In recent years, compensation has become just one of many factors employees consider when looking for a job or deciding whether to stay in their current roles. Today’s workforce understands how much of their lives are spent at work and wants to enjoy that time as much as possible. As industries continue to grow and change, businesses are competing for top talent. In the digital age, employee experience is the key differentiator for companies looking to build a robust organization that enables and supports their workforce.
Employee experience (EX), as a concept, is the sum of every experience an employee has related to their role and employer, from what they learn to how they feel at work to what they do in their daily roles.
In this article we will explain how companies can actively manage employee experience and the technologies companies use to do it. We will also discuss common challenges and questions related to employee experience management to help you implement effective employee experience management for your company.
What Is Employee Experience Management (EXM)?
Employee experience management (EXM) is the strategic oversight and management of every aspect of employees’ journeys with the company. With so many companies operating in a remote or hybrid format, much of this experience happens virtually. This means EXM requires a multifaceted approach, which includes considerations for company culture, physical work environments, technology, and management practices.
By ensuring employees’ positive work experiences, managers and business leaders can motivate team members to be more productive at work, build a sense of community across teams, and foster an environment where employees are excited to grow with a company.
The Importance of Employee Experience Management
Employee experience impacts more than just employee sentiment. Think of EXM as required maintenance for a large piece of complex equipment. By caring for the individual parts that make up the whole, leaders can keep things running smoothly and improve long-term performance across the board. Here are some key benefits of implementing EXM in your organization:
- Provides employee lifecycle data for performance insights and continual improvement.
- Higher employee engagement and productivity help organizations reach long-term goals.
- Creates communication channels between the workforce and management to promote transparency and understanding across the board.
- Improved employee retention and lower turnover keep companies growing and improving from within.
- Promotes organizational development, health, and resilience to keep organizations competitive in evolving markets.
- Improves employee performance, leading to improved customer satisfaction.
Key Pillars of Employee Experience Management
Every organization has unique environments and market circumstances that affect employee experience. This means there is no one-size-fits-all solution to EXM. However, there are certain key aspects every CHRO should incorporate in their EX strategy, including:
Physical environment
Employees’ workspaces provide a foundation for work, setting the tone for each workday. Aspects of workspace design, including floor plans, noise management, and temperature control, all impact employee comfort, motivation, and job satisfaction. Flexibility in the environment, allowing employees to provide or seek out their own work environments, can also go a long way toward improving EX, depending on the requirements of individual positions.
Whether employees work in-office or remotely, managers should ensure workspaces include access to all the tools they need to feel comfortable at work and excel in their roles, including space, technology, and information.
Technology and tools
Employees need well-functioning tools and tech resources to stay productive at work. Managers should provide reliable hardware with up-to-date and user-friendly software, including collaboration tools, to facilitate connections within and across teams.
Choose workplace software that uses AI and machine learning to streamline workflows and provide personalized support as employees adopt new tools. Workplace software should be easy to use and integrate with other commonly used software to reduce friction and ensure that employees are equipped with resources that facilitate rather than hinder their work.
Manage internal enterprise software and its tasks and workflows like you would customer experience. For example, customer-facing and product teams constantly work to improve product offerings, proactively identify and fix user friction points and bugs, launch new features, and optimize experiences. HR operations and enablement teams must also tackle EX like this by tracking software usage, identifying user friction areas that hurt task completion cycles, and launching support mechanisms and process changes to streamline these experiences.
Culture and leadership
Workplace culture sets the tone for employee experience. This makes it essential for EXM teams to foster communication, transparency, and mutual support across teams. By creating a culture in which every team member feels safe and empowered at work and by encouraging managers to lead by example, EX managers can create positive environments that make employees feel connected to, and even proud of, their employers.
Growth and development
Because EXM encompasses entire employee life cycles, strategies should address employee experiences related to employee onboarding, training programs, and continuous upskilling.
Work with L&D teams to develop training environments and activities that support employee needs and align performance with organizational values and goals. To keep team members engaged, provide different training formats, such as mentorship programs, job shadowing, and collaborative learning activities.
Health and well-being
Employees should feel safe and supported at work. This requires EX managers to implement and maintain resources and activities that support well-being from both mental and physical health perspectives. These might include wellness initiatives to support physical health or personalized work arrangements to accommodate employee needs and contribute to work-life balance. Outside formal health initiatives, EXM teams can foster a supportive and healthy work culture to help employees feel comfortable and supported at work.
What Is an Employee Experience Manager?
An employee experience manager is an employee responsible for overseeing, maintaining, and improving employee experience across an organization. This may be an individual’s primary role, or they may take on this responsibility as one component of a broader human resources position.
EX-managers have an important role in cultivating employee experiences by developing environments that empower employees to excel in their roles and find their time spent at work more valuable and enriching. Their work keeps teams motivated and contributes to a company’s success. Here are some core responsibilities and qualities that define a successful EX manager:
Employee Experience Manager Responsibilities & Tasks
Employee experience managers ’day-to-day tasks involve a combination of human resources, communications, technology, and business strategy. Here are some everyday tasks EX manager:
- Designing, optimizing, and implementing L&D initiatives, management practices, and culture activities that meet employee needs and align with business goals.
- Working with managers to ensure employees have flexible schedules that meet the requirements of their roles and ensure consistent, company-wide EX.
- Identifying resources and technologies that could improve EX.
- Soliciting and analyzing employee feedback through surveys and interviews to keep tabs on evolving employee sentiment.
- Working with leaders to set the tone for a positive company culture
- Conducting research and connecting with team members to get a pulse on business operations and industry happenings.
Employee Experience Manager Skills & Traits
These are some of the diverse skills and qualities that make for successful employee experience managers:
- Communication skills allow EX managers to convey the importance of EX and related activities to employees across the organization.
- Project management for designing and deploying initiatives to improve EX.
- Data analysis for accurate and effective interpretation of employee feedback and performance data.
- Creativity and empathy help EX managers connect with diverse team members and create experiences that benefit all employees.
- Problem-solving for time-sensitive issue resolution and strategic thinking about large-scale and long-term improvements.
- Priority management helps EX managers stay on top of far-reaching to-do lists.
Best Practices for Employee Experience Management
Effective management of employee experience requires managers to approach EX holistically, managing work environments, employee resources, and work culture. The finer details of employee experience management can vary across companies and teams, but this set of best practices will help provide the scaffolding for your employee experience management plan:
Define EXM goals and objectives
Start by defining goals and objectives for your EXM plan. Consider the needs of employees and the larger organization here. Some common EXM objectives include improving employee engagement, striking a fair work-life balance, and increasing employee performance. Upon setting these goals, document them and share them with employees as the program is announced. This will establish a sense of transparency and understanding from the get-go.
Gather, analyze, and listen to employee feedback
Next, get a handle on existing employee sentiment and EX management practices by soliciting feedback and holding interviews with team members at different levels. Use the resulting data as a baseline for employee experience management activities. This will further convey that organizational leaders are invested in creating a positive working environment across the organization.
Identify employee pain points and areas for improvement
Use data from feedback solicitations to earmark consistent areas of friction that could be interfering with organizational goals, performance issues, or high turnover rates. Use these along with your established objectives to guide EXM program development.
Develop initiatives targeting key EX areas
Develop initiatives aimed at key areas of employee experience, such as learning and development, performance support, and physical work environment. By actively managing EX related to all these areas, employee experience will improve holistically.
Break down company communication barriers
Poor communication can be the kiss of death for companies needing to improve EX. Foster positive employee experience by creating an environment of open communication. Establish feedback channels and encourage managers to have regular conversations with employees to stay abreast of changing employee sentiment.
Involve leadership and management
Communicate with organizational leaders about the importance of leadership examples in creating a positive company culture and promoting employee experience. Involve leadership in company culture initiatives and work closely with managers to improve EX at the team or departmental level.
Leverage technology and automation
Work with IT to implement support mechanisms and ensure that employees have the tools they need to excel in their roles. This includes software like digital adoption platforms to support employees through upskilling and automation-focused software that streamlines employee tasks and helps them be more productive in their roles.
Communicate and launch initiatives
As you launch EX initiatives, communicate their benefits and ensure that employees understand the intentions behind them. Take measures to ensure that employees feel this support and provide feedback channels so they can provide suggestions and criticisms for future activities.
Monitor progress and adjust based on continuous feedback
Use employee feedback and performance data to monitor the effects of EXM on employee performance and sentiment. Implement mechanisms for continuous evaluation to ensure that EX management activities evolve along with your organization’s workforce.
Challenges in Employee Experience Management
Let’s go through some of the most common challenges faced by leaders seeking to implement EXM in their workplace:
- Fragmented employee journeys – Without effective EXM, employees might have inconsistent experience even when working on the same teams. To combat this problem, managers should standardize processes and use modern communication tools to keep employees feeling connected and on the same page about work goals and expectations. Managers can use employee experience management practices to communicate clearly and align employees’ sense of purpose with the values and goals of their company.
- Lack of leadership buy-in – Workplace leaders can sometimes feel they’ve got enough on their plates and that EXM should be left to managers of individual teams. This separation can keep employees siloed and feeling disconnected from the larger organization, making leadership buy-in vital to the success of EXM programming. Employees who can observe executives and other key stakeholders leading by example are more likely to embrace EXM initiatives and contribute to improving company culture. To get buy-in from leaders, convey the importance of EXM for business success, and demonstrate the potential ROI with metrics like retention rates, employee performance, and customer satisfaction.
- Poor communication and transparency – A lack of clear communication can lead to weakened trust, raised stress levels, and reduced employee satisfaction. This challenge can be emphasized in remote or hybrid workplaces. To address this issue, managers and business leaders should create a culture of open communication by implementing regular opportunities for dialogue and feedback. Technology can help here, too. Managers can use software like digital adoption platforms and other in-app messaging tools to deliver important announcements and reminders to team members within the applications they use every day for work.
- Measuring the impact of EXM – Because experience is subjective by nature, measuring the impact of employee experience management can be challenging. To make it easier, establish clear objectives and metrics to capture experience data from qualitative and quantitative angles. Then, seek out and prioritize employee feedback to gain a close understanding of employee experience and use that information to make continuous improvements.
Software & Technology to Improve Employee Experience
In the digital age, software and technology play a key role in the overall employee experience. Implementing modern tools that use technologies like AI to streamline operations and provide useful insights is imperative for keeping employees engaged and satisfied.
Here are some widely-used software that can help you manage and improve employee experience for your organization:
- Digital Adoption Platform (DAP): Digital adoption platforms are incorporated into workplace software to provide on-the-spot guidance as employees learn to use new software. This helps reduce frustration throughout the learning process, boost confidence, and bring employees to proficiency more quickly.
- Internal Knowledge Base: Knowledge base contains resources and documentation employees use to refresh their understanding of workplace operations and seek resolutions to IT problems that might not require IT assistance.
- Help Desk: For issues that require additional skill and expertise, dedicated help desk teams support employees to help them through software and tech-related challenges. This resource improves issue resolution time and provides another avenue for personalized assistance, reducing friction for users and improving employee experience.
- Enterprise Browser: This is a secure version of a browsing environment that is customized to meet the needs of a specific business or team. Features like robust security and controlled internet access make it possible to optimize performance while ensuring security and compliance needs are met. This can eliminate employee frustrations, making adhering to industry regulations a minimally stressful experience.
- Human Capital Management (HCM): HCM software provides a centralized platform for HR professionals to manage workforce operations, from recruitment to performance management to payroll. It can help improve EX by automating manual HR tasks, providing opportunities for continuous learning, and simply hiring employees who are truly good fits for their roles.
FAQs on Employee Experience Management
Many business leaders and human resources personnel have questions when building a formal employee experience management plan for their organization. Here is a list of the questions asked most frequently:
How does EXM differ from employee engagement?
Employee engagement is a term commonly known and used in the professional world. It describes employees’ investment and motivation related to their roles. Organizations with formal employee engagement programs organize initiatives like leadership training and recognition programs and disseminate engagement surveys to measure employees’ productivity, motivation, and job satisfaction.
This makes employee engagement an essential component of the larger idea of employee experience (EX). Employee experience covers each employee’s journey all the way from recruitment to resignation. Employee experience management (EXM) is a formal initiative, often led by HR professionals and business leaders, to design and optimize every touchpoint and environment an employee engages with throughout this journey.
How does EXM influence remote and hybrid workforces?
As of 2025, only about 34% of the United States workforce is in-person for the majority of the work week. This shift toward remote work has greatly impacted employee expectations and has often left managers feeling lost when promoting engagement and creating positive work environments.
Managing and optimizing employee experience for employees working away from the office requires a slightly different approach, focusing on fostering a sense of camaraderie across teams through clear communication and ample support. By building a strong framework for EXM, business leaders can optimize employee experience by providing structure while giving employees the work-life balance they have come to expect.
What role does leadership play in EXM?
Organizational leaders set the tone for employee experience management initiatives within a company. By modeling positive workplace behaviors, contributing to strategy, and investing in resources for EXM activities, business leaders give managers the necessary foundation to solidify EXM as a fundamental part of business operations.
How often should EXM initiatives be reassessed?
As is often the case, ongoing reassessment and improvement are essential for maintaining effective EXM activities. Managers and other relevant leaders should conduct reassessments annually if not more often, to ensure EXM efforts align with employee and business values and goals.
Employee Experience Clicks Better With Whatfix
An organization’s workforce is the foundation for its success, making employee experience management absolutely vital for any company. A substantial component of EX management involves making sure employees feel supported at work and equipped to carry out their responsibilities.
Whatfix is a digital adoption platform (DAP) that allows teams to support employees as they learn new workplace software, keeping them engaged and productive throughout the process. Whatfix DAP empowers L&D teams to easily develop workplace learning content with a no-code editor and deploy it on top of digital applications to help employees learn in the flow of work. With guided product tours, step-by-step walk-throughs, and pop-up messages, L&D teams have a world of options for delivering effective, personalized content. This solution also includes customizable knowledge bases, which can be used to make important resources like tech documentation and FAQs readily accessible to employees.
Whatfix Analytics provides insights drawn from users’ behavioral data to help teams understand how employees interact with their work software and use those insights to continuously improve user experience. Another Whatfix product, Mirror, allows L&D teams to create replica sandbox environments for their work software, giving users a risk-free environment for hands-on training and experimentation.
To learn more about how Whatfix can help you improve employee experience for your organization, schedule a free demo today!
