Employee Journey Touchpoints: UPDATED 2022 – A Complete Guide

You have little chance of making it big if you don't have a solid and competent team. Businesses frequently make the error of prioritizing the satisfaction of their customers over that of their employees. It's possible that they'll do a great job of optimizing and fine-tuning it. After that, they'll focus on making their product even better. It is possible that they will be able to refine their offering further.

However, if you only focus on the satisfaction of your customers and the enhancement of your products, you will lose talented employees.

The best employees will want to work at the best companies. The success of any company hinges on its ability to attract, develop, and reward its best employees.

Employee satisfaction is critical. Likewise, you should focus on employee journey touchpoints. Keep on reading to learn how you can do it.

What are employee journey touchpoints? 

Whenever a company interacts with a customer, such interaction is a touchpoint. The "touchpoints" of an organization's employee experience are the various interactions between the company and its workers.

Anything from an email or phone call before an employee even starts to work to a handshake and a smile on the first day can serve as the first point of contact. The more integrated a new hire feels into the firm, the better their experience will be.

There are primarily four times a company will interact with its employees. These encompass the full spectrum of an employee's experience, from recruitment to retirement. 

4 crucial employee journey touchpoints 

 The four points of contact we'll examine here represent large, overarching turning points in an employee's time with an organization. A wide variety of micro touchpoints are contained within them, which can be further subdivided into a human, organizational, physical, and technological elements.

There are several key touchpoints in an employee's journey, and the specific ones will vary depending on the organization and the role of the employee. However, some of the most crucial touchpoints in an employee's journey might include:

1. The hiring process: This is the first key touchpoint in an employee's journey, and it sets the tone for their experience with the organization. The hiring process should be fair, transparent, and inclusive, and it should provide a clear picture of what the employee can expect from the role and the organization.
2. Onboarding: After an employee is hired, the next crucial touchpoint is the onboarding process. This is where the employee learns about the organization's culture, policies, and procedures, and it is an important time for the employee to begin building relationships with their colleagues.
3. Performance evaluations: Regular performance evaluations are important for providing feedback to employees and helping them to understand how they are doing in their role. These evaluations should be conducted in a fair and objective manner, and they should provide employees with an opportunity to discuss their goals and career aspirations with their manager.
4. Professional development: Providing opportunities for employees to learn and grow is crucial for retaining top talent and keeping employees engaged and motivated. This might include offering training and development programs, providing access to professional development resources, and supporting employees who want to pursue further education or certifications.

We'll do our best to cover as much ground as possible in each, but the specifics will vary greatly from company to company. Let's find out.

Recruitment: Selecting the right employee 

 One would reasonably assume that the employee experience kicks off on the first day of work. But if you want to get an edge in designing the experience your company gives, recruitment is where you should focus first.

1. Define the role: The first step in selecting the right employee is to clearly define the role and its responsibilities. This will help to ensure that candidates understand what is expected of them and can determine whether they are a good fit for the position.
2. Develop a job description: Next, develop a detailed job description that includes information about the role, the required skills and qualifications, and any other relevant details. This will help to attract qualified candidates and ensure that they have the necessary skills and experience for the position.
3. Source candidates: Once the role is defined and the job description is developed, the next step is to source candidates. This might involve posting the job on job boards, recruiting through social media, or working with a recruitment agency.
4. Screen candidates: After sourcing candidates, the next step is to screen them to determine which ones are the best fit for the position. This might involve conducting initial phone interviews to assess their qualifications and fit for the role.
5. Interview and select the candidate: Finally, after screening candidates, the next step is to conduct in-person interviews to assess their fit for the role and the organization. This might involve conducting individual interviews with the hiring manager and other relevant stakeholders, as well as group interviews or other assessment methods. After completing the interviews, the hiring team should carefully consider the qualifications and fit of each candidate and make a final decision on which one to hire.

Implications of the recruitment process 

 Every interaction a potential employee has with your company during the hiring process is an opportunity to make a positive or negative impression on them. So, establish your ground rules early on and strive for continuity.

For instance, promote your company's unique culture during the hiring process. Companies frequently outline their values, goals, and objectives in a job posting but then fail to mention them again. For things to be compelling enough to prospective employees, you must embody them fully.

Take action 

Be more than simply a talker; take some action! By maintaining a high level of professionalism and positivity throughout the whole hiring process, you can attract and retain the most qualified candidates who feel a real affinity for and commitment to the organization's mission.

Whether or whether a candidate is ultimately awarded a position, this practice benefits your company's image as an employer. In order to attract more of the appropriate kind of people in the future, it's important to make sure the word on your company is good. 

Employee onboarding: Welcoming the new employee 

A new employee's onboarding process does not begin on day one. We cannot stress this enough: the onboarding process does not begin on the first day of employment.

Taking charge of the onboarding process is the first step in bettering the experience for new hires. Consider: have you ever started a new job but had trouble accessing your digital workspace or emails on day one?

Our best guess is that the vast majority of people can relate to feeling at a loss, unmotivated, anxious, and lost after experiencing something similar. 

Providing essential items to the employee 

Prepare for the new employee's first day by listing everything they'll need. This could be in the form of furniture, such as a table, computer, laptop, keyboard, mouse, chair, etc. Passwords, email clients, software, a video chat program, or a messaging app are all examples of things that can be technological in nature. Or it could be interpersonal, such as a shared sense of purpose, open lines of communication, a well-defined course of action, detailed instructions, established norms and practices, an introduction to a new coworker, etc.

There is a lot to consider throughout the onboarding process, and you'll need to strike a balance between it and other obligations like compliance checks and mandatory training. 

Your new employee's touchpoints could also change depending on whether they are remote, office-based, frontline, or hybrid. Acquiring this awareness and taking the necessary precautions are crucial. 

Important questions to ask 

Here are some questions that can help you to improve the employee experience:

What preparations should be made before a new employee starts work?

When will the employee start working, and what preparations must be made?

When do new hires tend to feel the most disoriented, and what can you do to help them feel more at ease?

What do new hires dislike most about the orientation process, and how can you improve it?

The simplest method to learn whether elements of the trip leave a positive or negative impression on employees is to actively seek out and act on that feedback at each touchpoint along the way.

Employee journey mapping: Training and learning opportunities

Employee journey mapping is very important for most companies, however most companies find that a three to six-month onboarding period is optimal. But what happens next? Actually, it's not true that everyone in your company puts their heads down and works tirelessly. You can't alienate human beings! They have no reason to.

Every day, workers have new experiences with your company. This "messy middle," when the initial excitement of new employees has worn off, and workers are getting down to the business of doing the job, maybe particularly trying.

But there is another option besides watching them flounder. All of this boils down to seizing every chance to encourage development and expansion.

Important things to focus on during training

Training and development opportunities, as well as regular performance evaluations, should be prioritized here. Similarly, praising and recognizing employees regularly and offering them constructive feedback is important.

Mentoring and coaching are essential for new hires. Confidence can be boosted by inviting them to social events and providing them with additional perks and privileges at work.

If you want your employees to develop personally and professionally, you must provide them with excellent work experience. All it takes is for businesses to take the time to learn about their staff, take in their suggestions, and keep an open line of communication if they want to achieve this.

Consider what employees want from their job

What employees expect from their experience with a company is rather consistent across different work settings, such as remote, hybrid, and traditional office settings. The specifics, however, may change from person to person. In the end, all anyone really wants is to be acknowledged for their unique contributions and encouraged to flourish.

The importance of paying attention to both the professional and personal aspects of life cannot be overstated. When you take the time to acknowledge and celebrate your employees' milestones in life, such as the birth of a child (or fur baby), a wedding, or a major personal accomplishment (such as completing a marathon), you show them that you care about them and their lives. 

Equally important in building a people-first employee experience that prioritizes the touchpoints that actually matter is providing room for empathy and flexibility during trying times.

Offboarding: Handling retirements and resigns

No matter how fantastic your employee experience is, it's unrealistic to think that you'll be able to keep every single employee on staff. Employee turnover is inevitable due to factors such as retirement, moving, career changes, and family responsibilities. But that's fine, too.

However, the employee's departure from the company is just as significant a part of the employee experience as the hiring process. No matter how long they've been with your company, every employee deserves an offboarding process that's as smooth and positive as their onboarding.

While a smooth offboarding process benefits the employee, it also serves the company's best interests. If done correctly, you can lessen the likelihood of security breaches, head off potential legal problems, ease the transition for the rest of the team, and solicit helpful input from the departing worker.

Tips to improve the employee experience

Create small teams

Organizing into smaller groups or teams is an excellent strategy to boost productivity. However, at this time, we are not looking into it. For a new employee, nothing is more comforting than joining a small, close-knit team.

A greater sense of ease and safety is achieved. A new hire may be too sociable, making little difference whether or not they are part of a large team.

Of course, this isn't always the case. It's normal for new hires to feel some extra pressure to perform well, especially if they've finally landed at the dream company. They are especially vulnerable to errors during this phase if they are unfamiliar with the company's procedures. 

Promote transparency

The company's commitment to openness should be made clear to all staff members. If you want people to have a positive impression of your company, you need to be transparent about everything you do. Humans working for you are still people. Customers will have a more favorable impression of your company and its practices if they know your commitment to open communication.

It is crucial to establish this upfront. Now, it's one thing to claim that your company supports openness and quite another actually to operate transparently.

Providing training and other resources

Before bringing on a new employee, it's crucial to equip them with adequate briefing, training, and resources. A training need analysis based on the Goldstein model is useful if you are unsure of the needed training type.

Different work paradigms apply in various settings. Fairness requires that all necessities be met for a new hire before they can begin working.

However, remember that you can't put too much on the plate of new hires. Initial training that involves dumping a tonne of briefing and resource material may seem like a good idea, but it will really overwhelm them.

Engage employees in conversations

Communicate effectively, and don't just chat. If you're trying to introduce a new employee to everyone at work, resist the urge to take them on a tour of the office while exchanging pleasantries. Please be patient. Find times that work for everyone throughout the period of four to five days since not everyone will be accessible constantly. Engage the new hires in informal one-on-one chats.

The conversation around the water cooler. Get a coffee somewhere in the center and take your time chatting freely.

Engaging in fruitful dialogue is critical to fostering development in the workplace. With this, they can relax and feel at ease. The result is increased productivity and efficiency in the workplace as they gain self-assurance. The value of your employee's journey increases as a result of this, too.

Social activities

Organizational development can be greatly aided by hosting or participating in events, meetups, gatherings, etc. New hires see the most gain. Meetings like these have nothing to do with employment. The atmosphere is relaxed and informal. This doesn't require marathon meetings or conferences.

For every ten new hires, you may institute a policy mandating a social gathering. This serves as an introduction, allows for socializing, and boosts morale all around by making workers feel appreciated.

Tell your employees about company values

Before starting work, a new hire should be briefed on the company's mission and values. In the last phases of the interview process, a quick introduction is typically given, and before joining, some type of paperwork or a website is shared.

However, a one-on-one rundown on these issues is unparalleled in terms of being both personal and effective. Make sure everyone on staff knows the company values so they can adjust their behavior accordingly.

Make the first week memorable

 Put Day 1 behind you. You need to be better than the competition if you want to keep your best staff. You need to step up your game if you want to improve. Focus on having a productive first week. The question is, "How do you do that?"

Create a practice, official or otherwise, where all upper-level employees pause to welcome a new hire.

This need not happen simultaneously. Take a week to do it. Create a company culture, if you will. We can only hope that no new policies will have to be drafted.

This will eventually become ingrained in the organization's culture, so much so that it won't require constant policing. Great working partnerships sometimes begin with a simple handshake or introduction from a mutual friend.

Learn from mistakes and prepare a pre-onboarding plan

You have given careful consideration to the onboarding procedure. Is there anything you can tell me about the steps that come before official onboarding? Pre-onboarding is the period of time before an employee's first day on the job.

Get in touch with your staff now to show them how much you value them.

Begin with some sort of introduction, preferably digital. It's not necessary to make an investment right now. However, delivering corporate movies accomplishes two things at once: it strengthens the bond between the employee and the organization and makes communicating the company's ideals easy.

It is also important to detail any social services you offer during this stage. 

Start with employee journey touchpoints

 The preceding suggestions are not meant to be comprehensive. Given its unique structure, each company may discover additional phases in the employee journey and new touchpoints that require specific attention.

Therefore, your touchpoints should be the first area you focus on when designing the employee experience. Therefore, sit down and write them out, dissecting each into increasingly minute details. To change and improve the experience, one must first grasp the factors within their control.

What are the employee experience touchpoints in the journey?

The journey that an employee takes through an organization (primarily a journey in time) includes two types of interactions: those directly related to their work and those not.

Any company has an obligation and a prerequisite for improved corporate culture and enhanced productivity to enhance both sorts of digital employee experience touchpoints.

The morning greeting and the good nighttime night are two examples of non-task-related experience touchpoints. Any time you and your coworkers talk about something, whether it's a work-related topic like an update on a project you're working on or something more casual like politics or the weather, counts as a touchpoint.

Feedback, acknowledgments, project progress, performance feedback or goals, prototypes, support and advice, and so on are all examples of task-related touchpoints.

Wrapping up 

AgilityPortal can help you see your entire workforce, learn about your employees, and shape their work experience. Our modern platform for the employee experience centralizes all relevant internal communications, content, systems, and expertise in a single, accessible location in the cloud. Moreover, AgilityPortal allows administrators like HR managers and team leaders to monitor and keep tabs on employee touchpoints, allowing them to improve the employee experience by making it more personalized, consistent, empathetic, and human, regardless of whether your employees work remotely, in an office or in a hybrid work environment.