strong>Sascha Becker and Wenda Bolink really wrote a book that warmly welcomes new employees to your company, and keeps them aligned with your vision. In The Employee Journey the two authors made a good solid case in applying the ‘customer journey experience’ to fresh candidates and existing workforce talents as well.
‘The Employee Journey’ is a book that puts good recruitment and human resource management in a ‘customer journey’ perspective. Candidates move through touchpoints outside and inside your company. And in 3 stages, the right candidates are found, then they start working (and happily get good at it) and eventually employees move on or retire.
I have the idea that the pink colors throughout the book make a ‘hidden’ reference to a person called Daniel Pink. But whether this is true or not, I’ve rarely read books on people journeys that radiate such a warmth like this one. Maybe it’s the color palette, maybe it is the style of the drawings. But for sure, the book switches hence and forth between serious, more theoretical topics and illustrative practical examples and real world cases.
You’ll find well known and established approaches from the field of marketing and leadership within ‘The Employee Journey’. The AIDA-model comes along on how to get the right talent working for your company. A psychological model for dealing with loss (= an existing employee moving on) helps tune the experience to the right feelings for staying connected with the person behind the employee. Also a few HR-supportive frameworks from major consulting firms are described and illustrated.
Although the book ‘The Employee Journey’ includes breakouts with real numbers and pie-charts, my question remains on how to really measure your designed employee journey at each touchpoint. Don’t get me wrong. The authors state that most initiatives for improvements creating a great employee experience starts with insights, and end with looking at measurements. But please help me with some sample KPI’s and how I am doing as a company. At certain parts in the text, I was also looking for a clear reference to the fact source that belonged to a statement like ‘research shows that…’
Nonetheless, ‘The Employee Journey’ was a great experience to me as a reader. I could really feel the warmth of the authors while reading their work. And that might be perhaps the biggest take-away of this book. You must love your employees, in a sense that you create alignment and give freedom. Which is quite a different feeling I get from most books on customer journeys, which feel more like cold-hearted converting and hard selling your target audience through touchpoints.
Yes, it is really fun, effective and also required to create a great employee experience nowadays!
Over Quintus Hegie
Econometrist en informaticus Quintus C. Hegie, MSc heeft een tiental jaar praktische ervaring met data gedreven digitale marketing in de financiële branche. Zijn vertrekpunt bij het ondersteunen van bedrijven met hun marketing afdeling is steeds de gedragingen en overtuigingen van de eindklant beter te leren begrijpen.