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Employee Experience: Fueling a High-Performance Workplace
Design a world-class employee experience to unlock your team’s peak performance
Employees today expect their voices to be heard and their contributions valued. They expect a work environment in which they feel empowered.
Download this CHRO guide to creating a human-centered employee experience that meets these expectations and drives business value.
Discover best practices for employee experience from real-world examples.
Build a shared language around moments that matter to today’s workforce.
Benchmark your strategy to create a culture that retains top talent in a competitive market.
Building a human-powered employee experience strategy
Investing in employee experience is not just about making employees happy — it’s a strategic move that drives better business outcomes across the board.
Employee Experience 101
Enable High Performance
Invest in Key Moments
Foster a Connected Culture
Build an employee experience foundation to drive results
A compelling employee experience (EX) is a critical factor in organizational success, particularly in the context of hybrid work models, a hypercompetitive labor market and rapid technological innovation.
An employee experience strategy that aligns with the employee value proposition (EVP) fosters a strong culture and is crucial for sustaining engagement, retaining talent and achieving business goals.
Organizations that successfully deliver on the promises of their employee experience will outpace their peers in sustaining engagement and performance, retaining their workforce and achieving their business goals.
Key components of the employee experience
Employee engagement: This involves increasing the extent to which employees feel passionate about their jobs, are committed to the organization and put discretionary effort into their work. Enhancing employee engagement is crucial for retaining talent and boosting productivity.
Culture: Managing and measuring culture change are essential for aligning employees with organizational goals. This includes understanding how individuals connect to, and interact within, the organizational culture, which is vital for fostering a supportive and high-performing work environment.
EVP strategy: Differentiating the organization’s EVP is vital in attracting and retaining talent amid unprecedented labor market competition and economic volatility. The EVP must be compelling and authentic to resonate with employees and meet their expectations.
Employee experience design and delivery: Creating structures, organizations and frameworks that shape the employee experience in line with the promised EVP and desired organizational culture is essential for driving engagement and high performance. This includes recognizing and capitalizing on the "moments that matter" in the employee experience.
Hybrid work: Implementing a human-centric work design to deliver the benefits of a hybrid workforce is crucial. This involves balancing employee preferences for flexibility with organizational needs to maintain performance and inclusion.
Design a human-powered enterprise that enables a high-performance culture
Employee experience describes how an organization delivers on the promises in its employee value proposition (EVP) to create a culture that engages and retains existing talent to advance business outcomes.
But as global, socioeconomic and technological disruptors come and go, employees’ needs evolve — and organizations need sustainable ways to keep the workforce engaged while continuously driving high performance.
To shape a future-proof employee experience, organizations need to build upon the basics of the employee experience and design a human-powered enterprise.
Human-powered enterprises treat employees as people — instead of simply as “workers” — and enable those people to deliver their best work. CHROs who pursue human-centric strategies don’t do so out of altruism, generosity or naivete or place employee needs ahead of business outcomes.
Rather, they recognize there need not be tension between creating the right conditions for human performance at work and what is best for the organization.
Human-powered enterprises balance the employee experience and the structure of human work by intentionally building roles, workflows, experiences and structures that enable their employees to deliver their best work — while also addressing factors that degrade performance.
These enterprises view creating the conditions for human success at work as HR’s top priority and a strategic pillar of their organization’s success.
Bottom line: The human-powered enterprise approach to employee experience boosts engagement, performance, retention and other key outcomes needed to thrive in an environment of intense change and competition.
A human-powered enterprise model includes:
Creating and executing on a compelling EVP that delivers a “human deal”
Driving optimal employee performance through well-being
Embedding DEI into the organization
Supporting and developing human leaders
Cultivating a workplace designed around human behavior
Crafting a partnership between humans and AI
Curate “moments that matter” to enhance the employee experience
“Moments that matter” are the personal and work-related touchpoints employees have with their organization along their career journey. These moments have an enormous influence on employees’ feelings of fairness, change fatigue and workforce health. These five moments provide the greatest return on investment.
Moment 1. Receiving a performance review
Performance reviews are critical for employee development, motivation and belonging. Managers can promote satisfaction with performance reviews by:
Having clear goals and benchmarks for achievement of goals
Encouraging two-way, regular conversations
Helping managers assess behavior throughout the performance management cycle, and build their judgment capabilities to evaluate behaviors in difficult situations to make evaluations fair and effective
Moment 2. Having a coaching conversation with a manager
Coaching conversations are associated with the greatest increases in performance and inclusion across the top five moments that matter. They also have a positive effect on employee engagement.
To make the most of coaching, managers should do the following:
Personalize conversations based on the situation and needs of the employee.
Increase the value of feedback by focusing on helping employees to grow, navigate relationships or adopt a growth mindset and feel ownership over self-improvement.
Connect employees to others who can teach skills and provide feedback to better serve their employees’ development needs.
Moment 3. Participating in a structured skills session
Structured skills (training and development) sessions are critical for delivering on an organization’s EVP as part of employees’ whole career growth. In a hybrid environment, three levers can improve inclusivity:
Setup. Respect participants’ preference to join from personal office workspaces. Position in-room participants to face video monitors rather than each other.
Technology. Use technology that reduces friction between virtual and in-person attendees and allows for asynchronous collaboration. Set up group chats between or during sessions so colleagues can interact.
Facilitation. Train facilitators to consistently check in with all participants and check for “proximity bias” to be sure virtual participants are involved. Allow work-from-home participants to organize, host or lead sessions.
Moment 4. Participating in a high-stakes presentation
Being chosen to give a high-stakes presentation signals to employees that they are valued, which can motivate them. Keep in mind, though, that presenting in front of an audience can be stressful for some employees. Managers should help employees prepare, iterate and seek feedback for their presentations in an environment with high psychological safety.
Moment 5. Getting exposure to a senior leader
When senior leaders have increased visibility into underrepresented talent segments, it can help mitigate biases and foster growth and support. Consider matching employees with senior leader mentors to support their development and career advancement. Also foster informal connections between employees and leaders, such as social events, town halls or coffee chats.
Design a connected culture to build trust and reshape the employee experience
Despite their best efforts, many organizations struggle to translate their employee experience investments into higher employee engagement.
Factors like stress, burnout and unpredictable work environments can drain employees’ capacity to engage in skills development, growth and other engagement opportunities. And when employees don’t see immediate actions taken to address their concerns, trust erodes — along with business and employee outcomes.
To knock down barriers to performance and build an organizational culture of trust, start with the following actions:
Identify areas of friction. “Work friction” includes aspects of employees’ work that should be easy but are hard or frustrating. To identify where friction occurs in your organization, partner with employees to hear their experiences and ensure that proposed solutions address employee needs.
Set goals with measurable outcomes. Goals should include both business outcomes (such as cost reduction) and employee outcomes (such as work satisfaction). Then survey talent segments who play a key role in these outcomes as a starting point for action planning and change.
Find the major themes. Synthesize the survey data to identify common themes and sources of friction that are negatively impacting employees and business outcomes and creating barriers to achieving goals.
Partner with employees. Engage in active, structured listening to understand the nuances and experiences of work friction themes in your organization. Specifically look to clarify:
How employees define each of the themes
What happens and why it’s problematic
Who is involved in the friction and who should be involved in the discussion
What would help employees feel satisfied with their work, and what they believe needs to change
Prioritize short- and long-term actions. Identify visible short-term actions you can take to build trust with employees up front while you plan and implement more complex changes in the background.
- Collaborate transparently with employees on a way forward. Seek concrete input from employees on a proposed action plan, asking questions such as “What did we get right? What are we missing? What part would you like to play in implementing changes? What are your reactions to the plan?”
Attend a Conference
Join Gartner experts and your peers to accelerate growth
Gather alongside CHROs and human resources leaders on October 27 – 29 in Orlando to gain insight on emerging trends, receive one-on-one guidance from Gartner experts and create a strategy to tackle your priorities head-on.
27 – 29 Oct 2025
Gartner HR Symposium/Xpo™
Orlando, FL
FAQ on employee experience
What is employee experience?
Employee experience (EX) is the sum of all interactions an employee has with their employer, from recruitment to exit. It encompasses the work environment, culture, technology and support systems that influence an employee’s perceptions, engagement and productivity. A positive EX leads to higher job satisfaction, retention and performance, ultimately benefiting the organization.
How does employee experience impact ROI?
The employee experience (EX) impacts ROI by boosting productivity, reducing turnover costs and enhancing employee engagement. Satisfied employees are more efficient and innovative, leading to better performance and customer satisfaction. Lower turnover decreases recruitment and training expenses. Overall, a positive EX drives profitability and long-term growth.
What are the challenges of improving the employee experience?
Diverse needs
Employees have different expectations and needs, making it tough to create a one-size-fits-all approach.
Measuring impact
Quantifying the benefits of EX improvements can be difficult, making it hard to justify investments.
Consistent execution
Ensuring that EX initiatives are consistently applied across the organization is critical.
Leadership buy-in
Gaining and maintaining leadership support are crucial but can be difficult if the benefits are not immediately visible.
Drive stronger performance on your mission-critical priorities.