There are certain times of the year that I look forward to in particular, and the release of Parlons RH’s employee experience barometer is one of them. The 2025 version of this barometer has just been published ([FR] The tangible benefits of the employee experience). As its name suggests, this year’s focus is on the ROI of the employee experience, a topic that those who follow me regularly know is very close to my heart. 

While the 2024 edition addressed the topic from a performance perspective (The employee experience: a transformation lever at the service of performance), it was only logical after the 2023 edition, which “discovered” that one of the main expectations of employees in this area had nothing to do with QWL and traditional HR topics, but concerned the organization of work (2023 Employee Experience Barometer: the employee experience confronted with its contradictions).

It is therefore only logical that the question of ROI should arise this year, and it was with great interest that I devoured this edition of the barometer, rich in both positive and negative lessons, which provides an opportunity for a long post, as I am so fond of writing.

I will, of course, review and comment on these lessons, adding my own reflections based on my own experience, in the hope that this will provide some runways to managers, HR professionals, and others (and I especially hope others) who want to solve the problem of ROI in the employee experience and adopt a truly value-oriented operational approach.

There’s no point in promising to be brief and concise, there’s too much to say for that.

In short:

• The employee experience is not an independent driver of performance, but rather an indicator of organizational maturity: its success depends on a solid structure, clear processes, well-equipped management, and an aligned corporate culture.
• The link between employee experience and performance remains difficult to demonstrate due to a lack of clear economic indicators: initiatives are often confined to internal HR intentions and disconnected from business objectives.
• The absence of structured management, digital tools, and dependence on key individuals make employee experience initiatives fragile and unresilient, particularly in SMEs.
• An effective approach to employee experience requires moving beyond the traditional HR framework to integrate operations, organizational design, ergonomics, occupational psychology, and operational excellence.
• Employee experience must be thought of as a systemic result rooted in the design of daily work, rather than a series of HR measures or listening initiatives.

Bias and context

An analysis is never neutral, and knowing the author’s background is always useful in understanding their biases and prejudices.

In my case, I took on the role of HR and employee experience manager when I came from the business side, and that is precisely why I was chosen, because they wanted someone who didn’t just think about talent and HR, but also about business impact.

When I tackled the subject of employee experience, I realized that the sacrosanct employee lifecycle, which determines many employee experience initiatives, was missing a key moment: the moment when the employee is working. We address everything from onboarding to departure, and even a little before and after, but never when the employee is actually working.

But when you talk to your employees about their experience, they talk to you about tools, management, work organization, work design, processes, but never about their “HR” experience. Ask anyone at random and that’s what they’ll talk about, never HR initiatives. It may be hard to hear, thankless, but that’s the way it is.

So I started to take an interest in the subject and, ultimately, while some are considering merging IT and HR (HR and IT merger: Moderna redesigns its organization for and with AI and Why it’s ‘senseless’ to merge HR and IT functions) and, more broadly, the future role of HR to give it more impact, we decided to merge HR and operations with the conviction that the employee experience, seen from this angle, would be a lever for operational performance while increasing employee satisfaction, a term I much prefer to “engagement”, which I find overrated and overused (Employee Engagement: Illusion of Performance or Real Impact?). I have already told part of the story here (After the role comes the position: how the HR function can evolve organically).

So that’s my background and my approach to the employee experience, but if you want to go into more detail, I have tried to summarize my seminal articles (The employee experience, from concept to real-life work).

I think this is starting to give you a concrete idea of how I see the ROI of the employee experience, and you understand that to achieve it, I am very comfortable with taking the subject out of the HR sphere.

So let’s move on to the barometer.

The employee experience is first and foremost an indicator of organizational maturity

When we look at the figures in depth, one thing becomes clear: businesses that practice this are not only more attentive to the employee experience, they are generally better structured.

They:

• plan better,
• listen more,
• have more robust HR processes,
• have better-equipped management,
• are better equipped with digital solutions,
• are better prepared for CSRD,
• and demonstrate superior CSR performance.

In other words, it is not only the EX approach itself, or at least as it is most often practiced, that produces performance, but the organizational capacity that makes its implementation possible.

This only confirms a well-known principle in management: the employee experience is never better than the operational and managerial maturity of the business.

A business that is fragile in terms of processes, leadership, or strategic alignment will never be able to compensate for this through an employee experience approach.

Correlation or causation?

The study readily asserts that “employee experience makes money”, but although I am deeply convinced of this, and especially if we take a very operational approach, which I find difficult to see in the practices of the businesses surveyed, it has not really been proven.

What has been demonstrated is that growing businesses are more likely to focus on employee experience, have lower turnover, recruit more, and ultimately perform better in terms of CSR.

This suggests a link, but the nature of this link is unclear, and there are in fact two overlapping hypotheses.

The first is that employee experience improves performance. In this case, businesses that improve their EX strengthen engagement, and therefore performance. This logic holds true even though, as shown in a study mentioned in an article cited above, it has been demonstrated that engagement is not a factor in performance (Employee engagement is out. Here’s a better metric).

The second is that while businesses that are doing well have the means to invest in employee experience, businesses under pressure immediately cut non-mandatory HR budgets. This hypothesis would be very consistent with the notable decline in employee experience initiatives in SMEs and in certain sectors.

I believe that the two factors are combined and that performance enables investment in employee experience, which in turn improves the social resilience of the business.

The total lack of economic guidance in the employee experience is an alarming sign

Commercial performance is cited as an objective of the employee experience by only 10% of respondents, while 59% cite the individual and collective performance of employees.

I would not have dwelled on this point and would instead have congratulated myself on the 59% if the barometer itself had not emphasized the commercial dimension, so let’s try to see what all this is telling us.

From my point of view, this low score does not reflect a belief that the employee experience has no impact on the business, but rather a management choice: HR professionals set internal objectives (engagement, climate, collective efficiency) in areas they are familiar with and logically avoid external objectives (growth, turnover) on which they feel neither legitimate nor capable of acting (People are everywhere in the workplace, but HR is nowhere when it comes to work)

We therefore pursue internal performance objectives but without measuring what they actually produce: the barometer shows no KPIs for productivity, operational efficiency, or economic contribution, which leaves ambitions in the realm of intention, and for good reason: we are also in areas where the HR function has little means of acting unless, as I mentioned above, it either sets up a partnership with operations or merges and makes a takeover bid (From employee experience to operational excellence: HR not so well equipped!).

As far as commercial performance is concerned, I also think that the problem is more cultural and deeper-rooted. In fact, sales functions are often still managed according to very old logic, focused on quotas, pressure on the pipeline, and individual variables, which is not really the right environment for the kind of employee experience most businesses have in mind. Furthermore, the HR function does not yet see itself as a value-oriented function, capable of explicitly articulating EX ? engagement ? performance ? economic results.

In other words, businesses recognize that engagement is their primary competitive advantage, but do not translate this conviction into their priorities. The employee experience remains an internal lever, disconnected from business management, due to a lack of culture, tools, or posture that would allow it to fully assume the entire value creation chain.

However, beyond the subject of commercial performance, which I personally find more anecdotal than the importance given to it by the barometer because it is a sub-section of the much broader subject of overall performance, I can only note and regret that HR knows how to measure engagement, but not its contribution to the business, and the barometer offers several examples of this:

• QWL is better measured than economic impact.
• HR does not link EX ? retention ? operational continuity.
• Commercial performance is ranked last among EX objectives.
• HR directors adopt a “social” discourse rather than a “value-based” discourse.
• SMEs abandon EX as soon as the economic situation becomes difficult, proof that it is still perceived as a luxury.

This is not a methodological problem: it is a cultural problem that leads to a positioning problem.

For my part, I am convinced that the employee experience must address, not in its entirety because QWL and HR issues are important, but for the most part operational and business issues, because that is the only thing we know how to measure and ultimately give importance to (Employee experience is useless (if it is not linked to the business)).

I may be biased, but I am still stunned when, in a panel discussion on the topic of employee experience attended by senior executives from large businesses, no one is able to answer the following question: “How do you align specific EX initiatives or target employee behaviors to the business objectives of your companies?“ (How I Stumped a Panel of EX Experts). Or when we know that less than 10% of businesses are able to correlate HR data and business metrics (Is People Analytics the Next Job to Be Outsourced by Technology?).

I come back to my personal experience. I noticed that despite HR and employee experience initiatives that were “successful” in every respect, I saw no change in performance indicators, or so little that I had no idea whether I had anything to do with it or not. On the other hand, I understood that the solution was to address everyday operational irritants. I understood the urgency of proving the usefulness of our efforts and the associated costs, and in a publicly traded business that swore by EBITDA, that’s what I promised. To achieve this, I relied on operations, which became the driving force behind the employee experience, in addition to their central role in operational performance or rather, precisely because of this central role.

Mission accomplished, QED.

Employee experience is a fragile undertaking in organizations

It is unfortunate, but that is the way it is, and it is a figure to remember from this 2025 barometer: the 19-point drop in employee experience in SMEs is a true indicator of the fragility of employee experience initiatives.

When the economic climate toughens, it is one of the first budgets to be sacrificed, which speaks volumes about how its impact is perceived by managers.

Another worrying sign is that employee experience initiatives often rely on individuals (HR directors, engaged HR teams) rather than on a robust structure, which reminds me, in another field, of the era of corporate social networks and communities within companies. A convinced executive, a highly motivated and engaged project manager, success, the sponsor and/or project manager is promoted in recognition of their success, and… everything collapses.

This is what I tried to avoid in my own situation by making the employee experience a highly operational approach, integrated into our processes and the way we designed our work, each process, and each workflow.

Finally, the barometer shows that 70% of businesses that practice employee experience do not have a digital EX/QWL solution, which reflects a low level of industrialization.

In any case, without tools, the employee experience remains artisanal and vulnerable to short-term pressures.

The link between employee experience and CSR shows cultural convergence rather than operational causality

Practicing businesses that focus on employee experience perform better in CSR…but here too, I think this correlation reflects cultural consistency rather than a cause-and-effect mechanism.

Businesses that are able to listen to their employees negotiate better with their stakeholders, manage their social risks better, anticipate regulatory changes better, and are more sensitive to issues of sobriety, inclusion, and ethics.

It’s a systemic logic: a business that is attentive to its human capital is often attentive to its overall impact.

It is not employee experience that produces CSR, but managerial maturity that produces both.

What about the impact of AI on employee experience and HR practices?

I expected to see a greater emphasis on AI and its impact on the employee experience, given that there are now numerous use cases, such as the rise of HR co-pilots, the automation of administrative tasks to free up time for more interpersonal tasks, sentiment analysis tools, and HR nudge solutions.

In defense of the barometer, I note that Parlons RH had already produced a study earlier this year on the impact of AI in HR and that it may not have been useful to repeat the findings, especially since the level of adoption seemed relatively low (AI and HR: a revolution searching for direction).

Nevertheless, this topic is crucial for the future, as there is a fear that AI will mechanically reinforce the polarizationalready observed in the barometer between lagging SMEs and over-equipped large businesses. In doing so, SMEs risk being permanently excluded from the employee experience culture due to a lack of tools, skills, and resources, and HR’s perception of the business impact of these initiatives may remain low if HR teams do not have access to the data needed to establish causality.

I would like to take this opportunity to digress slightly and mention a subject that is not so far removed from the topic at hand. I have always felt that while, like any tool, HRIS should contribute to the employee experience (but no more or less than any other tool), I find that its role is completely overrated. In fact, apart from the HR teams who use it on a daily basis, it is completely anecdotal and peripheral for employees, which is why I have focused more on the operational dimension and business tools.

I would also add that although, as Head of People, I was very attached to my HRIS, as a manager, I never found it particularly useful, as it only covered a tiny fraction of my needs while sometimes requiring a significant amount of work on my part (Managers need more than an HRIS). This brings me back to my plea for a management information system that allows managers to correlate various aspects of their practices and HR initiatives with employee performance, and where AI could certainly be put to good use (What vision for a managerial information system?). A tool that would find its place in an employee experience approach by demonstrating the impact of “best practices” on performance.

The barometer therefore shows a very “pre-AI” employee experience approach, whereas the context in 2025 is radically different.

A highly underestimated “pseudo-speech” effect

I find that articulating, as many do, the definition of an employee experience approach based on listening to employees is insufficient and reductive. Of course, I have structured my approach around these practices by constantly asking, “What is preventing you from doing your job as well and performing as well as you would like?”. But the problem with listening to employees is that it is often treated as an end in itself rather than a means to an end.

An interview featured in the barometer clearly points out this bias: the risk is not in listening, but in pretending to listen.

However, the barometer does not tell us much about things such as:

• the response rate to internal barometers,
• the ability to turn feedback into action,
• the integration of middle managers into the loop,
• the credibility of initiatives among employees.

Yet there are major operational risks, such as disengagement if listening is not followed by action, a form of distrust if barometers are too frequent or poorly used, and a saturation effect if feedback is not processed, ultimately leading to the perception of a cosmetic employee experience.

And here again, I come back to my own experience. Of course, we picked up on weak signals through employee “moods,” but the initiatives that really generated enthusiasm and high participation were not there.

As I said, one of the things that was popular was putting “how can we help you do better” at the heart of continuous improvement, which is central to our approach to the employee experience. There were also two other digital tools, one giving them the opportunity to report a good practice or something remarkable they had observed in the field to see if we could learn from it and generalize it, and the other, on the contrary, to point out a notable irritant or malfunction. Not to blame people, but to improve the system (The Problem Isn’t the Employee, It’s the System).

But of course, the key was that everything was escalated to the leadership team with the engagement to provide feedback within two weeks.

Employee experience is not an HR policy but an organizational stance

The barometer inadvertently highlights several key points.

Firstly, it is now clear that employee experience cannot be driven solely by the HR department (HR and Operations: the only viable duo for driving employee experience).

As a logical consequence, it is the result of work design and can be, more broadly, the result of an enterprise design approach, of which it is a methodological pillar (EDGY: a common language to align identity, experience, and operations).

It is therefore largely dependent on operational conditions, work organization, and therefore leadership, which gives meaning to all of this.

The employee experience therefore only becomes effective when:

• managers have the power to act (To manage is to design and Let’s restore the role of the manager),
• processes allow for autonomy (People Centric Operations: adapting work and operations to knowledge workers and Employees must follow the processes. Are you sure?),
• business decisions are consistent with HR promises,
• tools support actual work, not just peripheral tasks.

What the barometer ultimately reveals without explicitly stating it is that a successful employee experience is a result, not a mechanism.

To go beyond a superficial employee experience

If all this has convinced you of the potential of the employee experience as a performance lever and you want to go further with a more “performance-based” approach, it is important to bear in mind that the employee experience is the result of several approaches, whether cumulative or not, and that beyond listening mechanisms and the HR aspect of the subject, there are other areas you can explore.

The employee experience is not limited to tools, surveys, or managerial intentions: it is shaped by the work itself. The disciplines that describe its mechanisms are well known, but rarely integrated in a coherent manner. Ergonomics helps us understand how physical, cognitive, and organizational constraints shape each task. Sociology and occupational psychology shed light on the dynamics of cooperation, mental load, regulation, and empowerment. Organizational design or enterprise design shows how structures, rules, and processes create or destroy fluidity. Internal service design questions the functioning of support functions, their clarity, and their ability to help rather than complicate matters. Finally, operational excellence reveals that the quality of the experience depends as much on removing irritants as on improving practices.

In other words, the employee experience is not a program but a way of designing work and organization. Those who want to use it as a performance lever must therefore broaden the framework, move beyond a strictly HR-focused vision, and accept that the quality of the experience is primarily determined by how work is designed, equipped, and organized on a daily basis.

Bottom Line

The barometer clearly shows that employee experience correlates with performance, but if we read between the lines, a more detailed analysis reveals something else, namely that employee experience is an indicator of overall maturity rather than an isolated lever.

It shows:

• a lack of business culture in the HR function,
• structural fragility in employee experience initiatives,
• growing polarization between SMEs, mid-sized companies, and large businesses,
• a failure to integrate the AI factor,
• a still highly emotional view of the employee experience, with few tools and little industrialization,
• and an inability on the part of HR to demonstrate the economic value of the employee experience in a causal manner.

However, experience shows that the employee experience can create both economic performance and a form of fulfillment, provided that its scope is redefined and the appropriate design approaches are mobilized.

In the meantime, I can only advise you to download this informative report.

To answer your questions…

Image credit: Image generated by artificial intelligence via ChatGPT (OpenAI)