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Summary – This blog explores what employee experience truly means, why it’s essential for both human well-being and business success, proven strategies for improvement, common challenges leaders face, and how Great Place To Work® Certification™ provides a roadmap to building exceptional workplace cultures.
What makes someone look forward to Monday mornings? What transforms a job into a place where people feel they truly belong? The answer lies in employee experience, the sum of every interaction, feeling, and moment that shapes how people experience their work and workplace.
At Great Place To Work, our research representing the voices of 5.7 million+ employees reveals a fundamental truth: great workplaces aren’t built on perks or policies alone. They’re built on trust, belonging, and the consistent feeling that “I matter here.” When employees experience workplaces where they feel valued, heard, and connected to purpose, something remarkable happens. They don’t just show up, they bring their whole selves to work.
The question for leaders today isn’t whether employee experience matters, but how to intentionally design it so every person, regardless of who they are or what they do, feels the workplace is great for them.
What Is Employee Experience?
Employee experience is the journey individuals take through your organization, encompassing every touchpoint, interaction, emotion, and observation from the moment they first encounter your employer brand through their final day and beyond.
It’s what people feel when they walk into the office (or log on remotely). The quality of their relationship with their manager, the fairness they perceive in how decisions are made, the pride they take in their team’s work, and the sense of belonging they feel with colleagues. It’s whether they have the tools they need, whether their ideas are heard, whether they see opportunities to grow, and whether they believe their work contributes to something meaningful.
How Do You Define Employee Experience?
Based on 30 years of studying the Best Workplaces™ globally, Great Place To Work defines employee experience through three essential dimensions:
- Trust – Credibility, respect, and fairness in relationships and work.
- Pride – Meaning derived from personal contributions, team accomplishments, and organizational impact.
- Camaraderie – Genuine care, psychological safety, and authentic connections with colleagues.
When these align consistently, exceptional employee experiences emerge.
Why Is the Employee Experience Important?
Employee experience matters because it directly impacts human well-being and organizational performance simultaneously. This isn’t a trade-off where you choose between caring for people and achieving results, it’s an integration where both flourish together.
From a human perspective, people spend significant portions of their lives at work. When that experience is positive, when they feel respected, supported, and connected, it enhances their overall quality of life. Conversely, negative workplace experiences contribute to burnout, stress, and diminished well-being that spills into personal life.
From a business perspective, the evidence is compelling. Organizations where everyone experiences a positive work environment report 9% greater discretionary effort across all industries. Best Workplaces score 7% higher on critical experience drivers, including career growth opportunities, better team dynamics, and clarity of expectations.
The financial impact is equally clear. Our research shows that Best Workplaces have yielded 14X returns on initial investment since 2008-09, outperforming major stock indices by more than 3X. When people have great experiences at work, they stay longer, perform better, innovate more readily, and deliver superior customer experiences, all of which drive business results.
Perhaps most importantly, employee experience shapes organizational resilience. In times of change, uncertainty, or crisis, organizations with strong cultures of trust and positive employee experiences weather storms more effectively because their people remain committed and engaged.
Why Businesses Need to Invest in Employee Experience?
Today’s workplace is transforming quickly. GenAI, a growing Gen Z workforce, hybrid work, and rising expectations for transparency and purpose are reshaping what people want. Employees now expect more than pay; they want psychological safety, real inclusion, well-being support, and room to grow, and companies that can’t offer this struggle to attract and keep talent.
This shift is redefining the psychological contract, pushing organizations toward more human-centric cultures that genuinely value individual needs and aspirations. In a competitive talent market, that shift matters; strong employee experience and a positive employer reputation help companies hire better and retain more.
Simply put, investing in employee experience is no longer optional, it’s essential.
6 Ways to Improve Your Employee Experience Strategy
Build a Culture of Genuine Recognition
People need to feel seen and appreciated for their contributions. When recognition is timely, specific, and authentic, it reinforces that their work matters and motivates continued excellence.
Create Crystal-Clear Communication and Alignment
Ambiguity creates anxiety and disconnection. Clear communication about organizational direction, individual roles, and expectations helps employees understand how their work contributes to the bigger picture.
Foster Transparent, Approachable Leadership
The quality of leadership fundamentally shapes daily experience. When leaders are accessible, listen actively, and create psychological safety, employees feel empowered to speak up, share ideas, and bring their authentic selves to work.
Strengthen Team Connection and Belonging
Relationships at work matter profoundly to employee experience. Creating opportunities for genuine connection, collaboration, and celebration builds camaraderie that transforms colleagues into trusted teammates.
Invest in Growth and Development
People want to evolve, not stagnate in their careers. Providing clear development paths, learning opportunities, and support for skill-building shows employees the organization is invested in their future.
Ensure Fairness and Equity Across All Groups
Best Workplaces create “For All” cultures where positive experience isn’t limited to certain demographics. This means examining experience data across different groups and taking action to close gaps, so everyone feels valued and included.
Challenges to Providing a Great Employee Experience
Even well-intentioned organizations face obstacles in creating consistently positive experiences, such as:
- Recognition Gaps – Systems that fail to acknowledge contributions meaningfully leave people feeling invisible. The challenge isn’t creating recognition programs but ensuring recognition is timely, specific, equitable, and valued by recipients.
- Communication Breakdowns – When organizational direction, expectations, or changes aren’t communicated clearly and consistently, employees experience confusion and disconnection. Information silos between departments or levels exacerbate this challenge.
- Leadership Skill Gaps – Not all managers naturally possess the emotional intelligence, trust-building capabilities, or people development skills required to create great experiences for their teams. Without investment in leadership development, even good intentions fall short.
- Inclusion Inconsistencies – When some groups experience significantly better workplace culture than others, whether based on gender, role level, tenure, or department, it creates inequity that undermines overall culture. Achieving consistency is challenging but essential.
- Limited Resources and Competing Priorities – Organizations face pressure to deliver financial results, manage operations, and drive growth. When employee experience initiatives compete for budget and leadership attention with other priorities, they often get deprioritized despite good intentions.
- Resistance to Change – Improving employee experience often requires changing long-standing practices, behaviours, and systems. Organizational inertia and resistance from those comfortable with the status quo can slow or derail improvement efforts.
How to Improve Employee Experience with Great Place To Work Certification
Great Place To Work Certification provides organizations with a proven methodology and roadmap for creating consistently positive employee experiences.
The process begins with the Trust Index™ Survey, where employees provide confidential feedback across credibility, respect, fairness, pride, and camaraderie, revealing not just overall experience but differences across demographic groups and roles. The Culture Audit™ complements this by evaluating leadership practices, programs, and policies that shape your organization’s culture and daily employee experience.
Together, these tools offer:
- Benchmarking Data: Compare your employee experience to thousands of organizations globally, understanding where you stand and what’s possible.
- Actionable Insights: Identify specific opportunities to improve experience for all employees or targeted groups.
- Best Practice Learning: Access proven approaches from the world’s Best Workplaces.
- Credible Recognition: Earn certification that validates your workplace culture and enhances employer brand.
Organizations that achieve certification join a community committed to continuous improvement, gaining accountability and evidence-based insights that matter most to their people. The certification journey transforms intuition into data-driven understanding, fragmented initiatives into integrated culture strategies, and good intentions into measurable impact.
Conclusion
When people experience work as a place where they’re trusted, valued, and connected to something meaningful, they don’t just work, they thrive. And when people thrive, organizations succeed in ways that transcend financial metrics, creating lasting value for all stakeholders.
The question isn’t whether to invest in employee experience. The question is: what will you do today to make your workplace great for all?
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the stages of employee experience?
Employee experience spans the entire employee lifecycle: attraction and recruitment, onboarding, development and growth, daily work experience, and offboarding, each stage shaping how people perceive and engage with your organization.
Why should employee experience be your top priority?
Employee experience directly drives business outcomes including retention, performance, innovation, and customer satisfaction, while simultaneously enhancing human well-being making it both a moral imperative and a competitive advantage.
How to improve your employee exit program?
Conduct meaningful exit interviews to gather honest feedback, maintain positive relationships with departing employees as potential brand ambassadors or boomerang hires, and use insights to address systemic issues that drive turnover.
What are the types of employee experience surveys?
Common types include employee engagement surveys (measuring emotional commitment), pulse surveys (frequent check-ins on specific topics), onboarding surveys (new hire experience), exit surveys (departure feedback), and comprehensive culture surveys like the Trust Index™ that measure overall workplace experience.
What is the difference between employee experience vs employee engagement?
Employee experience is the comprehensive journey and all interactions an employee has with the organization, while employee engagement is the emotional commitment and discretionary effort that results from positive experiences. Experience is the cause; engagement is the effect.
