Most organizations think carefully about how to bring in the right people. Far fewer organizations think about what happens after that.
That's a missed opportunity. Because the quality of the employee journey, the complete journey an employee goes through from the first introduction to the moment of departure, largely determines whether someone stays, grows and contributes. And whether someone enjoys going to work.
At JobAligner, the employee journey isn't an HR tool. It's the backbone of our work happiness approach.
There's a misunderstanding I regularly encounter. Directors and HR managers treat the employee journey as synonymous with onboarding. The first weeks, the first months, the program used to train a new employee.
That's just one of eight phases.
The employee journey begins earlier, namely the moment someone first hears about your organization. And the Employee Journey ends the moment someone leaves the organization and afterward, whether as an ambassador or not, talks about you.
Everything in between, how someone is recruited, how they grow, how engaged they feel, how their relationship with their manager develops, is part of that journey. And each of those moments influences work happiness, engagement and, ultimately, performance.
I don't see the employee journey as a separate track alongside work happiness. They're the same issue, viewed from two different angles.
Work happiness is about how someone experiences their work right now. The employee journey is about how that experience develops over time. Whoever maps out both sees not just what's happening now, but also where someone is heading.
That insight is valuable. An employee who's enthusiastic in year one but stagnant by year three gives off signals long before they decide to leave. If you pick up on those signals and act on them, you retain talent. If you miss them, you lose people you didn't want to lose.
That's precisely why JobAligner developed 15 work happiness themes that specifically map out how employees experience their employee journey. Not once, but continuously.
By mapping out the employee journey step by step, you discover exactly where employees feel engaged and where they don't. How happy and motivated they are. Whether they feel appreciated. Whether they experience enough autonomy. Whether they feel enough attention is paid to their development potential. And how they experience the relationship with their manager.
If you set up the employee journey well from the ground up, you help your employees make better use of their potential. This leads to more work happiness, more engagement and, ultimately, better performance for your organization. This is exactly what I focus on at JobAligner.
The employee journey can be divided into 8 steps. It's up to the employer to develop a vision for these different phases of the employee journey.
Attraction is an important part of every relationship, including the one between an employee and an organization. In this context, attraction refers to an organization being seen as an appealing employer.
Recruiting begins with attracting candidates, who then apply, and ends when they accept the offer.
Once the right candidate has been found and selected, the next phase begins: preboarding. This is the period between accepting a new job and the first working day.
Onboarding refers to the new employee's first working day and the period after. By investing in your employees from the start, you make a valuable long-term investment.
By now, the new employee has been successfully onboarded and has found their place in the organization. To help the employee contribute optimally, it's important to identify their personal development and growth needs. And to then see to what extent this matches the manager's vision.
Engaging employees is primarily about promoting work happiness. Increasing employee engagement is therefore central to JobAligner's approach.
Once an employee is onboarded, developing well and contributing to your organization, the next step is retaining that employee. Retention is important for keeping talent within your organization and avoiding the high costs of replacement.
Offboarding covers the period between the termination of the employment contract and the employee's final departure. Although professional offboarding is often overlooked, an organization can do what's needed to guarantee a pleasant and smooth departure. And in the best case, a departing employee can act as an ambassador for your organization.
With job crafting, the job content is adapted to the employee's knowledge, skills, talents, interests and needs. Job crafting is a method of making small changes to a job that make the work more fulfilling.
The phenomenon of job crafting and the employee journey are closely connected. As mentioned, assessing tasks and competencies per employee is an important part of the employee journey, and you need this in order to job craft. So let employees indicate which tasks they enjoy and which they enjoy less.
It's a given that employees are good at performing tasks they enjoy. The reverse is also true: tasks they enjoy less are often not carried out efficiently. Fortunately, every employee has a different experience when carrying out their tasks. Job crafting can therefore offer perspective here and give employees more enjoyment at work.
Mapping the employee journey is one thing. Acting on it structurally is another.
At JobAligner, we bring both together. Through the Work Happiness App, employees weekly answer questions about how they experience their employee journey. 15 themes provide insight into engagement, development, the relationship with the manager, and the experience of the work culture.
Managers can then respond to their employees' input. They add their own perspective on competencies, task execution, growth potential and development needs. This turns the employee journey into a shared conversation, not a one-sided measurement.
The fleet review, mapping knowledge, talents and competencies against what the organization needs, is fully integrated into our approach. Not as an annual HR ritual, but as continuous insight that supports strategic workforce planning.
A good employee journey isn't a luxury. It's a condition for an organization that wants to grow without wearing down its employees.
Employees who feel appreciated perform better. Employees who are given room to grow stay longer. Employees who know their voice counts are more loyal and contribute more.
All those outcomes start with one thing: serious, continuous attention to the journey each employee makes. From the first introduction to the farewell.
At JobAligner, we make that journey visible. So that you don't react when it's too late, but act while it still matters. Want to know what the Employee Journey looks like in the Work Happiness App? Request a demo now.
