Employee Experience | How to master Employee Experience

Employees are an organisation’s most important asset, and few areas have a greater impact on both performance and profitability. How people experience their work influences everything from productivity and engagement to customer satisfaction and long-term growth. Yet despite this broad and measurable impact, employee experience is still not treated as a true strategic priority in many organisations. Too often, initiatives remain fragmented or reactive, rather than embedded in leadership decisions and everyday practices.
In this article, we look at why employee experience matters, what it encompasses, and how organisations can approach it in a more strategic and structured way

What is Employee Experience?

refers to the sum of all experiences a person has with an organization throughout their entire relationship with it — as a candidate, employee, manager, freelancer, or alumnus.

These experiences include everything a person is exposed to, observes, feels, and senses from the moment they first hear about the organization, through recruitment, daily working life, development, leadership interactions, and ultimately exit — and even potential re-employment later on.
Because EX spans roles, touchpoints, and time, many concepts and frameworks exist within the discipline. To work effectively with employee experience, organizations must understand how these concepts fit together rather than treating EX as a single initiative or survey.

How to Master the EX Discipline

In striving to master employee experience, we've observed that an organization must accelerate its focus on four general areas:

1. Creating a strategic framework:

Employee experience must be anchored at the top of the organisation. This means engaging senior leadership, defining a clear EX purpose linked to business and financial outcomes, establishing clear ownership, and articulating a strong EX vision.
For EX to succeed, the CEO must believe that employee experience is a strategic priority and be willing to invest time, resources, and leadership attention in it. 
So get your CEO to prioritize EX.

2. Establishing a data-driven culture:

A strong EX approach is built on data — but not data overload. Organisations must collect feedback intelligently and at the right moments, combining survey data with HR data, qualitative insights, transactional data, and other relevant sources.
The goal is not to measure everything, but to gather the right data to support better decisions.

3. Implementing a brand new way of working:

Improving employee experience requires new skills, tools, and perspectives. Organisations must learn to view themselves through employees’ eyes and adopt an outside-in mindset.
Employee journey mapping is a powerful method for understanding how different touchpoints shape everyday experiences and identifying where improvements matter most.

4. Transforming the employee experience:

Raising EX maturity requires focused, long-term transformation. At the same time, meaningful progress often starts with small, well-chosen steps that build momentum and credibility across the organisation.
These four areas should be anchored, owned, and facilitated by HR, with local anchoring and executive power throughout the entire organization.

What is the Difference Between Employee Experience and Employee Engagement?

The main differences (and similarities) between employee experience and employee engagement can be summarized in four main ideas:

1. A focus on EX is broader than a focus on engagement

EX covers the experiences a person has from the time they hear about the organization, get hired, get onboarded, and have a daily life in the organization through the time they leave the organization, become an alumnus, and perhaps are hired once again (a winback). This definition covers both the employee's work life and portions of the employee's personal life. The actual person, in the EX definition, is also broadly defined to cover candidates, employees, managers, freelancers, and alumnies. In the field of engagement, the primary focus is on the employee and the portion of the employee journey we call "daily life as an employee," which is the portion most closely linked to management, the job itself, development, learning, purpose in the job, and so on.

2. The field of EX addresses a cross-organizational focus

All the functions in the organization focus on creating excellent, cohesive employee experiences collaboratively and with a shared EX goal. These experiences extend throughout employees' journeys through the organization, whereas employee engagement is more commonly a business area, a local team focus, or both.

3. Experience Comes Before Engagement

Engagement is a result of accumulated experiences. By improving experiences across the employee journey, organisations create the conditions for higher and more sustainable engagement.

4. EX Is a Holistic Discipline

Employee experience brings together multiple methods, tools, and perspectives and aligns naturally with customer experience (CX) thinking that many organisations already apply externally.

How does EX Affect the Top and Bottom Lines Every day?

Employee experiences affect an organization's customer experiences, top line, and bottom line each and every day in at least eight different areas. An employee exposed to excellent experiences might take less sick leave, be more productive and innovative, deliver better customer experiences, and sell more. Additionally, an employee like this is more of an ambassador for the organization and the product and is more ready for changes in the organization. Neglecting your employees is costly on the top and bottom lines in your organization.

The following 8 different dimensions affect the day-to-day top and bottom lines at your organization:

• Sickness absence - Positive employee experiences reduce stress and burnout, leading to fewer sick days and more stable day-to-day operations.
• Staff outflow - When employees have poor experiences, voluntary turnover increases. Strong employee experience lowers unwanted attrition and protects organisational knowledge.
• Attraction - Organisations known for good employee experiences attract more qualified candidates and reduce recruitment effort and cost.
• Retention of key employees - High-quality experiences increase loyalty among critical talent, making it less likely that top performers seek opportunities elsewhere.
• Onboarding speed - Well-designed employee journeys help new hires become productive faster, reducing time to full contribution.
• Ability to innovate - Employees who feel supported and engaged are more willing to share ideas, collaborate, and experiment with new solutions.
• Productivity - Clear expectations, good leadership, and positive daily experiences enable employees to perform at a higher and more consistent level.
• Rates of sale - Employees who are motivated and engaged deliver better customer interactions, which directly influences sales performance and revenue growth.
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We have conducted various analyses for many organizations, essentially all of which have demonstrated the positive financial effects of a clear focus on EX.

Three are shown in the following:

• Highly engaged employees deliver 38% greater profitability than weakly engaged employees.
  
• Of the weakly engaged employees, 17% quit their jobs within 1 year of the survey, while the same was true for only 4% of highly engaged employees.
• Blue-collar workers with low engagement take 2.3 weeks of sick leave per year whereas their highly engaged colleagues take only 1.6 weeks of leave. This is a difference of 30%.

If you want to simplify the work of HR managers, read this book “Mastering Employee Experience – 16 specific steps to take in your EX transformation”. The book helps generate an overview and insight into the different professional disciplines and areas. The book also offers a specific illustration of how your EX transformation plan could look from year 1 to 3.