Over the years we have partnered with many companies on employee experience projects — helping them map the employee journey, identifying areas of opportunity, collaborating with employees on designing new programs and processes, and defining launch strategies that bring the new initiatives to life. Recent world events had me wondering about these types of projects and asking myself…

Is now a time to put employee experience work on hold, waiting for a ‘return to normal’, or is there, in fact, even more reason to embark on those efforts based on how radically and rapidly the ‘work environment’ has changed with current circumstances?

It didn’t take long for me to conclude that the need for these types of project is greater than ever. The situation today presents new challenges across the employee journey from making the interview process feel personal to developing engaging onboarding to keeping employees motivated in their daily work and so on. These stressful times create an opportunity and need to engage employees even more! Face time is now screen time. We’ve all seen business ‘happy hours’ conducted over video and remote working sessions using online whiteboards and virtual breakout rooms and other creative engagement strategies. What works? What doesn’t? What do employees actually find desirable and valuable?

Consider mapping your employee journey to discover not only the ‘standard’ challenges that emerge when the world itself is ‘standard’ but also to uncover a host of new challenges posed by today’s work-at-home environment. We’ve also learned from experience that the simple act of collaborating with employees on a journey mapping effort helps them feel engaged and motivated in a time when both can be challenging.

Some actions to consider as you embark on your employee journey mapping:

• Recruit an internal team to collaboratively draft a hypothetical baseline journey.
• Conduct “research” with employees to validate that baseline. Tailor the research to a remote environment – interviews, video calls, online focus groups, video workshops, etc.
• Document the journey in an easy to consume format.
• Identify areas of opportunity across the journey and within phases of the journey.
• Gather a representative group of employees for a virtual ideation workshop to brainstorm new programs and processes through exercises optimized for a virtual environment.

Reach out if you want to chat about the benefits of employee journey mapping. We’d love to hear about your challenges and are happy to share ideas with you.

Noel Adams
noel@clearworks.net

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