Touchpoint Vol. 14 No.1 The Employee Journey

Employees are integral to service delivery, and the service design community has long recognised that employee experience is inherently interlinked with customer experience. But it’s not just the drive for happy customers that pushes organisations to focus on their employees; in the US alone, unemployment is hovering around its lowest level in 20 years, putting power in employees’ hands. Furthermore, Generation Z bring new expectations into the game. For them, career decisions do not drive their life plans in the way they have done for previous generations. As a result, employers must focus more than ever on factors such as working environments, remote working, work-life balance and DEI.

As we learn in this issue of Touchpoint, organisations large and small are applying the same rigour - and many of the same tools and techniques used to focus on customers - to make sure that employees perform at their best, and are fulfilled in their work. And it’s become a natural domain of service designers, who are taking on this challenge around the globe.

If you’re a service designer with a focus on how your organisation serves your employees, you will find inspiration from a rich selection of articles in this issue. If you’re not, but you know who is, I hope you’ll tell them about this Touchpoint. And if you’re in an organisation that isn’t applying service design to the employee experience, well, what are you waiting for?

On a closing note, I’m excited to say that this issue marks the start of Touchpoint’s 14th year of publication. While the journal goes from strength to strength (this is one of the biggest ever issues!), we’re also going to be making some small changes, starting with this issue. One of them is that we are proud to be working with Logos Verlag Berlin, whom we have teamed up with to publish Touchpoint.