Editorial
A recent post on FlexOS shared a sobering moment: a panel of Employee Experience (EX) experts were stumped by a simple but critical question: “How do you align specific EX initiatives or target employee behaviors to the business objectives of your companies?”
If you’re leading EX efforts, this question shouldn’t catch you off guard. In fact, it’s your ticket to credibility, budget and consistent strategic influence. When EX is treated as a “nice-to-have,” it’s easy to see programs cut or deprioritized. But when EX leaders tie their work directly to the business’s bottom line, it becomes indispensable.
Let’s break down exactly how to do that — and why it matters more than ever.
The Business Case for EX: Why It Matters More Than Ever
Thriving companies have figured it out: take care of your people, and they’ll take care of your business. During times of economic uncertainty, the employee experience becomes even more critical. Turnover and disengagement cost U.S. businesses between $450 billion and $550 billion annually in lost productivity.
Companies that prioritize their people consistently outperform their competitors across critical KPIs, according to McKinsey:
- Higher profitability.
- Stronger customer satisfaction.
- Improved employee retention.
- Greater adaptability and innovation.
When you link your EX efforts to those outcomes, you move from being a service function to a strategic driver of performance.
Step One: Align Onboarding to Business Metrics
Let’s start at the beginning: onboarding. This is often the first make-or-break moment for a new hire, and an overlooked driver of ROI.
Strong onboarding programs equal faster productivity and better retention. Here’s how to connect it to business outcomes:
- Preboarding and onboarding communications can increase day-one readiness.
- Leadership enablement and onboarding plans can reduce early attrition.
- Training and shadowing programs improve ramp time and performance.
What to track:
- Offer acceptance rates.
- 90-day and one-year retention.
- Time-to-productivity.
- New hire engagement (via surveys).
Why it matters: Replacing an employee costs anywhere from 50% to 200% of their annual salary, depending on the role. And 20% of turnover happens within the first 45 days.
Step Two: Track Long-Term Outcomes of Belonging and Recognition
After onboarding, many companies launch EX programs around recognition, culture campaigns, mentorship programs and inclusion and belonging — but forget to measure their business impact.
What to track:
- Engagement survey scores (especially around “I feel valued,” “I belong here” and “I plan to stay here for a year”).
- Retention of underrepresented groups.
- Participation in ERGs or recognition programs.
- Customer satisfaction (CSAT) and net promoter scores (NPS).
EX isn’t about perks — it’s about performance. When employees feel seen, supported and connected, they’re more likely to stay, perform and advocate for your brand.
Step Three: Tie Employee Feedback to Strategic Action
Your engagement survey isn’t just a morale check, it’s a treasure trove of business intelligence.
Most surveys already include questions that map directly to:
- Leadership effectiveness.
- Role clarity.
- Communication effectiveness.
- Trust in the organization.
- Readiness for change.
What to track:
- Correlate engagement survey responses to turnover rates, productivity or team performance.
- Look for patterns in exit interviews and compare them with low-scoring survey themes.
- Measure the ROI of taking visible action on survey feedback (e.g., manager training, team offsites, benefit updates).
When you close the loop between employee sentiment and business decisions — and share the results — it builds both credibility and momentum.
Step Four: Correlate Your Data to Business Outcomes
Once you have the data, it’s time to speak the language of the business. That means moving beyond surface-level metrics like how many employees you’ve onboarded or how many mentorships you’ve facilitated and instead present insights that connect directly to outcomes and dollars.
Start with satisfaction scores. Share how new hires rate their onboarding experience or how mentees feel about their mentorship connections. That’s step one.
Then, take it a step further and look for correlation. Are highly satisfied new hires staying longer? If you’ve recently made improvements to onboarding, compare satisfaction and retention rates before and after the change. If retention has improved, you’ve moved from activity to impact. You can translate that into cost savings, because reducing turnover lowers recruiting and training costs. That’s money back in the business.
The same goes for mentorship programs. Once you’ve gathered satisfaction data, begin tracking retention, internal mobility and engagement scores. Are participants more likely to stay, grow and contribute at higher levels? If so, that’s not just good for your people — it’s good for business. More engagement means better performance, and better performance means measurable value.
A Simple Engagement Formula
Disengaged employees cost their company up to 34% of their salary, and, according to ADP, the average business loses a minimum of $2,246 for every disengaged employee.
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If an organization with 10,000 employees has a 70% engagement rate, and they lose a minimum of approximately $2,246 per disengaged employee, this equates to a loss of $6.7 million annually. These numbers will change from one business to the next so adjust according to your company's realities. Use your company engagement numbers to share cost savings if you see engagement go up or down with employee experience programs.
Don’t Get Stumped — Get Strategic
Let’s go back to that panel moment. The reason the question stumped them is because too often, EX is positioned as “the right thing to do” — not “the smart thing to do for business.” But you don’t have to make that mistake.
If you want EX to be prioritized, funded and valued at the highest levels, you have to translate employee experience into executive language. That means KPIs, outcomes, and impact — not just vibes.
So the next time someone asks how your EX initiatives align to business goals, you won’t blink. You’ll show the data, the metrics and the undeniable results.
Editor's Note: Read more about how to tie employee experience efforts to business results below:
- 5 Ways to Measure the Value of Your Employee Experience Function — Amid tightening budgets, EX leaders need to prove the value of their programs to survive.
- How to Break Free From the Employee Experience Trap — If your company's employee experience looks good on paper but doesn't deliver the results you want, you may have fallen into the employee experience trap.
- A Comprehensive, Actionable Model for Employee Experience — A common approach to employee experience tells you to improve the "moments that matter." I suggest you should pay attention to the other 90% of employees' time.
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