Employee Journey Mapping: How Ashley Woodman of BOA Uses Pyn

Ashley Woodman is the Director of Organizational Development at BOA. BOA builds the proven and patented BOA® Fit System that makes the best gear even better. In her role within the People and Culture Team, she oversees talent acquisition, learning and development, and organizational development, as well as supporting strategic planning and operating across the People and Culture team’s centers of excellence.

Ashley found out about Pyn’s Employee Journey Mapper through a recommendation from her boss. “We had previously done some simplified journey mapping at BOA, so she sent it over for me to test it out and to see how we could use it with our team.” Their process for journey mapping was manual - a whiteboard and sticky notes - with the whole team collaborating in-person. 

“What I liked about the whiteboard was the visual aspect and it introduces the concept of - what are these little moments and experiences you want to create consistency across. But when I hopped into Pyn, you could tell they were just such thoughtful journey maps. The structure that was there, it was like - wow - there's so much already built in. Maybe even some things we weren't thinking about in terms of employee experiences or touch points. 

And so for us, we were building from scratch and identifying our gaps that way versus this was such a more robust tool to start from, sparking some ideas as well as creating a really nice foundation to customize off of for our processes.”

Learn how Ashley and the team at BOA are using Pyn’s Employee Journey Mapping capabilities to think about creating a more consistent employee experience, align their team’s work, and increase collaboration.

Journey Mapping helps set priorities and improve EX 

Journey mapping at BOA is about planning work priorities for the team, and continuously reviewing the employee experience for potential gaps and improvements.

“We take what we learn from journey mapping and put it into our roadmap for the People and Culture team. With Pyn’s updated journey mapping process, we thought it was a great opportunity to have a learning circle with our team to introduce them to the concept as well, using a more robust tool than what we had previously done before,” says Ashley. 

When it comes to looking at “gaps” or places for improvement across the employee experience, Ashley approaches the process with a positive mindset: “It doesn't have to be negative to ask, ‘How do we make this more awesome?’”

Creating a Journey Map using Pyn 

When asked what she thought of Pyn for the first time, Ashley says, “I don't know if giddy is the right word, but just seeing how robust the different sections were was great. To see [the employee journey] so thoughtfully put out there. And, the user experience was incredibly easy. I watched one short video upon signing up and then started digging in right away, moving things around, editing and inputting my thoughts.”

After Ashley created a baseline journey map for BOA, she met with her whole team. “We did about an hour and a half learning circle where I had gone through and modified most sections to at least show how the journey maps work, how we could use it to identify gaps, or maybe build up our employee experience in some areas. And it was really easy for everybody to grasp the concept because of how it's laid out.”

Learn more about the benefits of collaborating on your employee journey map here: Employee journey mapping: How to get started (includes template) 

In the longer term, Ashley sees their journey map as a way to create a vision for the future. When thinking about the organization in the next ten years, she knows that a lot of their potential for growth is fueled by the employees and their experience. 

Focusing on consistency: regional vs. global and supporting managers

When it comes to using their journey map to improve the employee experience, Ashley mentions the regional versus global perspective. “Oftentimes, when you work in one office, it's very easy to put the employee experience lens through what your day to day is. But how can we look at that through the lens of our regional teams, across the globe as well? How do we create this consistent, amazing BOA culture across all of our offices?” 

Another focus is on supporting managers. “Everyone at work has different management styles. You can have one manager respond to an employee going on parental leave that’s like, ‘Okay great, you can talk to HR’ versus ‘Oh, wonderful! Let’s talk about your leave planning, this is how I’ll support you and this is how People and Culture is going to support you.’ So that’s two different experiences. Journey mapping can help us plan support for those manager interactions.” 

As we hear from many People Leaders, Ashley says that the managers at BOA are amazing people, and they do a great job. “But how can we make their jobs a little easier? And how can we provide them the support and the resources they need more just-in-time,” she adds. 

Ongoing Journey Map usage to support EX planning

Ashley plans to revisit their employee journey map later in the year for further collaboration with her team. This includes Organizational Development, Social Responsibility, Total Rewards, and Systems and Insights. While there are different operating plans for each, they all need to work together on the employee experience. Ashley can use the “Team Responsible” designation to assign work to the different centers of excellence, as well set the priority level.  

“I think everyone loved this process because we recognize we're not four different areas of People and Culture operating distinctly. What employees experience across the journey intersects with everyone’s work. So, journey mapping helps us think more broadly about the experience versus siloed thinking in each of our centers of excellence,” explains Ashley. 

Whether you’re just getting started with the concept of employee journey mapping, or you’re coming to Pyn seeking a more advanced tool for a well worn process, you’ll get the most out of it if you have a goal in mind, says Ashley. Her advice is to ask yourself, “Are you using your map to help you think about and build out the employee experience? Or is it helping to help you refine and identify any areas where you maybe want to add more to your employee experience.” 

Pyn’s Employee Journey Designer is free to use. Try it out today.