Fragmented employee journey get in the way of a company being "On Brand", disrupt the delivery of customer experiences and lead to low employee engagement. See how to use Employee Journey Mapping to get back on track.

1. 2017
EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE
TRANSFORMATION
3 Reasons Why Your Company
Needs an Employee Journey Map
Leaders across virtually every industry want to increase employee engagement and lower attrition, especially
as millennials continue to dominate the workforce. This is obviously a huge challenge to the Human Resources
department, but the ramifications of disengagement reach all the way to the top levels of a company. Across
the US, Gallup estimates that low employee engagement costs businesses $450 – $550 billion annually, and
negatively affect customer service, communication effectiveness, and productivity.
Human resources departments typically try a variety of approaches to solving this problem, from re-evaluating
their perks and benefits packages to holding more company happy hours. But many miss an opportunity to
get to the root of the issue by mapping their end-to-end employee journey. Journey mapping is done by many
businesses to track the path-to-purchase their customers - everything from discovery, research, evaluation,
purchase and use. Few apply the same rigor to their employee journey.
1. Your Employee Experience is Fragmented. In most companies, the employee experience is extremely
fragmented. From the very start, employees encounter dozens of different departments, managers, policies
and hassles. The employee is handed off from one group to another along the journey just as if they were
in a production line. Few of the departments know what happened to the employee before, or what will
happen to them after. This fragmentation causes low engagement, mis-aligned execution of the company
strategy, a low-quality customer experience, and ultimately, increased employee attrition.
2. Your Employee Experience is “Off-brand”. At one of my first jobs out of business school, the CEO began
the day by spending four hours with the group of new hires, discussing the company strategy, how we
differentiate ourselves from competitors and the key role each of us play in the strategy. He answered our
questions and talking about the values of the company. This set a tone immediately. As employees, we felt
valued, and knew the priorities of the business right off the bat. It was a very “on-brand” experience.
Contrast this with a job I took a few years later, when it took two weeks after I started to receive the laptop
required for me to do my work. Their process required that I have an approved login before the equipment
could be ordered – and that I couldn’t get a login until I officially started. This gave me a first impression that
the company cared more about policies and procedures than employee productivity. Not only did this first
experience not set me up for success; my impression proved true throughout other inflection points in my
journey there.
The reality is, a cohesive, on-brand experience for employees can make the difference between an
engaged and unengaged workforce - and this pays off monetarily. Companies with an engaged workforce
caused by a streamlined, cohesive employee journey have 33 percent higher profitability than those that
don’t, according to 2015 PwC studies.

2. Take Southwest: from hiring to their promotion cycle, every touchpoint an employee has with the company
is on brand. As a company, one of their values is fun, so they have each employee tell a joke at their
interview. It may be a small gesture, but threading their values into each employee experience makes a
huge difference in engagement. As a result, Southwest Airlines just completed their 44th straight year of
profitability — a huge achievement in a volatile industry.
3. Contrasting Engaged and Disengaged Employees Illuminates Critical Gaps
Most employee surveys show average scores and compare one department vs. another. The differences
are typically not very large and the insights not very meaningful. Our experience is that by contrasting the
experience of highly-engaged employees vs. low-engaged employees across the journey, the “potholes”
along the journey can quickly be identified. Not only that, the internal best practices of different managers
and departments can be identified and quantified, making the development of an improvement plan fast
and believable.
Increasing Engagement Through Employee Journey Mapping
Revamping the employee experience and creating a more on-brand journey from ”hire-to-retire” can start with
an employee journey map.
Like a customer journey map, this exercise should be well-organized and researched-based, including:
• Employee segmentation and persona identification
• Focus groups with key employee segments
• Leveraging Employee survey data and “social media”
• Interviews with key leaders
• Collection and integration of key employee metrics along the journey
• Validation with employees and leaders
Mapping the employee journey gives a company a clear picture of what an employee experience looks like,
and clearly delineates gaps and areas of opportunity.
HR departments and department managers are quickly able to articulate where fragmentation exists, where
the journey is “on-brand” and “off-brand” and have employee-suggested approaches to solve for barriers.
Action planning can be done with confidence and precision – and the benefits can be rapid and staggering.
When employees feel part of an on-brand experience, employees feel like they’re invested in a clear path to
success. They have a clear career acceleration, and know that they can reach the next level through high
performance and delivering quality service.
From an employee morale and retention perspective, to your company’s bottom line, employee journey
mapping can make all the difference.
Tucker & Company is an award-winning leader in customer experience and employee experience
measurement, design and deployment.
Greg Tucker, CEO
Tucker & Company
415.680.5635
greg@tucker-co.com
www.tucker-co.com