How to Work Strategically With Employee Experience

Building an employee experience strategy that delivers measurable impact requires more than isolated initiatives or periodic surveys. To work strategically with employee experience (EX), organisations must focus on the underlying structure that guides decisions, priorities, and long-term change.
A robust EX strategy is built on four connected cornerstones. Together, they provide the foundation needed to move from insight to action and to embed employee experience as a sustainable part of how the organisation operates.
In this article, we outline the four cornerstones of an effective employee experience strategy and explain how organizations can begin strengthening each area in a structured and pragmatic way.

The Four Cornerstones of an Employee Experience Strategy

If you want to work with your employee experience on a strategic level, these four pillars are where you need to start: 

1. Create a Strategic Framework

2. Establish a Data-Driven Culture

3. Implement a New Way of Working

4. Transform the Employee Experience

All four interact and depend on each other and together, they form the solid base your organization needs.

But don't worry!

You don’t have to address all areas at once. You can begin by strengthening one cornerstone at a time, as long as you keep the full picture in mind.

At the end of the day, all four must be owned, anchored, and facilitated by HR, with strong local ownership across the business to truly succeed.

1. Create a Strategic Employee Experience Framework

Building an employee-centered organization starts at the top. You need genuine buy-in from your executive board and senior management. Without their focus and commitment, employee experience risks becoming just another "nice-to-have".

That means:

• Establishing a clear, inspiring EX vision.

• Tying EX directly to financial and business outcomes.

• Launching a formal EX program with concrete initiatives.
  
  

Research shows that organizations excelling in these areas are significantly more likely to report improvements in employee experience over time.

2. Establish a Data-Driven Employee Experience Culture

The foundation of any serious EX strategy is simple: Data. Insight. Action.

This means gathering ongoing feedback across the employee journey — not with an overwhelming flood of surveys, but with smart, continuous listening. Analyzing the right data at the right time empowers your organization to move quickly and create meaningful change.

Our research shows that organizations mastering continuous listening and agile action have made far greater strides in employee experience than those who haven't.

3. Design Employee Experience Through New Ways of Working

Taking your employee experience to the next level requires a shift in mindset. HR teams, leaders, and managers need to design experiences through the employees' eyes — not just manage processes.

This involves working with:

• Employee journey mapping.

• Design thinking workshops.

• Experience design sprints.
  
  

These methods help you uncover pain points, rethink key touchpoints, and co-create solutions together with employees — not just for them.

Despite the proven value of these methods, few organizations have systematically mapped and redesigned their employee journeys yet. That's a huge opportunity for those ready to lead the way.

4. Embed and Scale Employee Experience Across the Organization

True EX success requires real transformation across the organization.

This means:

• Mobilizing not just HR, but leaders, teams, and employees.

• Embedding EX thinking into daily leadership practices.

• Continuously educating and empowering everyone involved.

Organizations that achieve this level of mobilization consistently show stronger improvements in engagement, wellbeing, and performance.

Master this cornerstone, and you’re well on your way to delivering a truly standout employee experience.

How to Get Started With Your Employee Experience Strategy

Feeling overwhelmed? Don't be! You don't have to reinvent everything at once.

Start by asking these questions:

• Is EX clearly tied to financial KPIs in your organization?

• Are you gathering continuous, intelligent insights across the employee journey?

• Are your employee initiatives rooted in true experience design methods?

• Is there real organizational ownership of EX at every level?
  
  

If you're unsure about even one of these, you’re already facing an opportunity to level up.

And if you want to dive deeper and work with your EX strategy, you can download the full guide on how to build the four cornerstones into your EX approach:

Clarify your Employee Experience Foundation

Understanding where to focus first is often the hardest part. Our guide breaks down the four EX cornerstones and helps you assess your current maturity

Download the Guide Now

...We promise, your future workforce will thank you.

Working strategically with employee experience is not about launching more initiatives or adding new tools. It is about building the right foundation and ensuring that employee experience is treated as a core part of how the organization is led and developed.

The four cornerstones outlined in this article highlight that sustainable progress requires clarity of direction, reliable insight, new ways of working, and the ability to translate ambition into organization-wide change. Each cornerstone strengthens the others and neglecting one weakens the overall impact.