Companies with a strong focus on employee experience outperform their competitors by 122%. This statistic might surprise you.
The numbers don't lie - your organization's investment in employee experience directly impacts your bottom line. Companies that have highly engaged employees show 21% more profitability compared to those with disengaged workers.
Here's something remarkable: workplace moments shape 70% of employee engagement variance. These pivotal interactions throughout the employee lifecycle create positive connections or painful disconnections with your organization.
Our research shows that employees go through specific stages in their experience. Each stage contains key moments that shape their entire outlook. Organizations must optimize these moments to succeed. The data backs this up - workplaces that create peak moments have 13 times more engaged employees and face three times less burnout.
Employee experience mapping helps solve these challenges. This process lets you document experiences and feelings systematically to boost positive moments while reducing negative ones. Organizations can strengthen their connection with employees by combining this approach with design thinking principles.
In this piece, we'll show you how to create an effective employee experience map step by step. You'll learn everything from understanding the basics to identifying crucial moments and implementing design thinking methods. This knowledge will help you create experiences that boost engagement, improve retention, and deliver better business results.
A good employee experience starts with knowing how to map their time at your company. Let's get into the basic elements that make this process work.
Employee experience journey mapping shows and tracks every interaction between employees and your organization. Similar to customer journey mapping, this method looks at key stages of the employee lifecycle—from recruitment to offboarding. The goal is to understand how each touchpoint affects satisfaction, productivity, and participation.
Journey mapping creates a visual story of an employee's path through your organization. It documents interactions and finds gaps and inefficiencies. This gives you a complete picture of the employee experience and helps you spot areas that need improvement.
Companies that use good journey mapping see great results. About 72% of employees say they're more likely to stay with a company for three or more years after a positive onboarding experience. Also, 89% of employees believe a good experience at work is crucial to job satisfaction.
Design thinking offers a solid base to create effective employee journey maps. This step-by-step approach helps you see problems through your employees' eyes, question assumptions, and create innovative solutions.
IDEO defines design thinking as a method that "employs elements from the designer's toolkit like empathy and experimentation to arrive at innovative solutions". This methodology helps you:
Companies that welcome design thinking for employee experience do better than others—20% of companies with highly engaged employees show higher returns on investment, profitability, and sales.
Empathy is the foundation of good employee journey mapping. Empathy maps show what we know about different types of users. They bring internal knowledge out in the open to help everyone understand better.
Regular empathy maps have four parts—Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels—with the employee or persona in the middle. This structure captures the whole employee experience, including:
Empathy mapping in your process encourages deeper team connections. It creates a compassionate culture that builds stronger bonds between employees.
Image Source: AIHR
Your employees' trip needs careful planning at each stage to find key moments where experience design makes the biggest difference. Let's get into four major stages that can revolutionize how satisfied your employees feel.
The way you recruit talent sets the foundation for your relationship with employees. Candidates form lasting impressions about your organization from their first job ad to their final interview. The application process plays a crucial role - when job applications take more than 15 minutes to complete, over 70% of candidates lose interest.
The onboarding phase becomes a delicate transition period - employees who have a positive onboarding experience are 69% more likely to stay with a company for at least three years. This phase should include:
McKinsey reports that people quit during post-pandemic periods mainly due to limited career growth opportunities. Clear growth paths through professional development programs, skills training, and mentorship become vital to keep talent.
Recognition should happen throughout the employee trip, not just during performance reviews. Regular appreciation of contributions creates a workplace where employees feel truly valued. Celebrating work anniversaries, achievements, and milestones builds stronger organizational bonds and psychological safety.
The way employees leave affects your employer brand by a lot. Exit interviews help improve earlier stages of the employee experience. An alumni network helps maintain connections with former employees who often become brand advocates, potential rehires, or referral sources. Former employees who leave on good terms are nearly three times more likely to recommend your organization.
Image Source: Heart of the Customer
Employee experience design shows that some touchpoints affect workers more than others. These special interactions shape how employees notice their workplace trip.
Life-changing points in an employee's career can create a huge boost in experience when designed properly. These emotional interactions shape how people think, believe, and act throughout their time at work.
These crucial moments typically fall into three categories:
These moments affect employee retention by a lot - people who had good onboarding show up to 18x more commitment to their workplace.
McKinsey suggests working closely with employees to create personas first. The next step maps their trips to spot areas of friction, frustration, and dissatisfaction.
Look for places where employees show strong emotional responses. McKinsey notes that "emotions matter" - most important moments bring out strong emotional responses that leave lasting effects on employees' views.
The focus should be on critical changes like becoming a manager or first-time events like parental leave where employees need extra support. Data analysis helps identify broken parts of your employee's trip.
Proving which moments matter needs continuous listening through multiple channels. You should have:
McKinsey suggests getting help from colleagues who lived through these moments to develop prototype solutions in focused design sprints. Strategic lifecycle listening helps understand critical experiences during an employee's time at work, including their views on career growth and internal mobility.
Image Source: AIHR
Design thinking methodology provides a robust framework that transforms employee experiences through systematic improvements. This human-centered approach emphasizes empathy, creativity, and experimentation to create intuitive solutions.
Multiple channels help collect meaningful feedback. Surveys combined with focus groups and one-on-one conversations provide deeper qualitative understanding. Employees' unique needs and aspirations become clear through this approach. Journey mapping and employee personas take the guesswork out when changing employee experiences.
Analytical insights help identify patterns in employee feedback. The focus stays on areas where employees face friction, frustration, or dissatisfaction. These challenges transform into "How might we" questions that guide solution development. To name just one example: "How might we improve our onboarding process so new employees feel better supported?".
A culture that encourages experimentation and risk-taking drives innovation. Hackathons let employees from different time zones generate innovative HR solutions. Cisco used this approach and created 105 new HR solutions for their 71,000 employees. Fresh ideas emerge from this shared process to address ground employee pain points.
Preliminary models test functionality before full implementation. Prototypes range from basic paper sketches to detailed interactive models. Small-scale experiments explore different approaches to onboarding, learning programs, and workplace design.
Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) helps measure results. The framework asks a simple question: "How likely is it you would recommend this company as a place to work?". Insights gained help refine solutions through continuous iteration. Exceptional employee experiences need steadfast dedication to improvement based on employee feedback.
Employee experience mapping proves to be a strategic investment with clear returns. Companies that prioritize employee experience outperform competitors by 122%. Workplaces that create peak moments are 13 times more likely to maintain highly engaged teams. The link between thoughtful experience design and business outcomes is clear.
Design thinking principles combined with journey mapping reshape how organizations connect with their people. Breaking down the employee lifecycle into distinct stages helps identify key touchpoints where design makes the biggest effect. This approach removes guesswork and builds real understanding of employee needs at each stage.
Some moments matter more than others. Specific interactions have outsized effects on how employees view their workplace. Your organization can fix pain points before they hurt engagement and retention by spotting and improving these emotional touchpoints through ongoing feedback.
Design thinking methodology provides a framework that works. The cycle starts with understanding employees' needs and defining challenges. Teams then work together on solutions and test small initiatives with real feedback. This creates ongoing improvements that keep your employee experience fresh.
Great employee experiences don't just happen. They come from careful design, ongoing improvements, and dedication to understanding what your people value most. Time spent on mapping and improving your employee's trip creates a workplace where people feel valued and motivated to do their best work.
Your employee experience mapping can begin now. Better retention and improved productivity will make this investment pay off for years ahead.
Master employee experience mapping to unlock significant business advantages and create workplaces where people thrive.
• Companies with strong employee experience focus outperform competitors by 122% and see 21% higher profitability through engaged workforces.
• Break the employee journey into four key stages: recruitment/onboarding, development/performance, recognition/engagement, and exit/alumni experience for targeted improvements.
• Identify "moments that matter" - emotionally charged touchpoints that disproportionately impact employee perceptions and create lasting engagement effects.
• Apply design thinking's five-step process: empathize through feedback, define pain points, ideate solutions collaboratively, prototype small-scale tests, and iterate based on results.
• Use continuous listening through surveys, focus groups, and one-on-ones to validate which moments truly matter and measure success with metrics like eNPS.
When executed effectively, employee experience mapping transforms guesswork into strategic action, creating workplaces that retain top talent and drive measurable business results through intentional design and genuine employee understanding.
Q1. What are the key stages in an employee experience journey?
The employee experience journey typically consists of four main stages: recruitment and onboarding, development and performance, recognition and engagement, and exit and alumni experience. Each stage presents unique opportunities to create positive experiences and address potential pain points.
Q2. How can organizations identify "moments that matter" in the employee journey?
Organizations can identify moments that matter by closely working with employees to create personas and map their journeys. Look for emotionally impactful touchpoints, critical transitions, or first-time events where employees need additional support. Use continuous listening methods like surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one conversations to validate these key moments.
Q3. What is the role of design thinking in employee experience mapping?
Design thinking provides a framework for creating effective employee journey maps by emphasizing empathy, experimentation, and innovation. It helps organizations understand problems from employees' perspectives, challenge assumptions, and develop creative solutions. The process typically involves five steps: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test.
Q4. How can companies measure the success of their employee experience initiatives?
Companies can measure the success of their employee experience initiatives using metrics like the Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS), which asks employees how likely they are to recommend the company as a place to work. Other methods include lifecycle surveys, focus groups, and regular feedback mechanisms to gather insights on employee satisfaction and engagement throughout their journey.
Q5. Why is employee experience mapping important for businesses?
Employee experience mapping is crucial for businesses because it helps identify areas for improvement in the employee journey, leading to increased engagement, productivity, and retention. Companies with a strong focus on employee experience outperform their competitors, see higher profitability, and are more likely to retain top talent. It also helps create a workplace where employees feel valued and motivated to contribute their best work.