Employee experience journey mapping: Full guide (+ template)

The employee journey includes all interactions an employee has with an organization, from recruitment and onboarding to development and offboarding. Every touchpoint, such as the usability of your employee portal, the efficiency of employee services during critical moments, and the onboarding process, shapes their satisfaction and productivity, ultimately impacting the overall employee experience (EX).

According to our Zendesk Employee Experience Trends Report 2024, 83 percent of IT and HR professionals agree that employee experience is a top priority, especially as rapid technological changes transform the workplace. HR teams are increasingly dedicating time to employee experience journey mapping to gain a comprehensive view of employee tenure, reevaluate employee service offerings, and identify areas for improvement.

Use our guide to explore the stages of the employee journey, understand the benefits of mapping the employee experience, learn best practices, and access a customizable EX journey map template.

More in this guide:

• What is the employee experience journey?
• What is employee experience journey mapping?
• Employee experience journey stages
• Benefits of employee experience journey mapping
• Creating an employee experience journey map in 6 steps
• Employee experience journey mapping best practices
• Frequently asked questions
• Improve the employee journey with world-class employee service

What is the employee experience journey?

The employee experience journey encompasses all the interactions and touchpoints an employee has with an organization, from recruitment and onboarding through development, engagement, and eventually offboarding. It includes every phase of their tenure, such as training, employee service interactions, performance reviews, internal communications, and day-to-day activities, all of which collectively shape their overall satisfaction, productivity, and engagement within the company.

What is employee experience journey mapping?

Employee experience journey mapping is a strategic process used to visualize and analyze every interaction and touchpoint an employee has with an organization throughout their tenure. Similar to a customer journey map, an employee journey map involves identifying key stages of the employee journey, such as recruitment, onboarding, development, and offboarding, and examining how each stage impacts employee satisfaction, productivity, and overall engagement. This mapping helps organizations pinpoint areas for improvement, enhance the employee experience, and ultimately drive better organizational outcomes.

Employee experience journey stages

To create an employee experience journey map, start by identifying the key stages of the employee lifecycle. Consider your employees’ expectations and the critical touchpoints during each of these stages.

1. Hiring

The employee experience journey starts even before the first day on the job. Whether you’re hiring a sales rep or another type of role, the hiring process provides candidates with an initial impression of your company culture and sets the tone for their future experiences.

At this stage:

• Candidates expect clear job descriptions, salary expectations, and timely communication about application statuses.
• Employers expect to minimize hiring costs while also attracting top talent.

Cutting corners during this phase can create a lasting negative impression, making it difficult to improve the employee experience later on.

2. Onboarding

Successful employee onboarding involves providing new hires with the essential tools they need to perform their jobs effectively, addressing their questions about company policies and benefits, and giving them access to important information about your business. It’s more common to hire and onboard new employees totally remotely—a now widespread practice that was, until recently, totally uncommon.

With the surge of AI-powered tools, teams can streamline onboarding workflows and training without compromising EX. For example, HR teams can use intelligent routing to ensure timely questions from new hires are directed to the right team and swiftly addressed.

During the onboarding phase:

• Employees expect clear processes for learning role responsibilities, meeting teammates, signing paperwork, and clarifying compliance regulations.
• Employers expect to get new hires up to speed on the role quickly while covering benefit enrollment, team building, and tool immersion.

PwC finds that 69 percent of employees who have good onboarding experiences are more likely to remain with a company, reducing the costs associated with employee turnover.

3. Development

The development stage encompasses all activities an employer undertakes to evaluate and promote employees after onboarding. This includes creating performance reviews, compensation structures, and employee development plans.

The development stage includes everything an employer does to evaluate and promote employees after onboarding. This includes creating performance reviews, compensation increase structures, and employee development plans.

During ongoing employee development:

• Employees expect to prepare for and participate in regular performance evaluations, coaching sessions, and training seminars. They also expect easy access to training resources, such as via an internal knowledge base.
• Employers expect to provide actionable feedback, transparent performance insights, and opportunities for mentorship and professional growth.

This phase should also include continuing education opportunities and employee recognition when they meet performance goals.

4. Engagement and retention

Employee engagement is more than just happiness or satisfaction—it is the involvement and enthusiasm of an employee for the work they do and the place they work.

Businesses can foster engagement through acts like:

• Promoting a positive work environment
• Encouraging collaboration
• Recognizing achievements
• Prioritizing employee well-being
• Organizing team-building activities
• Offering fast, personalized, and supportive employee service

Teams that also focus on employee performance management keep employees engaged by opening up lines of communication, offering actionable feedback, balancing employee autonomy with teamwork, and more.

According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, engaged employees reduce company turnover by 21 percent for high-turnover organizations and 51 percent for low-turnover organizations. Plus, all organizations experience fewer negative business outcomes, like absenteeism, shrinkage, and quality defects.

5. Offboarding

Employers who manage employee offboarding well may see former employees return or recommend the organization to people in their network. Additionally, they can successfully retain valuable knowledge and ensure it is seamlessly passed on to their replacements.

Regardless of the reason for the departure:

• Employees expect to provide candid feedback, smoothly hand off projects and equipment, and document any critical knowledge or processes.
• Employers expect to revoke access to company systems, platforms, and networks, retrieve company assets, conduct an exit interview, and ensure the documentation of essential knowledge.

Use this stage to gather information about why your organization is experiencing employee turnover. This data can help you write better job descriptions, update employee perks and benefits packages, and map better experiences for replacements.

Benefits of employee experience journey mapping

Employee experience journey mapping helps organizations identify the most important moments throughout the employee lifecycle. Knowing these moments enables teams to adapt and refocus journey maps, ensuring an organization experiences various benefits.

Improved employee service

One of the top benefits of employee journey mapping is the improvement of employee service. This process involves identifying key moments in the employee journey and ensuring that employees can easily access support at each stage. It includes evaluating service channels to ensure they are convenient for employees and finding ways to deliver faster, more efficient, and better personalized internal customer service during critical stages.

For example, do new hires have an easy way to ask HR questions about benefits policies or request IT access to business systems? How long does it take your HR team to respond to a sensitive employee case?

Optimized HR processes and workflows

Employee journey mapping significantly enhances HR processes and workflows. By visualizing the entire employee journey, HR can identify areas where processes slow down or when employees face obstacles, enabling targeted improvements and highlighting opportunities for automation. Mapping clarifies when and how employees need information, allowing HR to streamline communication and make informed decisions about automating common requests and simplifying complex processes. Understanding critical touchpoints helps HR allocate resources more effectively, ensuring timely support when and where employees need it most.

Additionally, journey mapping highlights the unique needs of employees at different stages, allowing HR to tailor support and services to enhance the employee experience. By mapping out onboarding and offboarding processes, HR can identify ways to make transitions smoother, reducing administrative burden and ensuring new hires and departing employees have seamless experiences.

Identified opportunities to lower costs with AI-powered self-service

Human resource (HR) leaders face immense pressure to adopt and implement AI tools to streamline operations. Employee journey maps are invaluable for identifying opportunities to reduce costs with AI-powered self-service solutions.

For instance, HR teams can quickly deploy an AI agent by connecting it to their knowledge base. The AI agent can autonomously reference help center articles to resolve employee requests at various stages of the employee journey, such as onboarding or offboarding. This enables HR teams to scale their service availability without significantly increasing costs.

Related reading: 11 ways to use AI for a better employee experience

Boosted employee engagement

Employee journey mapping helps you identify moments in the employee lifecycle where staff members feel engaged and disengaged from their work. Disengagement can indicate a negative employee experience or a lack of employee satisfaction, leading to decreased productivity, poor morale, turnover, and more.

With journey maps, businesses can learn what might contribute to disengagement and what they’re doing well. These maps can also reveal where leaders can be more proactive in employee development, leading to higher engagement and retention.

Personalized employee experiences

Employee journey mapping leads to more personalized employee experiences by helping teams identify individual needs and preferences at different stages. For example, it can help HR provide timely, relevant support across employees’ preferred touchpoints and proactively address potential challenges with tailored solutions.

By continually refining the journey map based on feedback, HR can enhance overall satisfaction and engagement.

Strengthened diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging

Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) is not only the priority of HR teams—it’s the priority of all organizational members. Employee journey maps help teams identify where DEIB is deprioritized, especially in recruitment, hiring, onboarding, and continued education.

Whether creating more inclusive surveys, providing anti-discrimination, harassment, and bias training, or building diverse support operations teams, employee experience journey maps help leaders pinpoint areas where DEIB is lacking and where to update expectations.

Streamlined onboarding and offboarding

Employee journey mapping streamlines onboarding and offboarding by providing a clear, structured overview of each process. It identifies key touchpoints and potential pain points, allowing HR to design more efficient workflows and ensure all necessary steps are covered. This includes automating repetitive tasks, providing timely and relevant information, and ensuring seamless transitions.

By mapping out these stages, HR can deliver a consistent, organized experience that reduces administrative burden, minimizes errors, and enhances employee satisfaction from start to finish.

Refined management of benefits, leave, and life events

Employee journey mapping helps refine the management of benefits, leave, and life events by providing a detailed overview of employee interactions and needs at each stage. It identifies key moments when employees require support, enabling HR to streamline processes and ensure timely, accurate information delivery.

By understanding these critical touchpoints, HR can offer personalized employee benefits guidance, simplify employee leave management, and better support employees during significant life events. This leads to more efficient administration, improved employee satisfaction, a more responsive HR function, and overall enhanced employee experience management.

Enhanced productivity and efficiency

HR organizations continue to face the challenge of improving team productivity without increasing costs or compromising employee satisfaction, well-being, and experience. Employee journey mapping enhances productivity and efficiency by providing a clear visualization of the entire employee lifecycle, identifying bottlenecks and areas for improvement.

This detailed understanding enables HR to streamline processes, automate repetitive tasks, and allocate resources more effectively. By addressing pain points and optimizing key touchpoints, employees can access the support they need more quickly, leading to reduced downtime and improved focus on their core responsibilities. Ultimately, this leads to a more efficient workflow, higher employee satisfaction, and increased overall productivity.

Informed decision making

Employee journey mapping leads to more informed decision-making by offering a comprehensive view of the employee lifecycle, highlighting key interactions and experiences. This detailed insight enables HR to identify patterns, trends, and pain points, providing a data-driven basis for decisions.

With a clear understanding of employee needs and behaviors, HR can implement targeted improvements, allocate resources more effectively, and develop strategies that align with both employee and organizational goals. This approach ensures that decisions are based on accurate, relevant information, leading to better outcomes and enhanced employee satisfaction.

Creating an employee experience journey map in 6 steps

While each employee experience journey map will be unique, here are the essential steps to create one.

1. Identify goals and objectives

Identify the goals you want to achieve with the journey map, such as improving employee satisfaction, reducing turnover, or enhancing productivity.

Are you looking to streamline the employee experience with AI or find gaps in your employee service operations? Start by determining your objectives and aligning stakeholders around these initiatives.

2. Gather data

The next step is to gather information about and from employees. Conduct one-on-one interviews or send anonymous employee engagement surveys focused on goals, emotions, and pain points at different stages of the journey to obtain unbiased feedback. Review exit interview notes and analyze churn rate trends to understand when and why employees leave.

Additionally, if you have an internal help desk, analyze the data from support tickets to identify frequently asked questions and use quality assurance (QA) tools to evaluate the effectiveness of your internal service teams’ responses.

For example, Zendesk offers AI-powered QA software that can automatically score all your employee service interactions, pinpointing areas for improvement. These insights can then be used to inform your employee journey mapping process.

3. Map touchpoints and service channels

Now, it’s time to map out employee touchpoints, often referred to as “moments that matter.” These touchpoints represent critical interactions between employees and the organization. Be sure to include your employee service channels, such as an employee portal, an email for submitting support requests, and messaging channels like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

An employee experience journey map is essential for visualizing touchpoints and channels at each stage of the employee journey. Using a template can help you define each interaction clearly, identify gaps where touchpoints or channels may be missing or need improvement, and ensure a smoother, more efficient experience for employees.

4. Understand employee emotions

Understanding employee emotions at critical stages in the employee journey can help managers create a better experience.

AI-powered sentiment analysis tools provide valuable data on employee emotions, offering insights into trends and enabling real-time monitoring. For example, HR teams can route requests with negative sentiments to senior managers for resolution or establish rules for quicker response times to address concerns promptly.

Also consider:

• Asking questions about an employee’s state of mind
• Using empathy to evaluate decisions
• Observing team-building activities between employees
• Observing team-building activities between employees
• Conducting anonymous surveys about current or recent employee experiences
• Actively listening to frustrated or angry employees

By taking the time to understand your team’s emotional state, you can take care of yourself, your team, and your customers. Emotional intelligence also allows you to objectively evaluate your employees’ lifecycles, identify bottlenecks and areas of tension, and provide levelheaded solutions to complex problems.

5. Identify pain points and opportunities

Employee journey maps can reveal mismatches between employee expectations and their actual experiences. For instance, while you might believe you offer seamless service throughout the journey, mapping may uncover gaps. Or, perhaps you find that stress levels are high during employee onboarding, revealing an opportunity to streamline the process.

Minimizing these pain points and actively seeking solutions is crucial to enhance the EX and support positive business outcomes.

6. Use employee feedback to refine the map

After creating an employee experience journey map and implementing changes based on your findings, seek feedback from your employees to ensure the effectiveness of those changes. Conduct employee engagement and satisfaction surveys through convenient channels such as Slack, email, or Microsoft Teams to maximize response rates. Include both scale and open-ended questions to gather a range of feedback.

Additionally, analyze data from your HR help desk to confirm improvements in employee service. Continue to request feedback and update your journey maps regularly to gradually enhance employee engagement and productivity.

Employee experience journey mapping best practices

If you’re new to employee experience journey mapping, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. The process involves numerous tasks, such as identifying employee stages, using design tools or templates to visualize phases, and selecting the right solution to track data.

Here are a few best practices to help you stay focused on what matters most: your employees.

• Acknowledge employees’ unique differences. Not everyone’s journey is linear. Don’t expect identical progression paths from staff members, but help them do their best work by understanding their needs.
• Identify ways AI can enhance employee service. Use AI-powered tools to streamline inefficient workflows and provide swift, personalized support at critical stages of the employee journey.
• Make resources easy to find with an internal knowledge base. Our EX Trends Report revealed that 81 percent of EX leaders agree that implementing self-service tools leads to a significant increase in employee satisfaction.
• Ensure security at every step. Limit access to sensitive information and set permissions for different departments to ensure the safety and privacy of employee data.
• Use quality assurance (QA) tools to identify areas to improve employee service throughout the journey. Create a data-backed map by using AI-powered QA solutions like Zendesk QA, which classify unique service issues and monitor employee sentiment.
• Create employee personas and profiles. Develop profiles that outline the types of employees in your organization, including their roles, responsibilities, needs, and expectations.

Following these best practices while creating and maintaining employee experience journey maps allows you to accurately prepare for and prioritize your workforce’s expectations.

Frequently asked questions

Improve the employee journey with world-class employee service

Employee experience journey mapping is an excellent way to enhance your employee service, but it’s only the beginning.
With an AI-powered employee service solution like Zendesk, you can improve support at every stage of the employee journey—from onboarding new hires and answering benefits questions to managing leave and internal tool requests. Tools such as omnichannel support, AI-powered quality assurance, and intelligent AI agents help you deliver swift, personalized service at crucial stages and moments throughout the employee lifecycle.

Improve the employee journey by investing in employee service with Zendesk for EX today.