Better Employee Experience: 3 Steps to Take

Creating a Better Employee Experience
The employee experience is the sum of everything people see, feel, and navigate across their entire journey with an organization — from early brand impressions during recruitment all the way through their transition to alumni status. It is the lived reality of what it means to work for you, not the aspirational version written in a handbook.

Creating a stronger experience requires leaders to understand and intentionally shape the moments that matter most. These touchpoints influence trust, motivation, connection, and ultimately performance. Among the most critical elements are:

• Employee value propositions that reflect real, observable behaviors rather than marketing language.
• Recruiting and interviewing that demonstrate professionalism, clarity, and fairness
• Onboarding that accelerates belonging and role readiness
• Learning and development that fuels capability and growth
• Performance management that prioritizes accountability, transparency, and forward momentum
• Career development that provides visibility and opportunity
• Decision-making that is consistent, data-informed, and aligned with organizational values
• Interactions with leaders, managers, and colleagues that reinforce respect and psychological safety
• Written and verbal communication that is timely, candid, and clear

Getting these touchpoints right matters.

The Benefits of a Better Employee Experience

Leaders who manage the employee experience with intention create environments where people can do their best work — and choose to stay and contribute at a higher level.  How employees experience their jobs on a day-to-day basis has a direct impact on organizational health and performance.

• Research from Gallup shows that a well-designed employee experience directly improves retention, productivity, and client outcomes.
• A study published in the MIT Sloan Management Review found that organizations with high-quality employee experiences outperform peers in innovation and financial results.
• Recent research by McKinsey found that employees who have positive employee experience were 8 times more likely to stay and 4 times more committed to the company than those with a negative experience.

Smart talent leaders, especially in highly competitive markets for talent, purposefully empower and engage employees through meaningful employee experiences that align with their business and people strategies and with their desired workplace culture.  Because an employees’ experience is in constant flux, effective employee experiences are consistently monitored and improved.

However, in spite of extensive efforts to improve the employee experience, almost half of the employees in a recent Gartner study reported that they were largely dissatisfied. Companies that want to win the war for talent will have to find ways to buck this trend.

3 Steps to a More Positive Employee Experience
Efforts to shape a better employee experience will have a greater impact if you focus on improving employees’ feelings. When done the right way, the benefits are real: employees are more likely to stay, to expend greater discretionary effort, and to perform at higher levels.

1. Find Out What Matters Most
   Many organizations still default to a one-size-fits-all model when shaping the employee experience, assuming that what works for some will work for all. It rarely does. While practices must be scalable, the most effective employee experiences are customized — as much as is feasible — to the needs, motivations, and career stages of individual employees. The only way to do that well is to ask, listen, and analyze.

   Leaders should gather feedback that reveals not just current expectations, but also emerging needs tied to shifting market conditions, team dynamics, and organizational strategy. This means striking the right balance between company-wide priorities and individual preferences so that decisions feel both equitable and personalized.

   The real question is straightforward: What matters most to your workforce right now? And how will those priorities influence how they show up each day? Employees’ answers will typically point toward a few consistent themes where you can make an impact.

   Understanding what matters most is the foundation for building a workplace where people choose to contribute their best, not because they have to, but because they want to.

2. Actively Engage Employees in the Design and Implementation of the Employee Experience
   A stronger employee experience isn’t something leaders simply roll out — it’s something employees help build. When employees are invited to shape the environment they work in, ownership increases, solutions improve, and the experience becomes far more authentic. The goal is not to hand over control but to create meaningful partnership.  A recent study in The International Journal of Human Resource Management found that employee involvement in experience design significantly boosts trust and performance.

   Give employees the clarity, context, and boundaries they need to influence how they work and how they grow. Equip them with transparent information, accessible resources, and supportive leadership so they can personalize aspects of their experience in ways that align with organizational objectives.

   When employees are active participants — not passive recipients — the employee experience becomes more relevant, more motivating, and more sustainable.

3. Reinforce the Positive and Adjust the Employee Experience as You Go
   Shaping a better employee experience is not a one-and-done effort — it requires continual tuning. Leaders need to reinforce the moments that elevate performance and connection while thoughtfully reframing or addressing experiences that fall short. The aim is to help employees carry forward the positive memories that strengthen commitment and reduce the weight of the negative ones that can distort perception.

   Collect ongoing feedback, track how employee expectations shift, and stay alert to changes in strategy, workload, and cultural norms. When something is no longer working, adjust quickly and transparently. A study in Organizational Dynamics by Rousseau & Tomprou shows that timely updates to the employee experience strengthen psychological contracts and trust.

The Bottom Line
When you prioritize your employees’ experience — listening to what matters most to them, creating opportunities for growth, and putting systems in place that make their work more satisfying and meaningful — they, in turn, invest their energy, talent, and loyalty back into your business. Employees who feel seen, supported, and empowered become the driving force behind stronger performance, innovation, and long-term organizational success.

To learn more about how to create a better employee experience, download The Top 6 Forces Driving Employee Engagement and Strategies to Move the Engagement Needle

Tristam Brown

Tristam Brown is a seasoned business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.