Expert tips on getting buy-in for Employee Journey Mapping

When you’re excited about a new tool or process, you want to be able to run with it. But then you remember - if this is going to be effective, I need to get stakeholder buy-in. 

HR and People Teams don’t work in a vacuum. Quite the opposite, they’re one of the teams that gets the most critique (solicited or otherwise…) on how they’re working or what their perceived accomplishments are. 

If you’re thinking about putting together an Employee Journey Map for your team, you’ll need to identify your key stakeholders and get their buy-in. Thankfully, we have some great advice from People Leaders who have been down this road before.

Read on for their tips on getting buy-in for building and using an Employee Journey Map. Also, be sure to log in to our Employee Journey Designer to start building your own Employee Journey Map (it's free to use!).

An overview of securing stakeholder buy-in 

A stakeholder is a person at your company that will be asked to use or manage your project. In this context, that means anyone who would use or manage your new Employee Journey Map. 

You could expand this to include secondary stakeholders, which would be anyone that you would be asking to interact with the Employee Journey Map. 

Primary Stakeholders

You’ll want to identify your main stakeholders ahead of time, put together clear messaging on what you will communicate to them, and decide when to bring them into the process. For example, you’ll probably want to involve those who will be asked to collaborate in building or managing the Employee Journey Map ahead of those who would be using it as a reference. 

Next, meet with your stakeholders and capture their feedback. What questions or concerns do they have? Be sure you get back to them with answers. This demonstrates that you’re willing to make the Employee Journey Map work not just for you, but for everyone. 

What to present to each stakeholder

John Foster, a former CPO who led the People Function at brands like IDEO, Hulu, and Truecar, says that creating different versions or views of your Employee Journey Map can help with getting stakeholder buy-in. 

“It's like the specifications of building a house,” he explains, “Only a few people know all the details, but they've got a plumbing plan, an electrical plan, a framing plan, all the different parts are broken out. This way, that particular element is really obvious to the people that are working on it.” You can do the same for your stakeholders meetings by bringing or highlighting the elements that matter most for them.  

Stakeholders within the HR team 

Within your HR or People Team, you might have Operations, Talent Acquisition, Business Partners, Learning and Development, or more. The point is, there are many stakeholders within your team and they’re a good place to start when it comes to getting buy-in. 

Felicitas Schweiker, VP of People & Culture at parcelLab, gives this advice, “Involve your team. They are the creators of the map - whether you have a map or not, they're delivering on moments, they're creating moments, maybe you don't even know what moments they're working on.” She suggests bringing them together in a small workshop to get started, and having everyone list the moments they work on day-to-day. 

“All of the different disciplines within your HR team are stakeholders, and oftentimes they are disconnected from each other. This may be because of the software they're using or other silos they're in. So immediately I get my whole team together and show them how we all share parts of the journey,” adds John.

He uses the Employee Journey Map as a motivational tool to get everyone working together. “There's nothing more annoying to me as a leader than to have people passing things over a fence as if somebody was on the other side, and they didn't know what was happening next,” he explains.  

It becomes a particularly helpful tool for junior employees on your team who may not have looked at an entire employee journey. John adds, “We build empathy for the employee right off the bat by just getting the whole team to see the whole employee journey.”

Core collaborators: Managers 

While all of your employees will be affected by how you map out the employee journey, your managers will be more involved in shaping it. Involving them as a stakeholder once you have a version of your Journey Map that is ready to be shared, helps them understand the scale of their impact on the employee experience. 

“In terms of getting managers on board, the best way is to have a journey mapping session with them, so they're collaborators in building it. Oftentimes they can feel like they're left out of the loop because they're not themselves focusing on the full employee experience all the time. And so to see where they play a part and how they're part of a team for the journey is really an interesting process,” says John. 

Executive sponsorship

Starting a new project without executive buy-in is tough. But when you do have it, it makes the entire implementation that much easier. That’s why our goal here is not just buy-in, but sponsorship. 

John explains, “When going to the CFO, CEO or COO to get budget or talk about annual spending or annual projects, I use an Employee Journey Map to help them understand where and why we want to do the things we want to do and how they fit together.” 

Having the Employee Journey Map as a visualization of your HR strategy can make a compelling case to executives. “It can be hard sometimes in HR to measure progress, but the Employee Journey Map helps you do that,” says Joris Luijke, CEO of Pyn.