Most organizations say they want to create great employee experiences. But when you look closely, many of those experiences are really designed around internal processes — what HR needs to track, what IT needs to provision, what managers need to approve.
Employees often end up adjusting themselves around a workflow rather than the workflow adjusting around them.
Over the past few years, working with customers on onboarding and experience platforms, I’ve seen a recurring pattern: companies genuinely care about people, yet their processes rarely reflect how employees actually feel at each stage of their journey.
That’s where employee journey mapping makes a real difference. It shifts the lens from process-led to people-led, and once you make that shift, you start noticing friction points you didn’t even realize existed.
Let’s walk through the employee lifecycle from an employee’s perspective, with a few lessons I’ve picked up while working with HR teams, managers, and employees themselves.
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For new hires, onboarding isn’t “day one.” It starts the moment they accept the offer and continues well into their first few months.
One customer I worked with realized that almost 40% of their onboarding delays were happening before the employee even joined — incomplete manager prep, missing IT requests, inconsistent pre-start communication. HR assumed everything was smooth because the tasks were assigned, but from the employee’s lens, it felt disorganized.
A few questions typically shape a new hire’s early experience:
Common friction points that are seen:
What helps:
SHRM notes that 69% of employees are more likely to stay for three years if they have a great onboarding experience. Teams that put intentional effort into onboarding almost always report better manager sentiment and early engagement. (Source)
Once the initial excitement settles, employees start asking deeper questions about their growth in the workplace:
In one implementation, an HR manager told me, “We lose people not because they don’t like the work, but because we talk about their growth too late.” That conversation stuck with me.
Typical friction points I see across customers:
What has worked well:
Gallup reports that turnover can reach 50% in the first 18 months without meaningful development. (Source)
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Offboarding is the stage most companies rush through. Everyone is focused on the new hire replacing the outgoing employee, so the person leaving becomes an administrative checklist.
But from the employee’s lens, how you treat them on the way out says everything about your culture.
I once worked with a customer who discovered through journey mapping that payroll was being informed of resignations days or weeks late. This created overpayments — not only a financial issue, but a trust issue. Once they automated the workflow, the problem nearly disappeared.
Friction points I see frequently:
Simple fixes that go a long way:
HBR notes that 28% of new hires today are boomerang employees. Companies with respectful, well-managed exits see more returnees and referrals. (Source)
Employee journey mapping isn’t just a clean visualization on a whiteboard — it’s a way to connect the dots across the employee lifecycle.
In many implementations, the biggest insights come from comparing stages:
When employees are at the center, patterns around growth, retention, and staff engagement reveal themselves naturally.
Journey mapping helps organizations:
The most successful teams I’ve worked with treat employees as collaborators in designing the experience — not just consumers of it.
Technology isn’t the hero, but it can be the difference between a clunky process and an experience that feels intuitive.
I’ve seen customers use automation to quietly remove friction while keeping the human moments intentional.
Imagine this:
These aren’t futuristic ideas — they’re exactly what modern experience platforms are built to deliver.
Solutions like Applaud Journeys blend personalization, automation, and insights so organizations can design experiences that feel both efficient and genuinely human.
Employee journey mapping is ultimately about empathy — seeing experiences the way your employees live them, not the way systems define them.
Organizations that consistently map, refine, and humanize their employee journeys across the employee lifecycle build more than engagement. They build trust, loyalty, stronger staff engagement, and a workplace where people genuinely feel supported.
The technology is there to make it scalable; the mindset is what makes it meaningful.
If you’re ready to bring that mindset into your organization, platforms like Applaud Journeys can help turn employee journeys into experiences that feel effortless, personal, and connected — from onboarding right through to offboarding.
When employees feel seen and supported at every step, performance and culture naturally follow.
Anji is a Senior Product Owner with eight years of experience in delivering HR technology solutions, from on-premise to cloud-based systems. With a solid background in software implementation and system integrations, he helps shape practical products that align with business needs to support organizations and their people.