How did we start to really focus on employee experience?
By: Romain Quicq
Tags: Design, User Experience Design, UX, Employee Experience, Experience

For many years, ADEO and its companies all over the world (Leroy Merlin, Bricoman, Zôdio…), strongly work on improving customer experience.

Most people would say that it’s logical. As a retail company, selling goods is our DNA and there is no business without customers.

They are right. But without employees, there is no one to serve and take care of our customers. I don’t think that is a matter of the importance of who comes first between customers and employees because both are closely connected. Improving customer experience necessarily means looking at the employee experience, by identifying and analyzing employee's pain points which slow productivity and affect their well-being.

I remember a Spanish colleague who told me the story of Pablo, a department manager who met at least 25 different interfaces during his working day, using shared computer or mobile. And he only talked about digital tools…

Facing a customer and answering a phone call, making a live estimation, checking stock and prices, storing products, or communicating with colleagues about team schedule … All of these human and technological interactions can be extremely time-consuming and strongly impactful for employees engagement if they are not clearly identified in advance and designed in a coherent and transversal way.

Talking about experience

When I started working with Human Resources, I realized that many initiatives were already in place, at a group level or locally in our companies, to improve and measure the employee experience. Collecting feedback after events, creating or arranging comfortable working environments, sending satisfaction surveys, rating happiness at work, or co-building a meaningful “Employee Value Proposition”. The Great Place to Work trophy was won many times.

This is a good start. How could we go further?

A short definition of the employee experience could be summed up in all the interactions that an employee has with the company, as an organization, and the human ecosystem.

Concretely, what are these interactions?

Notebook in hand, I started to meet many colleagues with one main question to ask them: Can you tell me your story with the company?

Each one is unique. Communication channels, physical spaces, tools, or processes as many touchpoints; memories, beliefs, and life goals as many perception generators.

However, I progressively managed to group, compare and identify major stages on a non-linear and evolving timeline; many important moments lived by all employees. Each moment can be translated in a specific way depending on our companies and strategies, but the experience lived for each of them has a significant impact on the overall employee experience.

This is why it is crucial to have an overview of the journey in order to imagine a complete and smooth experience: from the first contact to separation. An experience on several levels: emotional, physical, technological, and intellectual.

Map an Employee Journey

Once these moments have been identified, making them “visual” seemed to be a good way to easily share and animate the topic within our companies. The Employee Journey Map, built on the stories of employees and completed by the testimonies of our HR, is now spread and used.

China, Poland, or Brazil are identifying clear strategic actions to improve the experience of their employees, helped by these moments that matter.

The goal of this map is clear: allow our companies to think about the overall employee experience when they design strategies, tools, and services.

And here you have it! This is our ADEO Employee Journey Map …

What do you think about it?