The employee journey starts from the job application and continues through onboarding, training, dismissal, or retirement. You want your employees to feel comfortable, engaged, and happy in your organization. The aim is to create a continuous positive vibe from the very first contact until well after the employment contract. How do you create this atmosphere? With these five tips, we help you to set up an incredible employee journey!
What is an employee journey?
First of all: what exactly is the employee journey? The employee journey is the journey that employees make within the organization: from the moment they first contact HR to when they leave your company. At the start, you want to attract and bring in people, you later wish to engage and keep them, and once they are gone, you want to keep them as ambassadors.
What is the employee lifecycle journey?
It is possible to distinguish different phases and moments within an employee’s journey. At any given moment, employees encounter different touchpoints. The more positive their feelings and experiences at that moment, the more likely they will stay longer and perform better.
Recruitment & employment
Take phase one, which includes the recruitment, selection, and preboarding process. This phase extends from the first email and the job interview to salary negotiations and contract signing. After the preboarding comes the onboarding process, which combines moments such as the first working day, the introduction week, familiarization in the workplace, and the first progress meeting with the floor manager.
Engagement, Motivation & Retention
Once the employee starts working, you will encounter countless contact moments across the engagement phase. Conduct performance and appraisal interviews, pay attention to someone’s birthday or anniversary, call if someone is having a hard time, and arrange training or education. Sick leave and coaching conversations are also moments within this phase of the employee journey.
Separation
Finally, there is the offboarding phase, which is neglected in some organizations. Do you conduct an exit interview, organize offboarding surveys, or let someone go without having a good chat? Do you organize leaving drinks, do you give a parting gift, and do you send someone a Christmas package after retirement? Each of these moments are opportunities to show what kind of employer you are. So that your employee leaves your company with a good feeling.
5 tips for a good employee journey mapping
A positive employee experience and a successful employee journey are also within reach for your organization. There is no standard procedure, and how exactly you improve your employee journey is different for every company. Nevertheless, there are general tips that you can use to start making a difference.
Tip 1: Show uniformity from A to Z
Does the image on social media reflect who you are as an organization? Is the tone of voice the same in all your communications, from emails and career sites to vacancies and vlogs? By presenting yourself the way you want to be seen, you have more chances to make a good (first) impression. And that’s already half the battle.
Tip 2: Keep promises
Keeping your promises is crucial. If your vacancy states that you value guidance, but later someone is thrown in at the deep end in practice, employees will quickly drop out. So plan that first progress meeting in advance!
{{CHECKLIST_RETENTION="/components"}}
Tip 3: Don’t make it an HR party
Build on continuous collaboration between HR, communications, board, and management to bring your strategy to life. The direct manager also plays a crucial role in a successful employer journey. It is up to HR to convince them of this. There are numerous internal communication tools that can help you streamline mutual communication.
Tip 4: Stimulate growth and development
Overall, employees tend to welcome the positive commitment of mentors or managers who act as coaches and stimulate growth. Listen to their wishes and ambitions and give them room to acquire new knowledge and skills through e-learning and microlearning. In this way, they – and therefore you as an employer – become more satisfied and successful.
Tip 5: Start small
Write down the most critical contact moments and for each one, write down how you approach this now and how you could improve. For example, start with slight adjustments for a specific employee group and measure its effect. Does it work? Then you develop it further. Also, regularly ask for feedback from your employees. This can be done, for example, through employee surveys.
What does a good employee journey yield?
The benefits of a good employee journey are endless. Without being too extensive, we’ll list some of them:
- A good employee journey ensures a better brand image;
- With the right employee journey, you attract the right employees;
- The better your employee journey, the faster new employees are up & running;
- A successful employee journey ensures well-functioning teams and better collaboration;
- Improving the employee journey also enhances the agility and innovative power of your organization;
- In the longer term, a good employee journey ensures a better employee experience, resulting in higher productivity and involvement;
- Satisfied and happy employees stay with the organization longer;
- Happy employees make happy customers! To quote leadership expert Simon Sinek: “Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.”
Employee experience solutions
It is clear that a well-designed employee journey provides your organization with numerous benefits. Employee communication software, like Oneteam’s employee app, can help you improve the employee experience within your organization.
With Oneteam, you have all digital tools at your fingertips to ensure that the employee journey within your organization is successful.
Do you want to learn more? Watch the explainer video below and request a free product demo.
