Editorial
Dear CIOs,
If Employee Experience (EX) can quietly fade from the executive priority list, what does that mean for digital employee experience (DEX) or your own team?
Let me share my case for why EX vanishing as a priority should matter to you when it comes to workplace transformation.
People-Focused Functions Are Losing Ground
In the last two years, I’ve seen critical HR functions silently slip into the background or disappear altogether. Sometimes, the change was public, with announcements of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) teams being eliminated or turned into a “compliance-focused” function. Other times, the shift was quieter, where standalone functions like EX were renamed or absorbed into broader areas like HR Operations or Talent Development.
However, it wasn’t long ago when organizations, regardless of industry or size, considered these two standalone functions top-of-mind investments.
From Spotlight to Sideline: The EX Story
As an EX practitioner, I watched with enthusiasm the initiatives I had long championed take center stage during the pandemic. It finally felt like DEIB and EX had arrived as strategic business priorities.
The outlook for EX was bright in 2021. More than 92% of employers considered enhancing EX as a top priority for post-pandemic success, according to Water Towers Watson’s 2021 Employee Experience report.
Things quickly changed, though. By late 2023, Forrester predicted an EX “recession” with organizations freezing or reducing their EX budgets in 2024. That prediction was spot on. Fast forward to 2025, and both the present and future of EX feel considerably different.
I considered this switch an expected response to the emerging changes in the economic landscape. However, the recent news that Moderna folded its IT team under HR got me thinking beyond EX and HR. While Moderna’s move might be a one-off, it raised a bigger question: What happens to EX’s closest cross-functional partners when EX is deprioritized?
If EX can be quietly and quickly diluted, could IT head down the same path? Or are other functions being asked to step in and fill the void left by EX?
Why Preserving EX Should Matter to CIOs
CIOs and their teams might feel several downstream impacts once EX is deprioritized and quietly vanishes in an organization.
The main effect is losing a trusted partner that can provide insights into employee needs and the “lived experience” of work to inform the design and deployment of human-centered tech tools. Without EX, IT is often left to do the discovery and change leadership work alone. This puts undue pressure on already stretched IT teams, leading to burnout and making it harder to support high-touch rollouts from end to end.
CIOs know that expectations keep rising, but headcount doesn’t. You are being tasked to do more with less, even when your function leads the rollout of the tools that amplify productivity across your organization. If no extra headcount is available, how can CIOs absorb EX and DEX in their teams for lasting impact?
I’ve seen what happens when there’s no dedicated owner of EX: feedback gets lost, frustration builds, and the tools designed to help people end up causing friction.
As CIOs take on more responsibility for AI adoption, EX can help create the human-centered conditions people need to engage with the change. This is one of the reasons CIOs need EX, and EX needs you right back. The partnership works best when both sides are at the table, shaping how workplace transformation actually feels.
Without EX as a partner, CIOs IT gets insights on usability and increases the chances of adoption. EX provides you and IT a human-centered tech strategy, increasing your chances of lasting impact.
CIOs as Co-Architects of the EX Ecosystem
Over the years, I’ve worked closely with CIOs and tech teams. These successful partnerships give me hope that CIOs can play a key role in advocating for EX to return to the C-Suite priority list.
You might be our last line of defense in preserving both digital employee experience (DEX) and the broader employee experience (EX) as distinct, strategic priorities. Both are equally important and complementary to each other in the “lived experience of work” ecosystem.
If we treat DEX and EX as standalone yet interconnected functions, we can get the true picture of what truly helps people thrive, while driving performance and productivity. Without both, it’s easy to miss the full picture.
- DEX provides the systems and tools that help employees work, learn and connect.
- EX gives you the lens of how people feel about their full-cycle experience of work, including these systems and tools.
Having DEX and EX gives you a unique opportunity to lead with efficiency and empathy.
What We Talk About Gets Prioritized and Protected
Here’s my call to CIOs: Start advocating for EX now and protect the strategic status of your own function along the way. Here are a few ways to make it happen:
- Champion EX and its value-add to your function and the organization at large in executive conversations. Share digital insights paired with engagement survey themes, journey maps and pulse feedback to tell the story of how EX, as a partner, helps you understand how employees feel using tech systems and proactively troubleshoot issues.
- Continue to work closely with your EX partners (if you still have them) and create clear charters for DEX and EX to define roles and responsibilities around the moments that matter in the employee lifecycle.
- Co-create a dedicated EX function if you don’t have one. Offer to co-lead cross-functional working groups that blend tech, people and culture insights to ensure your tech strategy remains grounded on the human side of work.
- Push for EX accountability in workplace transformation efforts so someone is clearly responsible for the human experience side of change, increasing your chances of successful adoption.
These small yet powerful moves signal EX is a priority to you and should be taken seriously organization-wide. You have the influence to make it happen and, in that process, protect your function to continue to have a seat at the executive table.
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Closing
My invitation to you is to champion both the digital and human sides of employee experience. This is the time to advocate for shared EX ownership to build workplaces where people and performance can thrive.
IT can then focus on what it does best: design and deliver the tech tools that power productivity without doing the extra work to fill in for the human side of change. In doing so, you’ll build the conditions for your team to sustain their impact today and tomorrow.
With respect, urgency and hope,
Lourdes
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