Conversations around employee experience can often make it seem like a bonus feature, a module, or an add-on.
But in reality, it’s something much bigger.
It’s your workplace culture in tangible form—and it matters now more than ever:
Global employee engagement has slipped from 23 percent to 21 percent, costing the world economy an estimated $438 billion in lost productivity, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 report. And in the United Kingdom, 85 percent of professionals say they’ve experienced burnout.
These numbers highlight the impact of how work feels. The experience your people have across the employee lifecycle shapes engagement, performance, and retention.
The good news is that many businesses are beginning to embrace work culture as a strategic asset, increasing investment in the employee experience, which means there’s hope that these numbers will spark a new era in people proud organizations.
Let’s take a closer look at the employee experience and investigate how it can influence the success of your business.
Redefining employee experience
When it comes to employee experience, it’s easy to think of it as simply compensation packages, perks, or office upgrades. These are all valuable, but they’re part of a much bigger picture.
The employee experience is the living, breathing culture of work. It’s how your people feel at each stage of their journey with your company, throughout every phase of the employee lifecycle.
It centers around one key question, according to futurist Jacob Morgan: How do you get the human component back into your organization?
Morgan believes the employee experience will only become more critical over the long run: “The future of work is all about how we move from utility to [employee] experience.” Truly investing in the employee experience involves a mindset shift where you see your professionals for what they are: people.
The fact is, professionals no longer need to stay with an organization—they’re willing to jump ship if they aren’t satisfied, as the Great Resignation showed.
Employee experience is about creating a working environment that makes your people want to stick around for the long run.
And the benefits are hard to ignore.
Why employee experience?
Organizations are beginning to embrace culture as a strategic asset by investing in the employee experience.
Because when people feel supported, empowered, and inspired, they bring their best to the table. And that shows up in everything from productivity to customer satisfaction.
According to Gallup, engaged professionals are 18 percent more productive, 23 percent more profitable, and take 78 percent fewer sick days. That’s rock-solid data that proves employee experience leads to measurable ROI.
Here’s what a great employee experience makes possible:
- Attracting and retaining top talent. In competitive hiring markets, culture and experience make all the difference, ensuring you attract and keep the best in the business.
- Boosting engagement. A strong employee experience helps team members stay motivated and present with their work. This is all the more important given Gallup’s latest data showing that “employee engagement is on the brink.”
- Increasing productivity and performance. The right support, tools, and processes create an environment that helps your people do their best work. That’s why onboarding, leadership development, and manager-led wellbeing programs rank as the top three people initiatives for driving performance and productivity—according to nearly 300 HR and business leaders across the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia.
- Improving customer experience. Companies with a strong employee experience strategy are 2.4 times more likely to delight customers.
- Achieving stronger financial results. With greater experience comes greater profits: Companies that have a positive employee experience are 2.2 times more likely to exceed financial targets.
That’s why organizations are starting to make employee experience part of their business strategy, investing in culture as a catalyst for growth.
But how do you know if you’re on the right track? What does a strong employee experience look like?
The telltale signs of a strong employee experience
A workplace with a strong employee experience comes with distinct traits. Being familiar with these traits can give you a clear North Star to guide your way—so you know when you’re on- or off-track.
HR analyst Josh Bersin outlines six key elements of a good employee experience:
- Meaningful work. Work aligns with your people’s values. The workplace provides trust, autonomy, team support, and time for focus, innovation, and recovery.
- Strong management. Strong management means setting clear goals, offering regular coaching and feedback, and providing transparent, simple performance management.
- Positive workplace. A positive workplace offers tools, processes, and systems for productive work, recognizes and rewards effort, provides flexible hours and workspaces, and nurtures inclusivity, diversity, belonging, and community.
- Health and wellbeing. Providing support for physical, mental, emotional, and financial wellness.
- Growth opportunities. A work culture that encourages growth, learning that matches real needs, role mobility, and career paths that reflect personal goals and business direction.
- Trust in the organization. A mission and purpose that go beyond profit. Transparency, care, and integrity in leadership. A clear focus on helping people, the environment, and the wider community.
Lemon Platypus, a certified HiBob implementation partner, helps HR teams achieve real, measurable impact from their HR tech. From their experience, one of the most underrated outcomes of strong employee experience is increased internal mobility. When people feel supported, listened to, and empowered to grow, even after they’ve hit a ceiling in their current role, they’re far more likely to stay within the business.
They’ve seen this play out across broad industries, from gaming to financial services, where replacing good talent externally can be expensive and slow. A strong employee experience strategy makes internal movement not just possible, but desirable. Companies retain institutional knowledge, reduce ramp-up time, and unlock cross-functional agility that external hires rarely deliver.
They add: “With the right tools and data signals, companies can go further, actively guiding internal movement to fill business-critical roles before going to market. It’s a win for engagement, a win for workforce planning, and a serious cost saver.”
How to create a positive employee experience
So, how do you improve employee experience?
It might seem daunting at first. But breaking down the employee experience journey into different stages of the employee lifecycle can be a great way to approach it. It can help you pinpoint areas for improvement in the employee experience, enabling you to set tangible goals and strategies that make a real impact.
Cian Collins, the Director at Nova HCM, focuses on helping scaling global companies optimise HR systems & data, suggesting that starting with mapping your employee lifecycle is a good place to begin.
“This won’t be an easy exercise, but if done correctly, it will be highly rewarding. Identify the pain points, the moments that feel inconsistent, and the areas where managers are struggling. Then consider how your current tools support or hinder these moments. Best-in-breed platforms give you the flexibility to improve quickly without needing a massive transformation on day one.”
Let’s take a look at some examples of what you can do at each stage of the employee lifecycle.
Hiring and onboarding
A great employee experience starts before day one with a clear, timely hiring process—it sets the tone for what’s to come.
Once someone joins, a solid people platform can make the onboarding process smooth and welcoming by automating welcome messages, streamlining tasks across HR and IT, and introducing your culture through videos or team intros.
It’s also the single most impactful people program across the employee lifecycle. Research shows that 90 percent of HR and business leaders report a positive impact from onboarding, with 40 percent citing significant improvement in engagement, alignment, and retention.
You can also further personalize onboarding journeys by role or location.
Development
Create room for development through coaching, mentoring, performance conversations, and skills-based learning. This stage can also include internal mobility, promotions, and pay adjustments. Platforms that support personalized development paths can make this much easier to manage at scale.
But structure matters.
Coaching and on-the-job learning outperform self-paced courses and LMS platforms by a wide margin, with 88 percent of respondents saying they saw a positive impact when development was guided rather than self-directed.
And when it comes to wellbeing, manager-led programs—such as regular check-ins and workload conversations—are effective ways to make sure your people are at their best.
They help to create space for growth and reduce burnout before it starts.
Retention
During this stage of the employee lifecycle, it’s important to promote wellbeing and work-life balance. Encourage feedback through regular check-ins and act on it. Offer flexibility and tools that make it easy for your people to carry out their work. Make sure your people’s talents are appreciated and recognized—even a short shoutout on your people platform can go a long way in terms of making team members feel valued.
Separation and offboarding
Even the best employee experiences include goodbyes. A thoughtful offboarding process shows appreciation and builds lasting goodwill. It’s also a valuable moment for reflection and feedback, helping you understand where the experience can improve and keep evolving.
How do you know it’s working?
There are many tell-tale signs that your employee experience strategy is working.
Look for higher confidence from people and managers, Cian Collins recommends. Pay attention to a decrease in questions and an increase in engagement. Watch out for people saying things like, “I knew what was expected” or “I felt part of the team from the start.”
When experience improves, so does the overall tone of the workplace.
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Build a positive experience into the everyday
The employee experience shows up everywhere.
It shows up in the tools you choose, the culture you shape, and the moments you create across the employee journey. It’s something you build into every part of the business.
When the employee experience is thoughtful, strong, and consistent, it can drive the success of your organization. It builds trust, boosts engagement, strengthens performance, and creates a culture where people and business can thrive together.
When you take the time to improve the employee experience, what soon becomes apparent is that investing in your people means you’re investing in your business.
Because where people flourish, profits are never far behind.
Key takeaways
- Employee experience is business strategy. A thoughtful employee experience strategy shapes culture, boosts retention, and drives measurable ROI.
- Strong employee experience attracts and retains top talent. In competitive markets, a culture-first approach helps you win the talent race and keep your best people for the long run.
- Engagement grows when experience improves. An intentional employee experience journey increases motivation, connection, and performance—while reducing burnout.
- Better employee experience leads to stronger customer experience. Companies that prioritize people are 2.4 times more likely to deliver exceptional customer outcomes.
- Financial growth follows culture investment. Organizations with a strong employee experience strategy are 2.2 times more likely to exceed financial targets.
- Six traits define a positive employee experience. Meaningful work, strong management, a positive workplace, wellbeing, growth opportunities, and trust in leadership are the hallmarks of thriving teams.
- Improving employee experience is a lifecycle journey. From hiring and onboarding to development, retention, and even offboarding, every stage is an opportunity to strengthen culture and outcomes.
- Investing in employee experience is investing in your future. A culture where people thrive creates resilience, agility, and sustainable business growth.
From Dana Liberty
Dana Liberty is a content manager at HiBob, where she combines her creative writing with performance marketing. In the winter, you’ll find her sitting by the fire with a glass of wine, trying to solve the latest word puzzle (and in the summer, she cuts out the fire, but never the wine and puzzles).
