It’s no coincidence that Loverboy’s Working for the Weekend is still ranked in the top 100 on VH1’s 100 Greatest Songs of the 80s. But what if employees actually enjoyed their work? There’s a way for employees to stop wishing it was Friday, and it all starts with mapping out your employee experience. Giving employees the best experience possible is about much more than just engagement. There are three main components — the physical environment employees work in, company culture and the technological environment. Employee experience isn’t just a buzzword anymore. It impacts real results. A study by IBM and Globoforce shows a positive employee experience is linked to positive outcomes in work performance, discretionary effort and retention.

Organizations are often worried about the consumer journey they provide, but what about the employee journey? It’s possible to map it in a similar way.

Step 1: Get to know your audience

Just like the consumer journey, it’s important to segment your audience. Who are you talking to? Create personas that explain how each segment thinks, what they like and what they do. It’s likely you’ll have several different segments within your organization. An executive and a distribution worker will have different employee experiences, which will require different journey maps. Both impact the organization’s success, just in different ways.

Step 2: Know your touchpoints

When does “the company” come into direct contact with the employees? The hiring and onboarding processes are just a small part of the overall experience. How about the technology your employee uses? It’s important for employees to have a user-friendly experience. That may look different for various segments of employees. Does the company culture make work enjoyable? What about the facilities? The Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that the average employee spends more than 44 hours in the office per week. That’s over a quarter of an employee’s week spent in the office. All of these touchpoints are an opportunity to create a positive employee experience.

Step 3: Hear straight from the source

Select employees from each department who are exceptionally engaged and successful. See what their experience has been like — what’s made it positive and what could your organization still improve on. After studying their own experiences, ask them to brainstorm ways that the employee experience could improve for employees in their department.

Step 4: Test your methods

Start small by implementing your new program within a certain department or team. Find out what works and what doesn’t. This will resolve any foreseeable issues before the program is applied on a larger scale.

Step 5: Identify your measurement methodology

What does success look like? How will it be measured? Employee surveys aren’t cutting it anymore. Develop a quick and easy feedback system for your test group. Hindsight is 20/20, but often that’s too late. Some employees leave. Others are unproductive at work. The time to receive feedback is now, not with a quarterly survey. Employee experience should receive the same attention as the consumer journey.

At the end of the day, your employees are the company. There’s no way it could function without them, so their experience is important. It’s pretty simple. If you want better employee performance, extra effort and low turnover rates, it all starts with mapping the employee journey.