VA publishes federal government’s first Employee Experience journey map

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced today the creation of a new, first-of-its-kind tool that supports VA’s public servants in providing the highest level of service to Veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors they serve.

The Employee Experience (EX) journey map identifies moments that are significant  during an employee’s career, using the same human-centered design process VA applied in the development of 45 customer journey maps to improve the experience for Veterans and their families.

“As we strive to give our Veterans, families, caregivers and survivors every reason to Choose VA for their care, benefits and services, we also want our employees to remain a part of the VA family,” said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie. “Our more than 400,000 VA employees know serving Veterans is one of the most rewarding careers in federal service, and the EX journey map helps empower our workers to better serve VA customers.”

The journey map is based on 11,000 insights collected from a diverse set of VA employees across 33 geographic areas. VA will use employee insights acquired from the EX journey map to also make improvements that will help the department attract top-talent, and continue to rise in “Best Places to Work” rankings among federal agencies.

VA pioneered customer journey mapping among government agencies in 2015 and leverages the human-centered design expertise to understand the pain points and bright spots for improvements to the customer experience.

Like the previously released Customer Experience Cookbook, the VA EX journey map is being shared government-wide as an example to help other agencies meet their employee and customer experience goals.

Learn more about VA’s customer experience accomplishments or visit the Veterans Experience Office for more information.