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Employee Journey Mapping

2 min read
December 3, 2025
Employee Journey Mapping

How can you ensure that your employees are happy and satisfied? That they work productively and business goals are achieved? But also: how do you retain talent? And ensure that recruitment & selection is efficient and effective? Or that absenteeism remains under control?

Simple: by mapping the employee journey, you know what is going well and what needs improvement. At Highberg, we help organizations and HR departments by combining qualitative and quantitative research and providing clear dashboards. This gives you valuable insights to optimize your organization and add value.

 

What is an Employee Journey?

The term Employee Journey might not immediately ring a bell. Think of the Customer Journey. That probably sounds familiar. A customer journey is a client journey where all contact moments with the organization are recorded.

Think, for example, of your own customer journey with your mobile phone provider. At some point, you chose to become a customer at, for instance, KPN, T-mobile, or Vodafone. You receive mail or mailings, pay your bills, and probably contact customer service if you have a question or problem. And you are a happy customer when you have a positive feeling about those contact moments.

Now replace ‘customer’ with ’employee’ or ‘colleague,’ and you understand what we mean by employee journey. Indeed: the journey an employee goes through and the associated contact points. This starts even before he or she is actually a colleague, just as someone can have contact with a company without actually being a customer.

What is the Employee Life Cycle?

Overall, we speak of the Employee Life Cycle, which includes many different employee journeys. Broadly, the employee life cycle runs from attracting a new employee, through onboarding, working, a possible promotion, and ultimately (hopefully after a long time together and a beautiful career) the exit.

You can see the employee life cycle in the image below, and it is roughly the same for every employee, although not everyone needs to go through the entire cycle. Think of the employee who finds another job during the onboarding period.

What is Employee Journey Mapping?

Employee Journey Mapping is the process of mapping and visually representing every interaction an employee has with a company. This map tells the story of the employee’s experience at all touchpoints between him or her and the organization, from the first contact and (interview) conversation to a long-term collaboration or finally an exit.

How we map the Employee Journey

Step 1: Kick-off

During the kick-off, we determine the scope and focus. We decide which phase or journey within the employee life cycle we start with. We do this based on data and the organization’s strategy. Think, for example, of:

  • What questions frequently arise in our case management system
  • What do we receive an unusually high number of complaints about
  • What do we see in the system log data? Are process steps being skipped, or is there a delay or even dropout
  • What is important in the organizational strategy
  • Recent developments, such as hiring many new people in the short term

As you can see, you can tackle a lot of issues. The art is to (dare to) make choices, and we are happy to help you with that. Together, we set goals and make a plan. We also look at which stakeholders we involve and which data we will use.

Step 2: Research and create personas

The next step is to create personas, where we make a detailed description of a representative part of the target group. We do this based on various inputs, such as observations, workshops, interviews, surveys, or analyses of documents, texts, and other data.

Examples include a young employee who has just had their first child, or an employee who is a few years away from retirement, or a student with a part-time job. But we also look at people’s personalities and what motivates or frustrates someone. This helps to determine what is important later in the project.

Step 3: Filling in the Employee Journey Map

The basis of the employee journey map is the different phases. Within these phases, there are various contact moments, or touchpoints. You record when, where, and how people come into contact. This gives you a comprehensive picture of how a persona interacts with your organization.

When recording the touchpoints, we also identify ‘moments that matter’ and ‘moments of truth.’ In other words, we differentiate between touchpoints, as some contact moments have more impact than others.

Then you zoom in on how people experience those touchpoints. You collect data to know how well (or not) the journey is going. To make this clear to the relevant stakeholders, we present this in clear dashboards.

Step 4: Initiating improvement initiatives

By visually representing the employee journey, you quickly see which touchpoints score worse than others and know where you can make improvements. For example, it turns out the job vacancy is not as attractive as you thought, or there is a complicated step in the application process that deters potential employees.

Based on this, stakeholders discuss initiatives to improve the employee experience. After starting such an initiative, we see the result reflected in the dashboards: do the touchpoints indeed score better?

Employee Journey Dashboard

An important part of our approach is the representation of the touchpoints and their measurements. Only then do you have quick and (near) real-time insight into the status and can act immediately if necessary. Therefore, we bring several metrics together in a cockpit. This means we create one or more clear dashboards with KPIs. This way, everyone has insight into what is important to them, and stakeholders are always informed. This way, you can also directly measure the effect of improvement initiatives. For clear dashboards, we often use Power BI, but other tools are also possible, such as visualization software like Tableau and MicroStrategy, or even the old reliable.

Benefits of Employee Journey Mapping in HR

At AnalitiQs, we believe that a good employee experience translates into a good customer experience. Customers notice immediately when employees are proud of their organization, enjoy their work, and are well-equipped to do their job. This then reflects in the financial figures. In fact, we don’t just believe this, we know it because we also measure it.

Working on the employee journey thus leads to direct benefits for your employees and customers, because the better the journey, the faster, the better your work, the less bureaucracy, and the happier and more satisfied employees are. For the organization, a good employee journey ensures a good employee experience, which is a prerequisite for success towards customers, shareholders, and other stakeholders.

Richard Branson: ‘Clients do not come first. Employees come first.
If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.’

Employee journey example

Are you wondering what employee journeys exist and which ones you should focus on? This varies for each organization. Depending on your focus, you can look at the employee life cycle from a high level, but also delve deeper.

Think, for example, of:

  • A colleague is on long-term sick leave and wants to return. What does that look like?
  • The first promotion to team leader of a young professional is a fact
  • A colleague can choose a company car
  • How is the onboarding process organized when you look at young starters and older employees transitioning

These are, of course, just a few examples. We are happy to discuss with you to determine the employee journeys that are most important for your organization.

What makes employee journey mapping with Highberg unique?

We assist you at every step of employee journey mapping. We do this as follows.

  • With a structured approach, we determine the priorities and focus together
  • We work with a well-thought-out combination of qualitative and quantitative research, such as interviews and workshops with employees, and data
  • We bring data together in a dashboard, so you can immediately see which adjustments have a positive impact
  • We use data and associated analysis and data science techniques to map the journey even better. Think of process mapping, but also predictive analyses. This way, you don’t just report reactively, but you can look ahead and anticipate
  • We support with employee journey surveys, such as onboarding and exit surveys

In short: we help you with data-driven insights to monitor and improve your journey. This ensures an ever-improving employee experience and customer experience.

Want to know more?

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