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Design your Ambassador Journey

The biggest challenge for organizations in the temporary employment sector is not finding customers, but finding and retaining employees. The competition is fierce. And that is precisely why you can distinguish yourself as an organization with a great employee journey, or as we call it Ambassador Journey. Design the journey of the temporary worker in your organization and discover the opportunities. And turn your temporary workers into ambassadors.

 

This is a comprehensive guide to the Ambassador Journey canvas, jump to your section via the table of contents or dive right into it.

The benefits of an employee journey

An employee journey describes the entire journey a temporary worker goes through in your company, from recruitment to the first day of work to leaving your company. All contact moments and interactions between the temporary worker and your company are included. Mapping out the journey so extensively has a number of advantages:

  • Finally an overview of everything that is going on from a temporary worker and employment agency side
  • You put the temporary worker completely at the center and learn to think like that person;
  • You view the organization from a different point of view
  • You describe the pains of the organization and also the opportunities that exist
  • You come up with actions that can be tackled immediately

Start the mission

I understand you want to dive right in, but hold on. It is important not to develop a journey in a vacuum. It's nice when it connects seamlessly with the goals and especially the mission of your organization. Make sure the mission is crystal clear for your organization, especially for the team that will design the journey. You'll find that you can find connections between mission and practice in many more places than you thought.

Persona: The focus on your temporary worker

Personas come from the marketing world where it is important to empathize with the target group, in order to be able to communicate in a very targeted way. A persona on this canvas is the description of the typical temporary worker of your temporary employment agency. The closer to reality you make it, the more you can empathize with it. And your temporary workers are on this canvas on a stage, you will experience that in the next step.

 

 

So describe the typical flex worker. What are the needs and goals of that person. And also what are the challenges, what is the person struggling with?

 

Download the Ambassador Journey Canvas

Pro tips for creating personas

Be specific

Make the persona more specific than stick to generalities. If necessary, you can create more personas. That way you can design truly distinctive services. A (fictional) photo, age and name give the persona even more life.

Check your ideas

Validate the persona by talking to at least 3 temporary workers based on the persona. Spend a day on the shop floor or go through your own process as an employee. This way you empathize even better and the personas only get better.

The journey begins

You are completely comfortable in it, you feel as if you are sitting in the temporary worker's chair.
Then we will now 'live through' and describe the entire journey (journey) of the temporary worker step by step.

To make your life easier, we have developed a canvas that distinguishes between a number of important phases for employees. Below is an overview of the phases and the main question you want to answer.

  • Recruitment – Why and how does a temporary worker start her journey with us?
  • Preboarding – What happens between signing and the first day?
  • Onboarding – How can a temp land and feel welcome?
  • Settling in – How can a temporary worker orientate himself in the first 3 months?
  • Stay on – What does a temporary worker experience in the first year, so that she wants to stay?
  • Exit – How does a temporary worker leave us and how do we make this a learning process

The touch points of the ambassador journey

In every phase of the temporary worker’s journey there are interactions, moments in which the temporary worker comes into contact with the temporary employment agency. You want to map those so-called touch points. Because we will then analyze them further to discover opportunities.

Write for each stage.

  • What actions does a temporary worker take on his journey with us?
  • What touchpoints with our organization are there? How do we provide service at these times?

Where are the needs and pain of the temporary worker?

In every phase of the journey, the temporary worker has different needs and perhaps also pain. And by mapping it out, you can respond to it later. So in every phase you really want to think from the perspective of the temporary worker where this pain is, and also the need.

The key question is: What does the temporary worker want to achieve or avoid?

Pro tip: Describe the need and pain in whole sentences from the perspective of the temp. In this way you can discover unambiguously and specifically from the perspective of the temporary worker what is going on.

How does the temporary worker feel during this phase?

An important step is to try to map the feelings of the temporary worker. Because feelings have a major influence on how we behave, how we experience the world and what we look for in contact with others. The better you empathize with the feeling of your temporary worker, the better you can adjust your services accordingly.

Key question: How does the temporary worker feel in this phase?

Pro tip: Make it visual. For example, by making a sketch of that feeling, or use emojis to describe emotions. In this way you can get an even better feeling from the perspective of the temporary worker.

Your goals

What goal do you have or do you want to set for each phase of the process? By making it numerical and therefore measurable, you can become more concrete in what you want to achieve and need to do to get there.

Key question: What do we want to achieve in this step? Which KPI do we improve to which value?

Pro tip: Here you can indicate very concretely what you aspire to in line with the vision and strategy of the organization. For example, ‘ambassadorship’: you can set a specific Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) here as a goal. That way you can really focus on that.

Pro tip 2: Don’t focus so much on comparisons and benchmarks of other companies. Use them as inspiration and ambition, but mainly formulate your goals as an improvement of your own figures at the moment. This way you get better step by step.

Tension: The gap between where you stand and want to be

A tension is a feeling of tension between the current situation and where you want to be. At each stage of the journey, look at the touchpoints you have described and the needs and pain of the temporary worker: Where do you already meet those needs and where do you have the greatest opportunities for improvement, the greatest tensions? State the tension and clearly describe in what way you do not yet meet the needs.

Key question; Where are our biggest bottlenecks now? Where do we not yet meet the needs of the temporary worker at the top?

Pro tip: Describe only the challenge here, not a solution yet. You then get a good idea of what the challenges are from the side of the employment agency. And don’t worry, the next step is to think about the solutions and opportunities.

Pro tip 2: Describe the tension relatively extensively, so that it is clear to everyone what the challenge actually lies in. Also give an example if you can.

Opportunities and prototypes

When you look at everything you’ve created above, what opportunities do you see? What ideas do you have to meet the needs, what actions will you take to achieve the goals. You want to know those kinds of opportunities. And you can go a step further by immediately writing down the opportunity as a concrete prototype. A prototype is a small test version of what you want to achieve. Something you can try out very quickly and easily in practice.

Main question: What can we improve or introduce? And what are the first steps we can take this week?

Pro tip: Keep it really small and immediately doable. That’s how you take steps. That is more important than doing everything right right away.

Ownership

The opportunities and prototypes are only as good as the execution. Therefore it is very important to be very clear who owns the opportunity/prototype. Who ensures that this is actually carried out and/or deposited.


Key question: Who will take charge of this opportunity?


Pro tip: always make sure that one person is responsible to avoid confusion.

Results

Take a look with your team at the entire journey and everything you have achieved on it. That in itself is a great result. You have an overview and insight into the journey that the temporary worker goes through, through your employment agency.

  • You can see exactly at which moments there is contact with the temporary workers
  • You see that you cannot do a one-off measurement to get a realistic picture of the temporary workers. Everyone is in a different phase of the journey
  • You know where there is need and pain in every phase of the journey
  • You have measurable goals per phase that reflect the ambition and are linked to the mission of the organization
  • You know where there is tension between the needs of the temporary worker and what you offer per phase
  • You see opportunities
  • You know who is responsible for each phase and opportunity and who is responsible for its realization.

That is quite something. And at the same time, that’s not all. Because this is only the first round. Of course we don’t put the canvas in the closet and then do nothing with it. We have gold in our hands to push through now. For example, think carefully about the following points

What can we do right now?

There are many options mapped out to get started. But focus helps here too. So prioritize the results together and choose a maximum of 3 actions on which you can immediately get started. At the same time, consider who will take which action.

Which tensions need attention?

Taking action immediately is great. But some challenges (or tensions) need a little more research to actually get started. Think of a maximum of 3 tensions that you pick up to investigate further. So that you can convert these into actions and prototypes in the next session.

Plan the next meeting

Make a new appointment with the team immediately, preferably within a month, to evaluate the next steps. Experience shows that there is more action when there is already a new appointment.

Not Just Once, But A Rhythm​

This is not a model that you fill out once. The journey of the temporary worker continues to change, as do the needs and pains of the temporary worker. And you as an employment agency do not sit still either. Make sure you have an overview, but you can also easily perform updates.

In fact, create a rhythm and see that you are taking really big steps for the temporary worker over time.

Could you use a hand?

We have already helped several organizations with this journey. We do this often and energetic workshops. That means that they are full of inspiration, but they can also help you on your way if necessary. Contact us and let us know how we can help you.

Ben MacKenzie

From the author

The Ambassador Journey is the result of our own journey together with our team and partners. Innovation at work is all about getting the full potential out of people and the team work. The Ambassador Journey Canvas is a great start to get your journey going. 

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