12 key benefits of employee journey mapping

Perhaps you’ve been hearing folks talk about employee journey mapping lately, and you’re wondering what all the buzz is about. 

Why should you, a busy HR leader with a ton of tasks already on their plate, take on the creation of an employee journey map? 

If you’re here, we’re thinking you’re at least on the curious side. Perhaps you’ve even logged into our free employee journey mapping tool to check out how easy it can be to create a map using our pre-built templates. 

Perhaps you’re here not because you’re looking to learn the benefits of an employee journey map, but you need a tidy list of the benefits to share with your team or make the case for journey mapping internally. 

In either case, we’re thinking we have what you need. Here are 12 benefits of employee journey mapping, for the HR team, employees, and the company at large.  

Benefits of employee journey mapping for the HR team:

1. Better collaboration (breaks down silos)

HR teams can sometimes work in silos. You have your Talent folks doing their thing, Ops is doing theirs, HRBPS have their rhythm, you get the picture. But everyone on the HR team affects the employee experience. An employee journey map is a great way to visualize just how those touchpoints work together to influence employees. 

With Pyn’s free tool, you can easily collaborate on your employee journey map by inviting others. You can also assign work on each employee touchpoint to different teams or specific team members. 

2. Reduces manual work/admin burden

It’s unlikely that just having an employee journey map as an artifact will reduce manual work on your team. However, when you keep your journey map an active resource - and combine it with the power of automation - it can save your team significant time on manual work. 

Once you have all of the moments of your employee journey represented on your map, you can decide which ones are suitable for automation. For example, you could automate parts of your onboarding process. Take this instance from Mary Newville, Director of People Experience at Arctic Wolf. 

“We are onboarding people all over North America and Europe, and so that's not just one mass email, it's a bunch of different versions of, here's your start date, or here's your office location and where to go on your first day, and here's your schedule…So I mean truly, without Pyn, I don't know how we would have survived or done anything else but onboard through those years of hyper growth, but Pyn allowed us to create custom thoughtful curated comms throughout the new hire journey pre-day one and post day, one to both the new hire and the manager.”

3. Makes it easier to present your EX strategy

Having a complete (or even a partial!) employee journey map that showcases your company's strengths and areas for improvement across the employee experience helps you tell a compelling story to stakeholders about your EX strategy. 

Stacey Nordwall, Pyn’s VP of People Strategy, explains “Once you identify where work needs to be done on your map, you can prioritize and resource based on what will have the highest impact on the business. Then you can connect those priorities to the business goals. So you're using your map to tell the story of the experience that you want to create and to help explain to stakeholders within the business the value that's going to be unlocked by working on those things. And that could be something such as improved employee experience, engagement, retention, tenure, etcetera.”

4. Work proactively rather than reactively 

“Reactive teams respond to problems after they happen. Proactive teams eliminate them before. Too much reactive work means our business stagnates and we risk burning out as we’re always on someone else’s schedule,” says Joris Luijke, CEO of Pyn and previous HR leader at Atlassian and Squarespace. 

So how can you work more proactively as an HR team? It comes down to better foresight and timing, which you can achieve by creating and using an employee journey map. 

“In the HR context, we need to map what predictable events/moments could happen throughout an employee's journey,” adds Joris. 

While you can’t predict the unexpected, there are many moments that pop up throughout the employee experience that can be anticipated and planned for on your map. 

Benefits of employee journey mapping for employees 

1. A more consistent employee experience

One of the most impactful ways that journey mapping benefits employees is by creating a more consistent employee experience. 

A consistent employee experience is a uniform and predictable set of interactions, policies, and practices that employees encounter throughout their tenure at a company. This means that no matter where your employees are located, who their manager is, how tenured they are, etc., they encounter a uniform and predictable set of interactions. 

Consistency in the employee experience is important because it leads to a more equitable experience and better employee retention. 

2. A more inclusive experience 

For employees, feelings of belonging at work are strongly linked to retention. For companies, creating an inclusive and equitable employee experience can be challenging, even when well intentioned. 

DEI Consultant Natania Malin Gazek explains that it’s important to focus on DEI from the very beginning when creating your employee journey map. “Developing your Employee Journey Map is powerful for DEI progress because it gives you a clear process to ensure the employee journey works for people across diverse identities,” says Natania. 

Learn more in their guides on How to create an Employee Journey Map that strengthens DEI and Using an Employee Journey Map to support ongoing DEI work. 

3. Better onboarding

Once a candidate’s offer is accepted, the onboarding process can begin. It’s your company’s first chance to make a good impression, and to help your new hire get started successfully. Pyn’s Employee Journey Map includes important templated messaging for touchpoints from the offer, to preonboarding, first week, 30-90 days, and even a 6-month check in. 

Planning how you’ll support employees as they onboard to your company is one of the biggest benefits of employee journey mapping for employees. Take this example from Balbina Knight, VP of People and Culture at Thrive Digital, who has been using Pyn to communicate with new hires - even before day one. “We have a really exceptional onboarding experience that's been built out. But between an offer to your first day starting…It was just radio silence. 

We needed to fill this dead air. The opportunity was there with Pyn. Let's create this trickle campaign that over the weeks leading up to somebody starting, we're still staying engaged with them,” she explains. 

In addition, Lauren Whitehouse, Employee Experience Manager at Mindbody, says now that she’s been using Pyn to automate - and personalize - onboarding messages, more employees are responding to her communications. 

Before Pyn, she says, “I did have a welcome series. It was like the exact same content, but it didn't look personalized. It didn't have this nice surprise and delight [a welcome video], because I wasn't able to do that with our old tool. And almost nobody would reply back to those emails. Now, I get a response almost every single time. [With messages sent via Pyn], people feel like they’re being personally welcomed.”

4. Better communication 

Who wants to get an email at 3am? A ping on Slack at dinnertime? No one, and definitely not employees who are trying to manage work-life balance. 

With communications automated across the employee journey, you can send messages in the right time zone, at the right time, every time. For companies that are new or still adjusting to remote work, better communication can help further a sense of connectedness with each other and with the company.

Mary Newville, Director of People Experience at Arctic Wolf, sends a series of onboarding messages to employees and their managers. As she explains, “We don't have the time to answer 20 manager’s questions about, ‘What's their schedule? Where are they going? Why aren't they on Slack yet? Did they get the benefits info?’ So Pyn allowed us to address, what are those questions we're getting asked all the time? Let's answer them at scale. Let's think of them before the person even has to ask and deliver it to them when they need it. And it has truly been a game changer for us.”

5. Personalized career development

Career development and general internal mobility within a company are important for employees. A one-size-fits-all approach isn’t the most effective for employees, and employee journey mapping can help bring personalization to the process. 
For example, you can use your employee journey map to look at career trajectories for employees in different departments, of different tenures, or in different locations. Knowing the current state of career development across these kinds of demographics will help you better personalize the process. 

Not only can you use your map from this strategic standpoint, but if you can automate communications, like you can with Pyn, you can prompt managers to have a career development conversation with their direct report.

Benefits of employee journey mapping for the company

1. Better engagement 

Depending on the company, different factors may be the main drivers for employee engagement. In general, leadership, learning and development, managers, and a sense of purpose all affect employee engagement. 

There are many employee engagement strategies that you can execute using your employee journey map. For example: 

• Foster personalized communication, training, and management
• Invest in manager training and development
• Provide opportunities for personal development and growth
• Keep company leadership actively involved

In general, creating an employee journey map also helps you identify - and solve - pain points across the employee journey which can improve overall engagement.

2. Higher employee retention rates

Research from our friends at Culture Amp shows that the top three reasons employees leave a role are: career growth, role expectations, and Inclusion.

You can address all of these factors - and more that are unique to your company - through an employee journey mapping exercise. To use your employee journey map to boost retention you can:

• Personalize employee/manager development
• Better onboard employees with clear role expectations
• Create a more inclusive employee experience
• Schedule salary review reminders and support for managers

Visit our blog on how to use your employee journey map to boost retention for more detail on each.

3. Better productivity 

As a measurement, employee productivity looks at the degree to which employees are contributing to company goals. An employee journey map can help your company ​better ramp employees to productivity during onboarding, and support better productivity across other important moments in a few ways: 

• Helping to create clarity of role and expectations during onboarding. When employees know what is expected of them and how it contributes to company goals, they can execute faster. 
• Support managers in communicating goals and OKRs with their team members on a regular basis. This ensures that employees know what is expected of them on an ongoing basis. 
• Provide access to regular training and career development. Helping employees become more proficient in their current roles, or to grow into more senior ones, creates more efficient employees.  

Lauren Whitehouse, Employee Experience Manager at Mindbody, shares why it’s important to help employees become productive early on, “While we always want employees to have a great experience, effective onboarding is about the business too. How quickly are new hires getting to productivity? That is critical, and that is saving you money. It’s an essential thing to get right off the bat.”