method also works well when nothing has yet been developed, such as with startups, where you can build from scratch.

Variant 2: from journey stage to journey stage

Break down the employee journey into so-called journey stages, such as onboarding or development within the organisation. In practice we see the journey as being divided into 6 to 16 stages. You can determine which stage to give priority to by measuring how appreciative of and important the employees find a particular stage, the impact it has on the entire employee experience, and its impact on the business strategy and results. Also, consider how many employees are involved in the journey stage, as well as the available resources (financial, IT and manpower). You then aim your approach at consistently improving an entire stage of the employee journey. Repeat the prioritization annually in order to create a timeline and action plan. Priority is usually given to two or three journey stages per year.

Variant 3:  from low point to low point

You can divide each journey stage into smaller moments, which impact the employee experience. Onboarding for example consists of: the week prior to the first workday, reception on the first workday, familiarization during the first week, and getting to know colleagues and supervisors. We call these smaller moments, ‘moments that matter’. Ask your employees which moments are the actual low points for them within the entire employee journey. Examples could be an employment contract containing far too much legalese, or being poorly prepared for FIT interviews or not being given priority for internal vacancies. Low points result in reduced engagement and enthusiasm, and even potentially the departure of valued employees. Based on these specific low points, determine which moments should have priority, so that you can quickly resolve the actual pain points, crisscrossing through the employee journey. Conduct an annual inventory of the low points, and based on this devise a short-term action plan.

The best approach for your particular organisation depends on various factors. Where are you now in the employee journey, what can your team handle, and what does the organisation want? This requires customization. Whichever approach you choose, innovating the employee journey always yields positive results. The best advice comes from Simon Sinek: “Dream big. Start small. But most of all: Start!”