Because the employee experience is vast and we’re moving beyond three standard areas to review, we need a standard way to capture the employee experience journey – to make it easier for you to influence engagement through quantitative and qualitative measures.
The employee experience journey is made up four components:
Know + Feel + Act + Touch
This framework may feel a bit different than most HR models you’re used to – it’s about your employee-first, and how we can create the ideal journey for them – not about us in HR. By putting our employees at the center of this model, we instantly change the focus of our work to be centered on their journey.
Before we go deeper into the framework and its components, it’s important to share why this model is so different and so successful. To do that, I’m going to bring you back to your high school English class – for some, this may be a fond memory, or perhaps the first time you’re remembering it. Either way, let’s talk about storytelling.
While there are many books about the elements of storytelling, my two favorite books, layout the characters in a similar fashion (Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t by Steve Pressfield and Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller). Now why do we need to consider storytelling when we’re talking about HR? Because in order to influence our employees and have our work deliver real value, we need to shift the way we approach our employee-focused work. And storytelling is the easiest way to explain this.
Why do we need to consider storytelling when we’re talking about #HR? Because in order to influence our employees and have our work deliver real value, we need to shift the way we approach our employee-focused work. Click To Tweet
In a story’s framework, there are a set of standard characters that help move the story along. You will see these same character archetypes in books, movies, successful marketing campaigns, podcasts, etc.
From a character perspective, every story has a:
- Hero
- Guide
- Villain
Traditionally in HR or employee-focused communications, we throw these rules out the window and just insert corporate speak about what you think the employee needs to know and do, add a bit of legalese in there, some HR acronyms to spice things up, and call it a good communication. Trust me – I’ve been seeing this across companies of all sizes, over the past 15 years.
And we all know that it doesn’t work. Our employees have stopped caring or even taking, the employee engagement surveys we send out. They have more questions than feasible about their benefits – even though all of the details are available. And when we try to incite action, it feels like it takes a force of nature.
It’s because we’re ignoring the Storytelling for HR ™ framework.
When we look at each character, here is what we see by default, and how it looks like when it’s successful – think current state versus future state of our HR view.
In general, you can see a big difference between our current approach and a storytelling approach to creating impactful experiences and communications (it’s applicable to both!). In our current state, we start from our own perspective within HR and by doing so, we take on a losing proposition before we even start. We’re trying to get our employees to think and act like we do – when they have no idea what’s going on. They’re joining us in the middle of the story and all they know, is that they need to do something because someone is telling them to, but they don’t want to and end up throwing a temper tantrum.
By shifting our storytelling focus to our employees and consider them your customers in the employee experience journey, you will already have created a more successful journey. Because you have placed your employees in the hero’s seat – you are setting them up for a journey, seeking out success.
By shifting our storytelling focus to our employees and consider them your customers in the #employeeexperience journey, you will already have created a more successful journey. #HR Click To Tweet
With this new storytelling construct in mind, let’s dive deeper into the elements that comprise the Employee Experience Journey Framework.
Know:
Know is applied in two different contexts along the journey: what do we need our employees to know at any given time along the journey and do we know what your employees need to know.
Feel:
We use feel, to ensure we capture the emotion we want our employees to actively have at specific points along the journey – creating an ongoing meaningful connection to the company and their overall experience.
Act:
Act is where we guide our employees to the next action we want them to take. This is what we want them to actively do – the one next thing.
Touch:
Touch is how we actually connect the experience together – the various ways we touch and interact with our employees. This is the tangible piece of the journey – we can point to it specifically and see it in action.
Introducing the Employee Experience model to create your company’s ideal employee experience journey: Know, Feel, Act, Touch. #employeeexperience #HR Click To Tweet
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Ready to learn more about the employee experience journey? Snag this checklist to get started – and stay tuned. Much more content, including samples and case studies are ahead!
