Editorial
For a long time, I believed that employee experience (EX) had to be centralized to matter. It had to be a visible senior leadership commitment with well-funded and comprehensive organization-wide programs. I even categorized organizations into three EX “camps” based on these investments: curious, committed or courageous. When many of the “committed” and “courageous” organizations began pulling back on enterprise-wide EX programs, I saw it as a threat to the future of EX.
I was wrong.
My recent research into how to design performance metrics for AI-enabled workplaces opened my eyes to a different reality. As constant change in the form of automation and AI augmentation becomes the norm, EX has silently moved out of the enterprise-wide standalone program sphere and into the daily mechanics of the work itself.
EX is now decentralized, and its impact sits at the team level.
The EX Tension Managers and Teams Are Living With
The pace of work continues to accelerate, forcing constant recalibration. Annual planning cycles are now quarterly, monthly or even weekly reset sessions. Yet many of the systems that support the work haven’t kept up with this intensity. Decision and approval loops still seem endless. Scope creep is an evergreen problem. Performance expectations still assume linear execution.
This is exactly where the old EX model becomes outdated. Enterprise-wide EX strategies were focused on delivering programs for the “moments that mattered,” anchored to an organization’s culture or milestones along an employee's journey.
The moments that matter today are shaped inside the work itself: project kickoffs, 1:1s, redesigned workflows and cross-functional collaboration.
When there’s misalignment between the work moments that now matter and the systems that support them, this friction results in increased rework, higher employee burnout levels and slower business results. A strained and unhealthy EX proposition over time.
McKinsey makes a clear business case: companies with strong organizational health outperform peers three times in total return to shareholders. The advantage comes from how work is structured and how decisions get made.
The elements of a healthy organization include:
- Clear decision rights so work doesn’t stall in endless approval loops.
- Real autonomy paired with clear accountability for outcomes.
- Fast, high-quality decisions that match the pace of the work.
- Aligned priorities that reduce rework and constant resets.
- Everyday behaviors that build trust and sustainable work rhythms.
That shareholder multiplier effect is created or lost at the team level.
This is how EX will now prove its business value: inside team meetings, workflows and daily decisions that determine whether speed turns work into positive progress or frustrating constraints.
Team-Level Employee Experience Means Supporting Team Leaders as Architects
This perspective shift will scale business results in 2026: empower team leaders to shape the conditions of work every day with their teams.
Teams experience organizational culture through the work they do, how that work is structured and the people guiding them through it.
The challenge is that most people leaders haven’t been successfully set up to guide their teams. Gartner research shows that three-quarters of managers are overwhelmed by increased responsibility, and 69% do not feel equipped to lead change effectively.
Organizations have asked managers to be accountable for the experience without giving them the authority to shape the work.
Supporting line leaders means trusting them to make faster, higher-quality decisions to streamline work with their teams with speed and complexity, minus the strain of bureaucracy.
A Practical Way to Navigate 2026 (Monthly Sprints)
Make your 2026 leadership focus to recalibrate and operationalize EX through a monthly sprint rhythm, grounded in three disciplines: Design Thinking, Organizational Effectiveness and Digital Employee Experience (DEX).
Month 1 Sprint: See Today’s Work Clearly (Design Thinking)
Lead with curiosity and an open mind. Where does work slow down right now? Where do teams experience friction, rework or constant resets?
Use listening sessions, journey mapping or simple “what’s getting in your way?” conversations to understand the lived experience of work and the skills required today.
Month 2 Sprint: Fix the System and Empower the People (Organizational Effectiveness)
Streamline the systems and clarify accountability based on the feedback you gather. Ensure leader span of control reflects the complexity and pace of work and not outdated org charts.
This step requires making the changes for work to flow better so line leaders and their teams can make fast, quality decisions to execute amid speed and complexity.
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Month 3 Sprint: Align Technology for Today’s Work (DEX)
The next layer requires looking at tools, AI and automation to ensure digital workflows align with how work actually needs to get done to support team needs in this moment.
Are they reducing friction or adding to it? Are they scaling to support constant change?
Month 4 Sprint: Lock in What’s Scalable
Capture what’s working and iterate quickly on what’s not. Recognize people leaders and teams who improved how work actually gets done.
Reward the skills that made progress possible. Celebrate smart risk-taking, small gains and the effort behind them.
When line leaders and teams can shape EX directly in their daily work, EX starts delivering measurable retention and performance outcomes as a living operational strategy.
The Leadership Question to Carry Into 2026
As you set your leadership priority to amplify performance for 2026, return to this question often: How is employee experience actually being created at the team level, and what am I doing to support it?
It starts with one team. Select one workflow or approval path that consistently creates friction. Fix it. Then repeat. Make it a leadership habit.
This is the second wave of employee experience. And it’s already here.
In 2026, employee experience is something line leaders either design into the flow of work or absorb the cost through friction and stalled performance.
Which EX camp will you be on: quietly curious, deeply committed or radically courageous? Your organization and your business results will feel the answer long before they show up on a dashboard.
Editor's Note: Employee experience isn't going away, it's evolving. Read on for other takes:
- The New Playbook of Employee Experience — Organizations that treat engagement as an outcome of good design, not a program to fix, will build meaningful employee connections.
- The Employee Experience Budget Paradox: More Spending, Worse Results — Companies are spending more on employee experience than ever, yet engagement, trust and collaboration are still collapsing. What went wrong?
- A Comprehensive, Actionable Plan 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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