Employee experience (EX) is still top of the agenda in 2025.
84% of businesses see EX as a competitive differentiator — a way to attract top talent and keep them working for your organization long into the future.
But that doesn’t mean all these organizations are getting it right. Crafting an employee experience that engages workers — and has them singing your company’s praises on workplace comparison sites — is no mean feat.
It requires a consistent approach that carries through all departments and across every employee touchpoint. And it requires a deep understanding of worker needs and expectations.
To achieve all this, a solid employee experience strategy is invaluable. This plan will guide your EX initiatives, the workplace tech you use, the company culture you strive to create, and the metrics you use to assess employee experience success.
Here, we take a look at all the ways an employee experience plan benefits your business and outline the steps you need to take to create one.
What is employee experience?
Employee experience is how employees think and feel about their workplace.
It encompasses every touchpoint and interaction throughout the employee lifecycle, including recruitment, onboarding, workplace relationships, development opportunities, and the technology you expect workers to use.
Employee experience managers are responsible for shaping EX, creating the kind of company culture and workplace environment that employees enjoy spending time in.
Why every org needs an employee experience strategy
Happy employees are good for business. High levels of employee satisfaction lead to improved talent acquisition, productivity, employee engagement, and staff retention.
The benefits of EX are clear. But many businesses are failing to deliver the kind of employee experience that inspires worker motivation and loyalty.
55% of all workers feel dissatisfied with their overall employee experience and this figure rises to 61% for Gen Z employees.
Why are these figures so high? You may have noticed that the modern workforce has pretty high expectations. Employees expect way more from their place of work than they did a few generations ago.
There are a couple of factors at play. First, we’re accustomed to personalized digital experiences at home — algorithms that know what we want before we do. And we expect the same quality and usability from the tech we use at work.
Second, the baseline for what makes a good workplace has risen. Mental health support, flexibility, and a sense of belonging aren’t perks anymore — they’re must-haves.
And finally, people are thinking bigger. A job isn’t just a paycheck. Employees are seeking growth, transparency, fairness, and purpose — and are willing to switch jobs to find a workplace that provides them.
Meeting these expectations is tough for any company. And — without a clear employee experience strategy — it gets even tougher.
With a solid employee experience strategy, however, you connect the dots between what your people need and what your business wants to achieve. You create the kind of workplace where people bring their A-game — where employees are engaged, productive, and with you for the long haul.
12 steps for building your employee experience strategy
Stellar employee experience management relies on a clearly defined strategy. Here’s how to get there.
1. Establish your why
Before jumping into tactics, pause and consider what you’re trying to achieve with your employee experience strategy. You need to understand the business case for improving EX. This will help guide your EX efforts — and get stakeholder buy-in.
Here are a couple of questions you can ask yourself to get the ball rolling:
- What pain points do our employees currently experience?
- How does this link to business outcomes, like retention, productivity, customer service, and engagement?
- What kind of company culture do we want to build — and how does this align with our values?
2. Map the employee journey
From day one to exit, every touchpoint matters. Working out each point in the employee lifecycle can help you uncover areas for EX improvement.
You should look at:
- Recruitment
- Pre-boarding and onboarding
- Career development and growth opportunities
- Engagement
- Retention
- Offboarding
Then, across these employee journey stages, figure out what the employee experience looks like.
Consider employee priorities like recognition and feedback, work-life balance, and any bottlenecks in their daily workflows.
Examine the cultural environment. Things like leadership style, the quality of co-worker connections, and the effectiveness of your internal communication channels.
Also, audit the physical environment, assessing how safe and comfortable employees are when they’re at work. Ergonomic desks and chairs are a given for your office-based staff. But consider the needs of frontline employees and those who work at home, too.
With a clear understanding of the employee journey and the factors that impact EX, you can (at step 4) craft staff survey questions that cover all elements of the employee experience. But first, there’s another key area of EX to get a handle on.
3. Assess your tech-sperience
Tech tools are now a fundamental part of every work day. So the digital employee experience forms an increasingly integral part of EX.
Remember that employees get streamlined, personalized experiences on the software they use at home. So — whether you like it or not — your workplace tech is going to be compared to the very best consumer-grade tools.
Clunky or outdated tech tools create frustration. They harm productivity and employee motivation.
Even the most cutting-edge tools can cause problems if they aren’t implemented with the proper focus on EX. Use too many different tech tools and employees can easily feel overwhelmed. They constantly have to recall login details and toggle between tabs.
So when crafting your employee experience strategy, assess your tech stack — and its impact on employees. Find out where technology is supporting a positive employee experience and where it’s creating friction.
Also, consider tech needs on a team-by-team basis, paying special attention to frontline employees. Without easy access to a desktop computer or a company email address, frontline workers often find workplace tools difficult or impossible to use, which harms the frontline experience.
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4. Ask employees what they want
Every workplace is different. And while you’ll find plenty of articles listing the workplace attributes that employees value most, these can only ever act as a rough guide.
To make a success of your employee experience strategy, you need to understand your workforce and what motivates them. Then, treat them as co-creators of your EX strategy.
That starts by gathering employee feedback. Send out surveys and polls. Launch a listening tour. Find out what employees think of EX at your organization and what would improve it. Work to discover pain points, needs, and expectations.
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This shouldn’t be a one-off event. You should aim to build employee listening and employee voice into company culture. Create two-way communication channels and foster open communication across all levels of your organization. Acknowledge feedback and tell employees what action you plan to take.
By doing so, you encourage engagement with the feedback process and prompt honest responses from employees. You also keep your finger on the pulse, which — faced with ever-evolving employee experience trends — helps you stay ahead of EX issues.
5. Dive into the data
You’ve got feedback. Now what? It’s time to analyze the data you’ve gathered from employees, looking for EX patterns, pain points, and opportunities.
Celebrate the areas where you’re doing a good job. And hone in on areas where EX could be improved.
Use the analytics tools you have access to and combine qualitative feedback with quantitative data on retention, absenteeism, and employee engagement to get a big picture perspective.
6. Get to know EX across the organization
Segment your data and you can also find out what employee experience looks like for different sectors of your workforce.
Perhaps your office-based team is satisfied with the quality of internal communications they receive. But your frontline team has to make do with a patchwork of paper memos and word-of-mouth messages.
It could be that Millennials are loving the option to work from their comfortable home offices. But Gen Z employees, still living in shared housing, are struggling to find a quiet and productive place to work.
Maybe one department experiences higher than average levels of turnover and lower than average instances of employee recognition.
Only by digging deep into the data can you understand how EX at your organization looks for every member of your workforce — and start to see the patterns that will inform your plan of action.
7. Set goals
You’re at the point where you’ve done all your EX research. Time to put down on paper what you hope to achieve with your employee experience strategy.
Create targets that are measurable, time-bound, and based on the EX issues you uncovered during the research phase.
Some examples include:
- Increase career development opportunities for employees
- Establish better two-way communication channels between employees and managers
- Boost news feed comments and reactions by X%
- Increase survey response rates
8. Build your plan
Keeping your goals in mind, lay out the actions that will help you achieve them.
For example, if you want to improve career development opportunities, you could launch a new mentoring program.
Or if you wanted to increase your survey response rate, you could look at ways to close the feedback loop, ensuring that employees feel their feedback is listened to and acted on.
You may like to overhaul employee pay and benefits, well-being support, or workplace recognition. You may want to focus on improving the frontline employee experience with better comms and flexible working opportunities.
9. Find the right EX tech
This is a great time to consider the employee experience tech tools that will support your employee experience strategy. The best employee experience platforms can improve EX with the help of:
- Internal communication tools — channels that support top-down, bottom-up, and peer-to-peer conversations and an engaging company news feed
- Recognition tools — that help you create a culture of appreciation
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- Integrated software — integrations with the other workplace software you use to create a streamlined digital experience
- Automated employee journey tools — features that make it easy for you to deliver the right content to employees at exactly the right time in their employee journey
- HR self-service tools — tools that allow employees to swap shifts, request leave, or view their pay stubs right from their user-friendly dashboard
- Surveys and analytics — employee survey and analytics tools that help your team keep up-to-date with employee satisfaction and EX
- Personalized employee experiences — tools that go beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to provide tailored comms, dashboards, and journeys relevant to each individual employee
10. Communicate and roll out
To make a success of your employee experience strategy, you need all hands on deck. Employees should get a consistent experience across the whole lifecycle and that relies on lots of different departments working together.
Get everyone on the same page — including employees — by communicating your EX vision clearly and transparently. Lay out your objectives and the positive outcome you expect. Tell them what will change and why.
If you’re rolling out new employee experience software, think carefully about how you’ll get your workforce to embrace it. Start by picking user-friendly, mobile-first tools that every employee can use. Then, use a marketing campaign, incentives, gamification, and platform ambassadors to encourage employees to log in.
11. Measure and evaluate
Is your employee experience strategy having the desired effect? As well as looking at the specific EX goals you set earlier in the process, measure your success in terms of overarching business goals too.
These include employee satisfaction metrics like:
- Employee net promoter score
- Absenteeism rate
- Turnover rate
You can also look at KPIs relating to talent acquisition, customer satisfaction, and employee productivity.
Measure employee experience and you stay ahead of any EX problems that might arise. You see where your EX strategy is bearing fruit — and where you still need to make improvements.
12. Iterate and improve
Improving employee experience isn’t a one-and-done situation. Creating and honing the perfect employee experience strategy is an ongoing task.
Use insights gained from employee surveys and analytics to keep pace with evolving employee expectations. Review your goals. Find new ways to enhance employee experience and keep staff loyal to your organization.
By treating EX as a continuous process, you’re more likely to create a strong culture, happy employees, and the business results you’re looking for.
Using your employee experience strategy to build a better workplace
A strong employee experience strategy can transform your workplace. It impacts company culture and internal communications. It boosts productivity and staff loyalty. And it can put a spring in the step of employees as they turn up to work each day.
And with 52% of employees saying they’re watching for or actively seeking a new job, employee experience strategy isn’t something you can afford to neglect.
The occasional free lunch or mental health day won’t cut it at a time when employees demand more than ever from their places of work — and are prepared to vote with their feet if their expectations aren’t met.
To ensure EX success, you need to consider the experience of every employee. The priorities of your retail staff, for example, are probably very different from those of your office-based team. Then, you need to create personalized experiences that make employees feel seen and valued.
An employee experience platform like Blink can make a huge difference to your employee experience strategy and its success.
With tools that automate elements of the employee journey, improve communication, streamline workflows, and include every employee in the workplace community, it becomes much easier to deliver the kind of employee experience your workforce expects.
Blink. And make employee experience your competitive advantage.
Employee experience strategy FAQs
What is an employee experience platform?
An employee experience platform is software that supports a positive employee experience at every stage of the employee lifecycle. It helps HR leaders turn their employee experience strategy into business results.
Using these platforms, employees can communicate with co-workers, managers, and the C-suite. They can access onboarding resources and HR self-serve tools. They can respond to surveys, receive recognition, and get to know company culture better.
The best employee experience software integrates with the other workplace tech you use. It creates a streamlined and user-friendly digital hub for your organization, which further improves the employee experience.
What are the three key factors of employee experience?
When analyzing the employee journey, there are three main factors to consider: company culture, technology, and the workplace environment.
- Company culture. How do employees feel about the organization which employs them? This usually comes down to the company’s hierarchy, leadership, and management style along with traditional factors like compensation and benefits.
- Technology. Do employees have the right tools to complete their jobs? This includes hardware like computers and mobile devices, as well as software including mobile apps and online subscriptions. It’s important to consider whether these tools offer a user-friendly, consumer-grade experience.
- Workplace environment. Are employees physically comfortable in their work environment? Think furniture, safety equipment, decor, lighting, and noise. These physical factors all directly impact the well-being, performance, and productivity of your people.
How can HR teams utilize employee experience platforms?
Employee experience platforms give HR teams everything they need to understand EX and make a success of their employee experience strategy.
HR teams can use survey and analytics tools to track EX at their organization and make meaningful improvements to their employee experience strategy. They can access features that support internal communication, employee recognition, and an inclusive company culture.
