The notion that happy employees achieve better results isn’t a new one. For decades, working conditions have improved dramatically to meet worker demands. But recent cost-of-living pressures have pushed workers to question whether employers are doing enough to support their material and emotional needs. As stress levels soar and productivity declines, there is still a long way to go for most industries to adapt their employee experience for the challenges of the twenty-first century.
It might be easy to blame younger generations of “quiet quitters” or remote workers for a slowdown in productivity, but the reality is that all employees are feeling the strain as inflation rises and feelings of “togetherness” break down in the workplace. As AI continues to dominate the conversation, workers feel pressured to work harder to avoid being “replaced”, but the impact on stress and mental health often has the opposite effect. Employee burnout is a real phenomenon, but few companies are moving to tackle it head on.
So, what can a people-focused organisation do to support their employees and improve business metrics at the same time?
Evidence shows that investing in employee experience is a key metric to help reverse falling engagement trends. As Jonathan Emmett, et al. write for McKinsey, “In an era of workplace upheaval, companies that create tailored, authentic experiences strengthen employee purpose, ignite energy, and elevate organization-wide performance.”
In this ultimate guide to employee experience, we will explore three important stages to help you understand and maximise your organisational potential through employee experience:
- Why Employee Experience Matters
- How to Enhance Your Employee Experience
- Ways to Maintain Positive Employee Experience
This guide is designed to help people leaders understand the changes in the employee experience landscape and enable them to recognise the impact that your employee’s relationship with their workplace has on business metrics and retention rates. We will also explore ways to improve employee experience, especially in digital spaces. By working through these steps, you will set your organisation up for ongoing business success.
As experts in cultivating positive employee experiences and improving engagement, we have seen up close how easy it is to overlook vital elements of your company’s ethos. But when we get it right, the results are dramatic: up to a 60% increase in employee retention and a significant lift in productivity and engagement scores.
If this guide raises any red flags or you would like support with bringing your people together for success, reach out to our team. Your free consultation will allow you to share current goals and challenges, and we can advise on whether we can improve your employee experience in as little as six months.
Whether it’s a competitive edge or just peace of mind when planning for the future, Mo engages your employees and helps you build a great place to work.
Part 1: Why Employee Experience Matters
Is employee experience really that important? Put simply, yes. Employee experience directly determines rates of hiring, retention and productivity in an organisation. Employee experience is an umbrella term that encompasses numerous factors in a worker’s employment package, including pay, workplace culture, management and career opportunities. If employees feel unhappy at work, they are more likely to underperform or leave. And if a business cultivates a poor reputation for employee experience, it is less likely to hire the best candidates.
Research from Gallup suggests that $8.9 trillion is lost globally each year due to low employee engagement and workplace stress, a trend that can only be countered by improvements to your staff experience.
We’ve seen first-hand the power of employee experience in work environments like hospitality, offices, and the energy sector. While these industries face different challenges, all can benefit from smart engagement strategies. How do we know? We helped them achieve it.
How Do We Define a “Positive” Employee Experience?
First, let’s start by laying out a definition of employee experience. When your staff come to work, they consciously and subconsciously measure it in many different ways, such as recognition levels, feelings of connection and support, possibility for career development, and interactions with management. All of these factors contribute to their overall experience.
When we think of a positive employee experience, we are looking for key factors:
- A respectful work environment
- Fair compensation and benefits
- Adequate resources and tools
- Psychological safety
- A sense of meaning and fulfilment
- Opportunities for career development
- Positive feedback systems
- Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB)
- Parental, illness and disability support
What is the Connection Between Employee Experience and Engagement?
Businesses with positive employee experiences will prioritise factors like team connection, incentivisation and career progression. When we look at organisations with high employee engagement, they prioritise these same factors. A study by Marriott International found that organisations with higher employee engagement see a 22% boost in profitability and a 21% increase in productivity compared to companies with lower engagement.
The same study noted that hotels with higher employee satisfaction scores also boasted higher guest satisfaction scores. The result? An increase in revenue per available room (RevPAR) and market share.
The perks of prioritising positive employee experience don’t end with customer satisfaction in the hotel sector. According to a study by Deloitte, businesses with strong employee experience programmes see a 40% reduction in turnover rates, helping to mitigate other costs.
Ways to Recognise a Positive Employee Experience
When measuring employee experience, people teams often fall back on engagement surveys. But there are many ways to gauge rates of satisfaction at work. Great employee experience can only be achieved through a dynamic, tailored approach that encompasses multiple metrics.
These engagement metrics include:
- Employee engagement surveys
- Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)
- Culture and wellbeing
- Peer-to-peer communication
- Work/life balance indicators
- Retention and progression
There are other, smaller indicators that can signal positive employee experience, such as when your team demonstrates accountability and ownership over their results. When employees feel safe and empowered, they will take on greater responsibility.
Why is this a good thing? Accountability indicates that employees are engaged emotionally, meaning they are less likely to burnout or “quiet quit”.
So, how do you measure employee experience KPIs? Rather than basing your HR policy on a single metric, expand your scope to consider other insights that will give you real-time data.
You can use behavioural and sentiment data, along with your eNPS score, to estimate changes in employee experience over time.
Many organisations see benefits in running engagement surveys every 6-12 months. They also invest in innovative employee experience platforms like Mo to elevate their digital employee experience. Ensure that any software you bring onboard has an insights dashboard to show you where improvements are happening and where to place your focus.
Why Employee Experience Is a Key Business Metric
When employees are dissatisfied at work, attrition rates rise. Some studies suggest that replacing a salaried employee can cost between 6 to 9 months’ salary, equating to 50% to 75% of their annual earnings, though these numbers are mostly estimates. Long story short? Employee turnover is too expensive to ignore.
Beyond retention rates, employee experience has a knock on effect in other areas. Global engagement has dipped to 21%, with Europe reporting the lowest figures at just 13%. In the UK, the number is even more concerning — only 10% of workers are engaged in their jobs. Gallup points to three major culprits: lack of meaningful management, declining team connection and a weak sense of organisational purpose.
You now recognise and understand the importance of employee experience as a business metric. In the next section, we’ll break down how to improve it.
Part 2: How to Enhance Your Employee Experience
While your employee experience strategy will be unique to your workforce, industry and business model, we have worked with dozens of organisations to improve their performance and have identified six key areas for focus and improvement.
- Onboarding
- Recognition
- Togetherness
- Company Values
- Career Progression
- Departure
Evidence from Gallup and others shows that by investing in these areas, you will see a lift in the way your employees perceive their work.
We’re going to go section-by-section to explain where you can make short and long-term improvements in each area, as well as how you can use Mo to maximise your employee experience.
A Better Onboarding Process
When you bring on a new employee, their impression of your organisation is already being formed. New hires often decide in their first 90 days whether they’ll stay.
So, if first impressions shape engagement, then a poor onboarding experience can harm retention, productivity and employer reputation.
To improve onboarding in the short-term, build a structured 30‑60‑90 day plan with clear goals, assigned buddies and regular check‑ins. Ensure hires feel welcomed and supported from day one.
Over the longer term, develop a scalable onboarding framework spanning departments. Make sure to include standardised modules, feedback loops and engagement metrics to continuously iterate and improve your process. Don’t forget to action the feedback you receive!
Mo enables you to automate welcome messages by posting a “Moment” for each new hire, inviting colleagues to recognise them publicly.
Regular Recognition
Everyone loves to be incentivised at work. Frequent appreciation or gifting drives motivation, boosts engagement and reduces turnover. According to Gallup, regular recognition can cut turnover by 24% and increase productivity by 21%.
Here’s something you can action in the coming weeks: encourage simple recognition acts, such as a “thank‑you” in your next meeting, shout‑outs in team chats or peer-to-peer email highlights. They might seem simple, but evidence shows that meaningful kudos goes a long way to improving productivity.
For long-term results, embed recognition into your culture. HR can achieve this by establishing monthly nominations, quarterly awards, and leader‑driven reflections on employee efforts.
Mo makes recognition habitual with its central feed and “Boosts” feature that prompts managers to appreciate behaviours aligned with company values. Colleagues can nominate peers; admins can attach rewards directly within Moments. Easy. Effective.
A Sense of “Togetherness”
In an age of remote and hybrid work, it’s getting harder to create strong bonds between colleagues, with many employees complaining of isolation. To combat loneliness, businesses must prioritise recognition and belonging. When employees feel part of something bigger, they’re more committed and collaborative. They are also more likely to stay.
The data supports this. People who feel recognised and included are:
- 3× more likely to describe their workplace as fun
- 5× more likely to plan to stay long-term
- 6× more likely to look forward to work
To improve “togetherness” in the short term, create virtual coffee meetups, shared Slack channels, a specialised culture platform or hybrid team huddles to build camaraderie, especially across remote and deskless teams.
Over the long term, HR can develop a culture playbook highlighting shared rituals, value-based behaviours and regular social moments to reinforce belonging across locations.
Mo scales a culture of connection through a company-wide timeline of feedback, updates and recognition. Our platform reinforces shared achievements and bridges physical distance. Don’t just take our word for it. Read other success stories to find out more.
Shared Values
Company values define behaviour. When employees understand and see values in action, they align more closely with vision. And when leaders role model these values, it drives engagement, consistency and trust. Make sure that your values are clear and agreed across all of your leadership before sharing them with the wider organisation.
To reinforce your company’s shared values in the short term, launch an awareness campaign across your teams.
As a long‑term solution, build values into performance indicators, recognition programs, onboarding and leadership development. Regularly measure awareness through employee pulse surveys.
With Mo, company values are embedded into every Moment. When someone is celebrated on the platform, it’s not just for a task well done. Every post is labelled with a specific value like “Customer First” or “Act with Integrity.” Attaching values helps reinforce what truly matters across teams and builds cultural alignment with every post.
“Mo helps make work fun, engaging and a key part of welfare, mental health and engagement – alongside your core values.”
Hazel Hogben Chief People Officer, Unilode
Career Progression
Employees that see a path for growth are far more likely to stay and perform. Development opportunities correlate with higher retention and engagement.
Over the short term, offer learning stipends, host knowledge-sharing sessions or run mini mentoring circles to signal investment in growth. Long term, design transparent career pathways. Develop a defined Role → Next Role journey for your employees. Be clear about training tracks, mentorship programs and progression feedback loops. If your attrition rates rise, make sure to account for any feedback related to career opportunities.
You can easily recognise the completion of internal and external trainings on Mo to publicly to reinforce development as a cultural norm. By posting a Moment about these kinds of achievements, leadership ties career development to your overall culture by collectively celebrating growth milestones.
A Positive Departure
Even an employee’s departure can be a tool. Exit experiences shape your overall employer brand, while alumni advocacy can be a great way to hire your future team members. By gathering the right insights, HR can minimise future hiring challenges and negative sentiment.
To improve off-boarding in the short term, conduct structured exit interviews or exit surveys to understand why people leave and how to improve. Then, over the longer term, incorporate feedback into your HR strategy.
Make sure to address any common themes. You could also consider developing an alumni programme to keep past employees engaged and potentially boomerang back.
Mo allows you to share positive departure messages, such as automating a team member’s work anniversary or final achievement, on your company-wide platform. Automation ensures that departures end on a celebratory, company-strengthening note.
Part 3: Ways to Maintain a Positive Employee Experience
If you have reached this part of the guide, you will have considered all the ways you need to improve your employee experience. Now, we need techniques to maintain it.
Mo is an employee culture platform that can help leaders improve collaboration and morale, reduce employee churn and drive change.
Our award-winning platform is designed to help busy managers engage their teams and provide HR with methods to improve employee experience. It doesn’t matter if your people are in-office, hybrid or remote. Mo is designed to work across physical and cultural distances to improve key areas of employee experience.
Mo Helps Create a Great Employee Experience
Let’s look at a specific example. Feedback systems will help your people team and managers monitor the right metrics. Within Mo, admins can view rates of sharing, rewarding and engagement. This visibility allows you to recognise disengagement quickly, enabling you to change course before work becomes affected.
Our platform creates a vibrant employee experience by developing team habits, encouraging people to celebrate success, recognise results and appreciate colleagues. Your complete toolkit for connecting and motivating teams in the new world of work.
Mo’s desktop platform and mobile app helps tackle some of the main causes of poor employee experience. We unite teams under a shared set of values, supporting their team connection and communication while facilitating feedback and recognition.
Transform your culture with Mo
Book a free demo to learn how Mo can help you:
- 🤝 Improve employee engagement scores
- 🚀 Reduce employee churn
- 😍 Build a collaborative culture
We Help You Become a Great Place to Work
Mo works with dozens of different industries and sectors to deliver results for their employee experience. From office cultures to nursery teams, we understand what it takes to bring a team together because we use our platform in-house.
Let’s look at another example. Mo has strategies to support part-time teams and shift workers by connecting them on a centralised app. Casual staff, such as hospitality workers, often have higher attrition rates because they don’t feel an attachment to their team. So, what is the solution? A genuine sense of belonging and accountability will motivate them to work harder and stay longer. Mo brings casual staff together on one culture platform, making workers feel appreciated when it matters most.
In corporate cultures, we can spot weaknesses and help boost your culture for success. Data indicates that 82% of managers end up in the position “accidentally”, while one in four employees have left a job because of a negative relationship with their manager. Mo enables managers to achieve the “impossible”: providing feedback, motivation and recognition without burdening them with a significant workload. Organisations like Axol Bioscience and Hotel Indigo have already reported massive improvements in their employee engagement. Is your team next?
A great employee experience is within reach. With the right strategy and investment, your organisation can find a market advantage, retain employees and soar where others flounder in the new world of work. If you have any questions about your culture, or anything covered in this guide, reach out to our team.
