How to improve employee experience: 8 effective ways

What do you think separates the winners from the losers in your vertical? A good product? A large customer base? A strong vision?

While all of these factors play a role, you might be surprised by how vital one commonly-overlooked (and frequently misunderstood!) element is: The employee experience.

In this article we'll dig into the employee experience in detail: What it is, how to measure it, why it matters, and how to improve it.

Employee experience – or EX for short – refers to the sum of all interactions, perceptions, and feelings that employees have throughout their journey with an organisation.

From a strategic management standpoint, EX denotes a comprehensive approach to understanding and improving how employees feel about their job, workplace, and interactions with an organisation – across their employee lifecycle.

Employee experience framework

The employee lifecycle is broad, encompassing everything from initial interactions before the contract is even signed, through to an employee's day-to-day dealings with the business over the course of their employment, and even the offboarding process as they leave the business.

As such, there is no definitive list – just as there is no quantitative way to define 'employee experience'. However, if we think about the employee experience in terms of whether a business is meeting its employees' needs across different stages of the lifecycle, we can break it down into some core themes. Here are some ideas – plus some specific examples of how you might judge if you're meeting those needs.

Key components of the employee experience across the employee lifecycle

Early needs

• Do employees feel prepared and welcomed during pre-boarding and onboarding?

• Do new hires receive the training they need to be successful?

Foundational needs

• Do employees enjoy an acceptable work-life balance?

• Are employees paid fairly for their work?

Performance needs

• Are employees' goals and how they contribute to company success clear?

• Are workers properly incentivised to perform?

• Does the company effectively recognise employee achievements?

Growth and development needs

• Are employees given the opportunity to expand their responsibilities and grow into a more senior role?

• How satisfied are employees with the professional development opportunities on offer?

Social and cultural needs

• Are leadership positively regarded across the company?

• Do employees generally have positive connections with coworkers?

• How appreciated do workers feel?

Tools and technology needs

• Are employees supported by technology where appropriate?

• How satisfied are employees with their existing work tools?

Positive work environment versus employee experience

As you can see from these examples, effective employee experience is about more than just creating a positive work environment that employees enjoy attending. An optimised employee experience prioritises giving employees what they need in order to feel satisfied, motivated, and bought in to the company itself.

When workers feel bought into the company and have the tools at their disposal to succeed across the employee lifecycle, the business reaps the rewards alongside its workforce.

Profitability and growth

IBM’s report ‘The Financial Impact of a Positive Employee Experience' quantifies this impact on business performance. Organisations with employee experience levels in the top 25% report nearly three times the return on assets and double the return on sales compared to businesses in the bottom quartile.

While the size of the impact employee experience can have on a business’s bottom line might seem surprising, it makes sense if we consider that the employee experience is a direct driver of employee engagement.

When employees are engaged – i.e. both satisfied and motivated – they are also more loyal, and more likely to expend discretionary effort on behalf of the company.

Beyond profitability and growth potential, other benefits that businesses see as a result of a positive employee experience and high employee engagement include:

Reduced absenteeism

Reams of data show that highly engaged employees take fewer sick days than their poorly engaged peers, with a Gallup meta-analysis demonstrating an 81% difference in absenteeism rates between business units with top- and bottom-quartile engagement levels.

Employee retention

Businesses with a positive employee experience and high engagement enjoy considerably lower staff turnover than their counterparts – a 40% difference, according to one data point.

Customer satisfaction and improved customer experience

Customer experience and the employee experience go hand in hand – when one is struggling, the other will, too.

Unsurprisingly then, highly engaged teams drive higher customer loyalty, directly impacting other success metrics such as sales volume or brand sentiment on company review sites.

All that to say - if you’re not paying attention to your employee experience, then you’re likely missing out on better business performance, competitive advantage, and significant returns.

Common hiccups in building an employee experience strategy emerge when it's time to measure the employee experience.

Why does measurement matter?

Being able to measure the employee experience is important for a couple of key reasons.

First, without effective measurement, it's impossible to establish a baseline, identify key areas where attention and action are needed, or measure if your EX initiatives have been successful or not.

Second, even when your gut feeling as to the gaps in your employee experience are accurate, that often won't fly when it comes to justifying resource allocation. In recent Flip research, for example, 32% of frontline business leaders cited proving ROI or business impact as a major blocker to getting support for employee experience initiatives.

That difficulty comes, in turn, from difficulties measuring: 67% of those surveyed state they find it 'very challenging' to demonstrate clear metrics in this area.

While we've written extensively on how to build employee surveys and dug into metrics in detail elsewhere, as well as employee surveys, here are a few of those ideas condensed:

Measuring engagement: Pulse surveys and polls

Short, sharp pulse polls can give you a measure of employee sentiment and engagement levels. While this won't identify where in the employee experience you need to make changes, it will give a quick idea of the general trends across your business. To accurately assess engagement in this way, we suggest questions in four key areas:

1. ENPS: How likely are you to recommend this company to a friend or colleague?

2. Morale: How satisfied do you feel in your job?

3. Energy: How motivated do you feel at work?

4. Direct manager: How satisfied are you with your line manager on a scale of 1-100?

Why the manager question, you may ask? BCG research has found that great managers are a key driver of employee engagement, accounting for a 72% reduction in attrition risk.

Measuring the employee experience: Deeper employee surveys

In order to account for the findings from your employee engagement polls, it's necessary to dig deeper into the employee experience with deeper employee surveys.

For inspiration, return to the key components of the employee experience above. Or for more question ideas and actionable guidance on how to design and distribute your surveys, head to the article below.

37 useful questions to ask in your employee surveys

Measuring business impact: Tracking key KPIs

Given that the ultimate aim of improving the employee experience is improving business outcomes, tracking key KPIs will enable you to judge whether the initiatives you select are having an impact over time.

Example metrics include:

• Retention rate

• Absence rate

• Error or incident rate

• Cost per unit or sale

• CSAT

• Revenue/profit per employee

Top tip: Segment your findings

With a diverse workforce, findings and feedback can differ significantly between groups. Collapsing these nuances into one category can lead to muddy data that is difficult to analyse for actionable insights. To overcome this, segment your audience based on key worker group attributes or existing hypotheses about your employee experience gaps. Your segmentation criteria may include:

• Employee lifecycle: Compare brand new hires to existing employees

• Work type: Segment on-site, frontline workers out from those who are engaged in remote and hybrid work

• Location and role: Assess differences in employee sentiment across geographic or function splits

• Seniority: Compare the views of business leaders to middle management and junior staff

In case your surveys and metrics reveal mixed results or you’re in doubt about whether you need to make any changes, there are certain tell-tale signs that indicate poor EX. The chances that you have room for improvement are high – Gartner suggests only 13% of employees are largely satisfied with their work experiences.

Combining datapoints with qualitative observations

While your first port of call should be the data points outlined above (using 'vibes' alone to gauge the general overall team morale and co-operation is not advised!) observing employee behaviour and listening to employee concerns is a crucial lever in identifying and addressing issues before they escalate.

These qualitative indicators include an increase in employee complaints or grievances (especially if the number seems to be increasing), poor health in workers, low generalised energy and enthusiasm, and a rise in workplace conflicts.

Also, simply encourage employees to share their thoughts. If they respond, that's more insights to go on. If they ignore your calls for feedback? Take that as a glowing beacon signalling that something is very wrong.

The importance of rapid action

Just as one bad apple spoils the bunch, low morale in one area can quickly spread across the business and even your customer base. As such, it’s vital that you pay attention to these tell-tale signs. Problems can arise at any stage of the employee life cycle, impacting the overall employee experience and making it important to monitor each phase closely.

Per Jacob Morgan, organisations that focus on 'the employee experience advantage' gain a strategic edge by creating environments that foster engagement and success.

As such, a strong employee experience strategy is the foundation for building an employee experience that attracts, engages, retains, and gets the most out of top talent in today's hyper-competitive environment. Leaving it to chance is not an option – organisations must take a proactive approach to strategy development that considers every stage of the employee lifecycle - from the first interaction during recruitment to the final exit interview. By understanding employee expectations, needs, and pain points at each stage, you can design employee experience initiatives that truly resonate.

A positive employee experience doesn’t happen overnight; it requires ongoing commitment and alignment with your company’s broader business goals. Start by regularly gathering insights and employee feedback through pulse surveys, employee engagement surveys, and performance data, as outlined above.

From there, you can measure your employee experience effectively, identify trends, and spot areas for improvement – and use these insights to inform your employee experience strategy. As a bonus, by acting on this feedback, you make employees feel heard and valued, which further boosts employee satisfaction and reduces employee turnover.

Your employee experience strategy should be flexible enough to adapt to the evolving needs of your workforce, yet robust enough to support business success. When employee experience initiatives are woven into the fabric of your organisation, you’ll see higher engagement, improved productivity, and a stronger employer brand. Ultimately, a well-crafted employee experience strategy is a win-win: it supports your people and drives your company’s success.

With that in mind, let's explore some key focus areas to consider on your journey to building a strong employee experience strategy.

Hiring and onboarding process: Enabling employees from day one

The hiring process – and subsequent onboarding – is a defining moment in the employee lifecycle, shaping how new hires perceive your company and their place within it.

During recruitment, it's important that the hiring process feels fair and transparent, and that candidates have enough information to make an informed choice about whether to accept an offer. This avoids disappointment later on.

After contract sign, a thoughtful, well-organised onboarding programme does more than just cover off paperwork – it welcomes new employees into your company culture, helps them build connections, accelerates their time-to-productivity, and fosters a sense of belonging that lasts throughout the employee journey.

To create a positive employee experience from day one, ensure your onboarding process includes a warm welcome, comprehensive training, clear introductions to team members, and easy access to the tools and resources new hires need.

If that seems daunting, remember that with intelligent automation solutions like Flip Flows, providing a robust onboarding process at scale doesn't have to be time or resource intensive.

Recognition and appreciation: Making employees feel valued

No one likes to feel taken for granted, and that includes your employees. Workers who feel recognised for their contributions and appreciated for who they are enjoy a better employee experience as measured by considerably higher employee engagement markers than their disengaged peers:

Make sure to bake recognition and appreciation into your organisation by training managers and supervisors to give regular positive feedback for a job well done. An employee recognition or awards programme is also a great way to create a public arena for gratitude that will help your workers to feel proud of their contributions to the overall business.

While it may sound resource-intensive, such programmes can be very lightweight – check out Virgin Media O2's Shout programme for inspiration.

Growth: Providing career development opportunities and continuous learning

When employees see opportunities for personal and professional development, their engagement and loyalty increase. McKinsey research into frontline employees' needs stressed the importance of job growth and learning opportunities in particular.

However, recent Flip research surveying frontline workers around their unmet needs uncovered widespread gaps in the employee experience when it comes to growth and development opportunities. Less than half of frontline workers reported that it was possible to progress in their career at their company, and only 44% reported access to development opportunities.

To improve this aspect of the employee experience, it's vital to:

• Establish a learning and development programme that empowers your workers with new skills,

• Provide professional development opportunities such as mentorship, clear advancement pathways, and access to training programmes,

• Keep documentation on hand so employees have the materials required to learn proactively.

Sidenote: While these steps are a great start, their value is limited if employees aren't aware of what's on offer or cannot access your your training programmes or resources. Here, employee experience platforms like Flip provide a huge advantage by giving employees everything they need to grow – right from their pocket.

Educate and engage employees from day one

From fresh faces to seasoned staff, give your employees everything they need to succeed. Seamlessly onboard new hires, get them up to speed in record time, and maximise productivity with training that reaches everyone.

Explore Flip for training and onboarding

Communication: Ensuring nothing gets lost in translation

While it might sound like a bit of a wildcard, one of the top contributors to a poor employee experience is poor communication.

Employees who report effective communication at their company, by contrast, are 8.2x more likely to be satisfied with their job and a whopping 12.9x more likely to report good or excellent well-being – and more likely to drive results:

With so much on the line, communication should be a key priority area for your employee experience strategy.

Ensure that you have open and accessible communication channels for both top-down, bottom-up, and peer-to-peer communication – especially if you have diverse workforce split across geographic locations, localised functions, or types of role.

This democratic approach to communication sits at the heart of employee experience platforms like Flip, allowing all workers to receive news and updates, network with peers, and access business leaders from their smartphone, no matter where they work.

Environment: Providing safe and comfortable working conditions

Prioritising a safe and supportive work environment is paramount for a good employee experience. When we quizzed frontline employees on their engagement levels, for example, it emerged as a key differentiator for employee satisfaction. Among satisfied employees, 78% agreed their working conditions were safe and comfortable. By comparison, only 12% of dissatisfied employees agreed.

To ensure employees feel safe and secure in their workplace, ensure that you meet adequate health and safety standards, prioritise employee breaks, provide adequate work equipment and comfort facilities, and develop clear policies around threats to the employee experience such as coworker or customer harassment.

Well-being: Safeguarding employees' health and wellness

According to Flip data, 1 in 5 UK employees say they feel burned out at least multiple times a week as a result of work.

With so many hours of the week spent in the workplace, employers have a duty of care to consider both the physical and mental health of their employees – whether the strain originates from their employer or their personal lives.

Resources that address employee health and well-being – such as free counselling, employee assistance programmes, and free health screenings – are great options that demonstrate a real commitment to your workforce.

Remember, however, that well-being goes beyond direct threats to physical health – it's impacted by other areas of the employee experience, too . When Flip surveyed thriving employees, for example, aspects like coworker connections and job security emerged as key predictors of well-being:

Feedback channels: Giving employees a voice

Fostering a positive workplace culture contributes significantly to overall employee satisfaction. To achieve this, employees must feel comfortable discussing concerns or reporting issues to their superiors – without fear of repercussions.

By proactively gathering honest feedback from employees, businesses can ensure that the workforce feels valued and heard. Better still, they can collect ideas for operational improvements across the business, driving further time and resource efficiencies.

Take EUROPART, for example – frequently named as one of the most innovative businesses in Europe. As part of its employee experience strategy, EUROPART implemented a feedback channel in Flip's employee app, allowing frontline employees to submit improvement ideas to the business. This move has supercharged EUROPART's innovation pipeline, providing hundreds of improvement ideas annually. Even better: It's providing real business impact, with an idea implementation rate of 98%.

Word of warning, however: Only pursue this tactic if you actually intend to accept honest feedback with grace and act on it (ideally with similar enthusiasm!). Soliciting employees' views without concrete action is likely to actively harm trust.

Performance management: Providing a clear path to success

Performance management is a cornerstone of a positive employee experience, providing employees with the guidance, support, and recognition they need to thrive. Recognising and rewarding outstanding performance is intrinsically motivating. What's more, when employees know their growth is recognised and supported, they’re more likely to stay committed and satisfied in their roles.

Yet despite the clear benefits, many employees are struggling to grasp their employer's performance management framework. Just 44% of frontline workers receive clear feedback on how to improve at work, and just 37% receive recognition for good performance. These stats are even less promising in challenging industries such as retail:

While annual, comprehensive employee performance reviews are a great start many businesses, a truly effective performance management process goes further. To positively impact the employee experience, it should also include aspects such as:

• Clear job expectations that are linked to business success

• Regular manager checkins

• Timely feedback on areas for improvement

• Regular praise for a job well done

• Easy access to coaching and professional development opportunities in order to act on performance feedback

• Incentives (such as bonuses, discount cards, or other perks) for stellar performance

To ensure your performance management practices are effective, gather feedback, measure employee experience, and use existing business data to drive insights. This data-driven approach allows you to identify strengths and areas for improvement, ensuring your performance management strategy evolves alongside your workforce.

The employee experience extends far beyond individual roles, shaping organisational culture and driving overall business outcomes.

But while its impact is felt at scale, it is difficult to reliably influence or control at scale. As such, many business turn towards digitalisation to achieve their employee experience aims.

The digital employee experience

By facilitating easier communication, democratising access to resources, and giving frontline employees the chance to have their voice heard, digitalising the employee experience can supercharge many of our strategy suggestions above. Examples of digital employee experience success stories from Flip customers include:

• Integrating tools into a single platform to make resources accessible to all employees (Ben & Jerry's)

• Providing easy shift scheduling through centralised rota distribution (McDonald's Germany)

• Accelerating the innovation pipeline through employee feedback channels, with a 98% implementation rate for ideas (EUROPART)

• Improving the employee experience with a centralised hub for direct, fast, personal communications (Penny)

• Increasing the efficiency of operational processes such as uniform requests or stock distribution (GLS)

Embracing emerging technologies

The benefits of this digital-first approach are only in their infancy; advancements in technology – particularly in the AI space – are causing seismic disruptions to the business landscape. The move towards Industry 5.0 is drawing an increased focus towards how humans can leverage technology to improve lives. How we approach our employee experience strategies must adapt and evolve accordingly.

Some employee experience solution vendors are already embracing this shift. With Flip Intelligence, for example, we have combined a flexible knowledge base with customisable workflow automation and an AI agent, compounding the business impacts of individual digital features.

Selecting partners who have this future-first mindset will make your employee experience strategy more resilient in the long run by reducing the risk you're left behind.

Improving the employee experience is an ongoing process – not a dreaded task to be ticked off and never examined again.

For the best results, it's imperative we remain adaptable, continually assessing our approach, measuring progress, taking employee feedback on board, and tweaking the strategy where necessary.

This continuous test-and-learn approach to employee experience management will make it possible to adapt quickly to the major changes approaching the business world, safeguarding competitive advantage.