Discover this practical guide to understanding and managing the employee experience as technology and workforce needs change.
Sara Braun
Editorial Strategist, HR
Workday
Only 31% of U.S. employees are engaged at work in 2026, according to Gallup. For employers, that number points to a bigger question: What is it actually like to work at your organization?
Employees experience work through their relationships with managers, the technology they use, opportunities to grow, and the support they receive as their roles and workplaces evolve. Each of these factors influences how effectively people work and whether they want to stay.
Employee experience management helps organizations understand and improve the employee experience. By listening to employees and acting on what they learn, organizations can create an environment where people are better equipped to contribute, develop, and succeed.
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Employee experience management is how organizations use employee feedback and workforce data to improve engagement, productivity, retention, and overall workplace effectiveness.
The employee experience begins before an employee’s first day and continues through their eventual departure. Managing it effectively means understanding what employees need at different stages of that journey, including:
Recruitment and hiring: Set expectations for the role and create a positive first impression of the organization.
Onboarding: Give new employees the tools, information, and support they need to get started.
Everyday work: Understand how managers, technology, processes, and workplace practices affect employees on the job.
Growth and development: Give employees opportunities to build skills, advance, and explore new roles.
Career and life transitions: Support employees through promotions, role changes, leaves, reorganizations, and other significant transitions.
Offboarding: Understand why employees leave and create a thoughtful transition out of the organization.
Employee experience strategy has real implications for retention. Workday research found that voluntary turnover among high-potential employees is rising across 75% of industries, putting greater pressure on organizations to understand what top talent needs and where employee experiences may be falling short.
Effective employee experience management requires more than collecting feedback. Organizations need a repeatable way to identify where employees are struggling, decide what to address, and determine whether those changes actually improve the experience.
These five practices can help organizations take a more intentional approach to managing the employee experience.
2. Strengthen defining moments in the employee journey
3. Equip managers to enhance the experience
Employee listening can include engagement and pulse surveys, lifecycle feedback, manager conversations, and other channels. The goal isn’t simply to collect more data. Start with a specific question you need to answer, such as why engagement is declining on a particular team or where new hires are struggling during onboarding.
Then, connect what employees say with workforce data to identify patterns and determine where action is needed. Look for recurring concerns across teams, employee groups, or stages of the employee experience journey rather than treating individual feedback points in isolation.
Most importantly, assign an owner to what you uncover. Employees should know what the organization heard, what will change as a result, and what won’t. That’s a baseline requirement for increasing the number of engaged employees.
Certain points in the employee journey can have an outsized impact on the overall experience. Starting a new role, earning a promotion, changing managers, taking a leave of absence, or moving internally can shape how supported employees feel and how they view their future with the organization.
Use employee feedback and workforce data to understand how people experience these moments and where there are opportunities to make them better. For example, onboarding feedback can inform how new hires are welcomed and supported, while engagement data can help organizations understand how employees experience promotions or internal moves.
Use those insights to strengthen key points across the journey, building on what works well and making targeted improvements where needed.
Managers account for 70% of variance in team-level engagement.
Managers have significant influence over employees’ everyday experience. In fact, Gallup finds that managers account for 70% of the variance in team-level engagement.
Focus manager development on the interactions employees experience most often. Train managers to set clear priorities, give useful feedback, recognize strong work, discuss employee goals and development, and spot when workloads are becoming unsustainable.
Next, give managers enough capacity to do those things consistently. Automating or simplifying administrative tasks can create more time for one-on-one conversations, coaching, and development, while HR can provide frameworks for situations managers may encounter less often, such as supporting an employee through a role change or leave.
A positive employee experience makes it easier for people to focus their time on meaningful work. Well-designed processes and technology can simplify routine tasks and give employees more capacity for work that requires their skills and judgment.
Look for opportunities to streamline how work gets done. Simplifying an approval process, improving access to information, or automating a repetitive task can give employees time back and make everyday work more seamless.
As AI becomes a core part of everyday work, it’s even more crucial to ensure new efficiencies translate to a better experience for employees. For example, Workday research found that while 85% of employees save time using AI, 37% of those savings are lost to rework.
When it comes to new technology, implementation alone doesn’t drive experience improvement. Organizations need to design how AI fits into employees’ work so that productivity gains translate into meaningful improvements in their experience and, ultimately, real value for the organization.
Career growth is becoming especially important as employees adapt to changing skill requirements. Deloitte found that 85% of leaders consider workforce adaptability critical in 2026, while just 7% say their organization leads in helping employees continuously grow.
Start by making opportunities visible. Employees should be able to see which skills they need for future roles and find relevant learning, projects, mentors, and internal openings that can help them build those capabilities.
There’s evidence that this can make a measurable difference. At Workday, for example, more than 6,000 internal gigs have driven a 43% increase in internal mobility and a 13% lift in long-term career sentiment among participants. Development is not an abstract promise but something that employees can actually pursue.
Employee experience is multidimensional; no single metric can tell the whole story.
Employee experience is multidimensional, so no single metric can tell the whole story. The goal is to build a clear picture of how employees experience work and whether the changes you make are having the intended effect.
Start with the areas you’re actively trying to understand or improve. If you’ve redesigned onboarding, measure how new hires experience it. If you’re investing in manager development, look at whether employees feel better supported. If you’ve introduced new technology, examine whether it is making work easier.
From there, combine different types of data to understand both the experience itself and its impact:
Employee feedback: Use engagement surveys, pulse surveys, and lifecycle feedback to understand how employees perceive their experience.
Workforce outcomes: Connect those insights with measures such as retention, internal mobility, or absenteeism to see how employee experience relates to workforce behavior.
Operational measures: Track relevant indicators such as time spent on processes or adoption of new tools to understand whether changes are making everyday work easier.
Differences across the workforce: Break results down by team, role, tenure, or other relevant groups to identify where experiences vary.
Measurement should continue after changes are made. Establish a baseline, track the same indicators over time, and use what you learn to refine your approach. For example, an organization investing in career development could measure employee sentiment about growth alongside participation in development opportunities and internal mobility.
This creates an ongoing feedback loop between listening and action. Organizations can see what is improving, where more attention is needed, and which employee experience investments are producing meaningful results.
AI, shifting skill needs, and changing employee expectations are putting new pressure on the employee experience. HR leaders need a clear view of how those shifts are affecting employees and where the organization can respond.
Employee experience management provides that visibility. Ongoing listening and measurement help leaders make informed investments in the areas that shape employees’ day-to-day experience.
Those investments improve employee retention, development, and productivity while helping organizations get more value from their workforce strategies.
Feeling the strain of rapid market changes on your talent strategy? Develop a plan to unlock workforce potential with the right skills technology in this Workday Buyer's Guide.
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