Most Companies Struggle to Measure the Employee Experience

The old adage that you can’t manage what you can’t measure may be true, but there are some factors in business success that are very difficult to measure: employee experience is one of them. Measuring begins with collecting data, and many companies today are finding collecting data about their employees’ experiences is an enormous challenge.

FOUNT Global and TI People release of their “2022 State of EX report,” a longitudinal study tracking organizations’ efforts to improve employee experience. For the majority of respondents (85 percent), their top challenge is measuring the business and financial impact of EX improvements. In fact, seventy-nine percent of companies struggle to coordinate EX work across their organizations.

Current methods of data collection appear to be a kink in the process. Although over 90 percent of companies say they run employee surveys at least once a year, most (70 percent) say the employee data they collect is inadequate for their needs. This inadequacy seems to stem from the fact that most organizations’ data does not capture the depth and context of employees’ experiences thoroughly enough to guide decision-making and action.

Another noteworthy point is that many companies feel the current business environment is disproportionately favorable for EX investment, with 94 percent reporting that EX improvement is more than just a short-term project at their organizations. For more than half – 51 percent – the employee experience work is a permanent change in how their organizations operate.

“The upheaval of post-pandemic work life has driven many organizations to reevaluate their employee listening strategies to be more responsive to their workers’ expectations,” said Christophe Martel, co-founder and CEO of FOUNT. “Given our experience working with early adopters of advanced EX practices, we expect to see more global brands extend their existing survey capabilities to dig deeper into what causes friction for their employees and focus their data collection activities on things they can actually fix.”