The Ultimate Guide to

Building an Employee
Experience Program
Step-by-step instructions from leaders who have
firsthand experience launching and advancing
programs that drive results
Introduction

Employee experience is what separates organizations that

succeed at attracting, cultivating, and retaining top talent
"
Many managers make decisions that
apart from those that suffer from high turnover and poor have huge financial implications
morale, productivity, and customer satisfaction.
about employee experience every
Capturing the voice of the employee, keeping a real-time
pulse of the sentiment of the entire organization, uncovering day, but they make these decisions
what's working and where there's real friction, prioritizing without data, instead relying on
key actions that can be taken to optimize the employee
experience, communicating these across the organization, and intuition, anecdotes, and their own
monitoring progress are all fundamental to effective employee
listening and employee experience programs — and taking
personal experiences and biases.
these critical steps is more important than ever at this moment That's why we need to measure the
of major industry shakeups and mass employee departures.
employee experience, to change this
This, when we're seeing that 50% of employees who left
their last employer did so without a new job lined up. When paradigm and truly enable data-
about 60% of employees report feeling burned out and
emotionally drained at their last employer. When 70% of
driven decision-making across the
workers who left their job due to the pandemic say they organization.
realized they wanted a better work-life balance.1
Melissa Arronte
After all, collecting employee feedback is strongly linked to
PhD, Medallia Global Employee Experience Practice
employee satisfaction, engagement, and experience.
Lead, the former Head of People Analytics at Liberty
Mutual Insurance

https://www.medallia.com/resource/insights-into-the-great-resignation/
1

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The Link Between Employee Listening &
Employee Satisfaction, Engagement,
and Experience

• Most employees (68%) whose employers do not

collect employee feedback are dissatisfied with their
employer, versus less than half (48%) of employees
who have a way to share feedback with their company.1

• Most (56%) employees whose employers do not

collect employee feedback say they would NOT
recommend their company as a great place to work,
compared with less than one-third (32%) of employees
who have a way to share feedback with their company.1

It's clear that investing in employee experience needs to be

a top business priority.

If you're ready to step up your employee experience

and engagement efforts, you have everything you need
right here in this guide packed with expert insights from
Medallia's employee experience experts who have firsthand
experience launching and advancing employee experience
programs across industries who will walk you through:

• How to make the case for building an employee

experience program for your organization

• The exact steps to take to launch employee listening

initiatives and build an effective employee
experience program

• Unlocking untapped employee experience insights

to meet your team where they are and optimize key
touchpoints of the employee journey

• What it takes to become an employee

experience leader

https://www.medallia.com/resource/insights-into-the-great-resignation/
1

©2022 medallia.com 3
Key Employee Experience Definitions

01. Always-on surveys An open channel that is easily 06. Employee listening The simple process of finding out
accessible for employees to share top-of-mind what employees need and care about, using a variety
feedback in the moment, whenever they like. of methods to capture employee feedback, including
surveys and analyzing employee signals from other data
02. Direct feedback or signals How employees share sources.
their opinion about you when directly solicited via
annual and pulse surveys, idea factories, social media 07. Engagement survey Used to collect qualitative
conversations, and crowdsourcing. and quantitative data to measure and analyze how
employees feel and track their overall commitment to
03. Employee engagement The level of enthusiasm and their role and the organization.
dedication employees feel towards their job, often
reflected in their individual performance. Employee 08. Indirect feedback or signals Data sources that show
engagement is not the same as employee experience. what and how employees are feeling about your
Rather, employee engagement is an outcome of organization that aren’t expressly designed to solicit/
employee experience. gather feedback (e.g. chatbot transcripts, helpdesk
tickets, performance reviews, etc.).
04. Employee experience (EX) Encapsulates the entire
journey an employee has at an organization: every 09. Signals How employees act and what they say about
moment, interaction, touch point and transaction from the company, collected from direct and indirect
interview to exit. Employee experience is not only about experience data points (e.g. surveys, transactions, chats,
what companies do; it’s about how companies make voice calls, website visits, PTO patterns, performance
employees feel. reviews, and more).

05. Employee journey and employee lifecycle Two terms

that are used to describe all of the key phases and
milestones staff members experience throughout their Click here for a complete glossary
time with a given employer, including the recruiting
process, receiving an offer, onboarding, training,
performance reviews, professional development,
promotions, and more.

©2022 medallia.com 4
Meet the Experts

Melissa Arronte, PhD, Global Employee

Diane Daum, Senior EX Advisor
Experience Practice Lead

The lead designer of Medallia’s current employee experience An industrial/organizational psychology professional with a passion
strategy and vision, Arronte brings over 20 years of industry for applying research, measurement, and statistical techniques
experience with people leadership roles in the pharmaceutical to help organizations solve problems and leverage opportunities,
and financial services industries. She started her career at Willis Daum has led EX consulting engagements in a variety of industries,
Towers Watson, consulting in executive compensation and including manufacturing, transportation, insurance, retail, fast
organization surveys. Most recently, she was the Head of People food, technology, and utilities. Her experience also includes
Analytics at Liberty Mutual Insurance for nine years, the Head of conducting analytics/research projects linking employee attitude
People Analytics at Citizens Bank for three years, and the Head data to organizational outcome metrics such as customer service,
of Customer Research at Citizens Bank for two years. Arronte turnover, financial results, and safety. Daum has held internal
received her Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial and Labor consulting roles in HR analytics at Wells Fargo, and in customer
Relations from Cornell University and her Ph.D. in Industrial satisfaction and loyalty at TIAA. Daum holds a PhD in Industrial and
Relations from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Organizational Psychology from Bowling Green State University.

Elaine Demers, Senior Manager of Employee

Nina Bianchi, Solutions Principal, Public Sector Experience & Engagement and Organizational
Psychology Graduate Student
Prior to joining Medallia, Bianchi served as Chief of People and Culture Demers has been with Medallia for over seven years, where she
at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration during the peak pandemic, leads Medallia’s comprehensive employee listening program
in partnership with the U.S. General Services Administration IT that collects feedback across more than 20 touchpoints in the
Modernization Centers of Excellence. As a White House Presidential employee journey. In addition to listening, she is responsible for
Innovation Fellow with the Biden Cancer Moonshot at the National analyzing and ensuring Medallia takes action on feedback from
Cancer Institute, she worked with diverse stakeholders, from employees by telling data-driven stories and recommending
Microsoft to the National Cancer Institute’s Contact Center, to psychology-backed solutions to tackling pervasive employee issues.
usher in the future of more collaborative work experiences to drive
personalized patient experiences. She brings 20+ years of experience
in coaching diverse leaders to take compassionate action and
Karen Iacobucci, SVP, People Operations &
redesign work experiences to improve outcomes for all.
Technology, People and Culture

Iacobucci leads Medallia’s internal employee experience program.

Grace Black, Group Director, Employee
Over the last 20 years, she has worked in the high tech industry,
Experience Advisory transforming technology and operations using design thinking
methodologies and long-range strategic planning. She received
Black joined Medallia in 2019 and leads Medallia’s team of intensive training in sociology, user-centered design, and
EX Advisors. She has 20+ years of experience with a strong experience transformation during her five-year tenure at Apple as
background in consulting and designing employee feedback the Senior Program Manager of HR Technology Transformation.
programs, helping clients interpret results and drive action at Prior to Medallia, Iacobucci served as the Senior Director of People
all levels of the organization. Living the principle that people Operations and Technology at The RealReal and as the Director
strategy drives business results, Black helps national and global of HR Technology Strategy & Operations at Salesforce. She has
brands navigate the complexity of the workforce and use data- a BS in Management of Information Systems from Florida State
driven insights to execute people strategies that add value to the University, College of Business.
organization, its customers, and its employees.

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Meet the Experts

Lorena Kurtjian Hernandez, Senior Director, David Ostberg, PhD, Solutions Principal,
Solutions Principal, Travel, Hospitality, and Employee Experience
Restaurants
Prior to Medallia, Kurtjian Hernandez was the Director of Customer An industrial/organizational psychologist with over 10 years of
Experience Transformation at United Airlines, where she led specialization in employee experience and organizational culture,
the Inflight Experience strategy. In her 20+ years at United, she Ostberg launched his I/O career building artificial intelligence-
held various leadership roles within the CX Strategy & Analytics based hiring models at Kronos and Evolv On-Demand to help
organization, as well as serving as a CX and EX practitioner by global organizations better predict employee performance
defining and driving innovation, customer, and employee initiatives and retention outcomes. Prior to Medallia, he was Director of
built on customer and employee feedback. Kurtjian Hernandez has People Science & Performance at Culture Amp. In his 20+ years
an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, developing HR technology solutions, Ostberg has worked closely
specializing in customer strategy and econometrics and statistics. with hundreds of organizations, focusing on implementing
tailored, data-driven solutions to elevate employee experience,
performance, and organizational culture. He received both a Ph.D.
in Systems Science and a master’s in Industrial-Organizational
Toni Land, MBA, BSN, CPXP and Head of
Psychology from Portland State University.
Clinical Healthcare Experience

Land has spent more than 30 years in healthcare across a number Jodi Searl, JD, PhD, Vice President, Industry
of settings ranging from nursing, home care, medical practice, Solutions and Global Head of Automotive
performance improvement, education, and management. This Practice
time allowed her to serve and impact many areas of patient, family,
and employee experience, enabling direct engagement with the Searl brings a wealth of industry experience to her role where she
many complex areas of healthcare to implement and sustain specializes in the complex auto, powersports, and recreation vertical
change. Prior to joining Medallia, she was Chief Patient Experience for all OEM brands and manufacturing with an OE to dealer to
& Quality Officer at the Medical Center Health System and Director customer business model. Prior to joining Medallia, she was the Head
of Patient Experience at Prisma Health. Land has her bachelor’s of Global Dealer Training for the Harley-Davidson Motor Company,
in Nursing, master’s in Business Administration, and Patient where she led the strategic transformation and operationalization of
Experience Certification through the Beryl Institute. customer experience for the global dealer network.

Sarah Mocker, Senior EX Advisor Scott Spayd, EX Senior Technical Manager

Mocker has 18 years of experience advising on the design and A Medallia-certified senior marketing, operations, and business
implementation of employee experience programs for 100+ development leader, Spayd brings over 15 years of experience in
organizations, and consulting on a range of people & culture fields, employee experience (HR), customer experience, people analytics,
including culture change; diversity & inclusion; engagement & and technology to his role as a EX Senior Technical Manager at
retention; program governance and strategy; and total rewards Medallia, where he helps clients adopt Medallia’s technologies in
optimization. She is SHRM-CP certified, and holds an M.A. in support of their employee and customer experience programs. He
International Economic Policy from American University and a B.A. holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Iowa.
in International Politics and Honors in Science, Technology and
Society (Phi Beta Kappa) from Penn State.

©2022 medallia.com 6
Part I: Making the Case

Why Every Organization Needs an

"
To keep your employees, especially
Employee Experience Program your best people, your organization
needs to understand what they're
The work of launching an employee experience program
begins with executive buy-in. thinking, what they're feeling, what
To achieve true success, you'll need the full weight of your
sort of experiences they're having,
leadership team endorsing your employee experience and especially understand the
initiatives. These stakeholders must be philosophically
aligned with the importance and value of listening to your disparity of experiences. If you want
people, according to Ostberg.
to strengthen your employee
For those champions of employee listening who want relationships, you have to have open
to make the case for launching an employee experience
program, here are some ideas for framing the conversation. communication. You have to know
what they care about, what they're
How to Make the Case for Your Employee
excited about, and how they feel,
Experience Program
and that requires feedback.
01. Align your employee experience program to your
organization's mission and vision David Ostberg
PhD, Medallia Solutions Principal of Employee
"You will be most successful at gaining buy-in at the top Experience, an industrial/organizational
when you're able to align your employee experience psychologist with over 10 years of specialization in
program to your company's mission, vision, and values," employee experience and organizational culture
says Toni Land, MBA, BSN, CPXP and Head of Healthcare
Experience, who has spent 30 years in healthcare working
on patient, family, and employee experience initiatives.

©2022 medallia.com 7
 When pitching your initiative, remind stakeholders that "There are also plenty of studies out there that show the
without employees — and without engaged employees — it's links between employee experience and key business
impossible to bring your organization's mission to life, and outcomes, so there's a good base of research to draw
that's why understanding what drives employee satisfaction without having to necessarily do your own," says Diane
and retention is critical to the success of organizations. Daum, Senior EX Advisor.

02. Do the math — calculate the cost of employee

turnover and the ROI of improving retention See Special Report: Employee Experience Excellence:
Key Practices that Differentiate Leaders from Laggards
Employee disengagement and turnover are expensive for
organizations — from the financial impact of recruiting
and training needs to the potential adverse effects on 03. Share the top benefits of investing in employee experience
performance and the customer experience, which can
add up to multiple millions of dollars, says Elaine Demers, • Gaining insight into the employee experience. "You'll
Senior Manager of Employee Experience & Engagement understand what's happening to employees, uncover
at Medallia, where she leads a comprehensive employee obstacles, and discover efficiencies and challenges,"
listening program, collecting feedback across more than 20 says Arronte. "You'll also find ways to problem solve
touchpoints in the employee journey. together as a team to make things more effective and
let your people have the impact they want to have."
"These types of back-of-the-napkin calculations are really easy
to estimate and can give your organization a sense of how poor • Creating an organization of folks who are committed
employee experience is costing your business," she explains. to the success of your business. "The more engaged
your employees are, the more they're going to go the
You can also invest in a more official analysis, working extra mile for your customers, whether internal or
with an insights or people analytics partner to quantify the external," says Grace Black, Group Director, Employee
impact that the lack of employee experience is having on Experience Advisory, who has 20+ years of experience
your business. Technology platforms like Medallia’s can also in designing employee feedback programs.
be used to help businesses understand the financial impact
of their employee experience efforts. • Driving employee retention, talent recruitment, and
customer outcomes. "Across industries, we're seeing
"Showing the money is really helpful when convincing people leave due to burnout and other reasons, so finding
business leaders that this is something that they need to ways to drive employee engagement is key to retaining
invest in," says Demers. employees and attracting new team members," says
Land. "Employees want to work in great organizations
Several of Medallia's experts added that demonstrating the where they feel valued and that they're having quality
ROI of improving retention can be an effective approach for experiences," says Nina Bianchi, who served as Chief
winning over stakeholders. You can do that by: of People and Culture at the U. S. Food and Drug
Administration during the onset of the pandemic, in
• Determining the cost savings of retaining employees or partnership with the U. S. General Services Administration
the financial toll of recruiting and onboarding new hires IT Modernization Centers of Excellence. "Talent attraction
and retention is extremely challenging, so if employee
• Demonstrating the potential upside of reducing experience is not a priority for an organization, they risk
employee turnover by X% losing great talent and not serving their customers well."

©2022 medallia.com 8
 • Unlocking new opportunities for innovation.
"Employees doing the work every day have great ideas
on how to do the work better, how to do it smarter, and
Stakeholder Talking Points
how to do it more efficiently," says Black.

• Being able to more effectively deliver your We’ll have an easier time
recruiting and retaining
organization's mission. "Whether it be meeting Head of HR or employees because
patient needs, meeting customer needs, or building a talent acquisition we’ll understand how to
product, you can't do that without your employees. If
empower and engage them
you're not meeting their needs, they're going to either
not do a very good job or they're going to leave the
organization," says Sarah Mocker, Senior EX Advisor.
We'll have fewer quality
• Solving problems for customers. "If employees don't Head of operations issues, because our people
have the resources or permission from management will be more engaged

to solve customer problems, then that eventually filters

down to poor customer satisfaction scores," says Daum.
Head of customer We'll be able to serve our
• Bridging the communication gap for remote teams. experience customers better
"Now is the time for organizations to reinvigorate their
employee experience programs and do things differently
than they did before the pandemic," says Scott Spayd, EX
Our employees will tell
Senior Technical Manager. "Employee listening initiatives
everyone how great our
may be one of the few opportunities that remote Head of marketing
company is in support of
employees may have to speak about their experiences, our brand message
because they don't come into the office very often, or
they don't have a direct line to their manager's manager
or have the face time to communicate with leaders."

04. Tailor how you communicate the benefits of employee 05. Connect your employee listening program and
experience and listening programs to the individual employee experience goals to your customer listening
stakeholder — showing the "what's in it for me?" program and customer experience goals

Understand what's most important for the individual From Mocker's experience working on EX initiatives with
leader and tie your messaging back to why achieving Medallia's customers, one the best use cases she's seen
gains in employee experience benefits their efforts, says for making the case for investing in employee experience
Black. Here are talking points she offers to connect with programs is tying together employee listening insights with
your stakeholders. customer listening insight to demonstrate all the ways the
employee journey and customer journey are connected.

"When I've seen it done well, the program really reinforces

how EX and CX are linked and allows for really good buy-in to
organizations looking to launch an EX program," says Mocker.

©2022 medallia.com 9
Part II: Laying the Groundwork

Planning an Effective Employee More likely than not, there's someone at your organization
that's ready to start listening to your employees, says Demers.
Experience Program "From there, start to show proof of concept and some quick
wins, and that will catch the interest of other leaders. You'll
"In order for us to truly be successful and have a high-
be able to quickly get other executives on board."
performing organization, we have to co-create our
processes and our experiences in the voice of our own Once leaders see the impact of employee experience, you'll
people, and the only way to do that is to listen, take begin to get that top-down support that you need, she adds.
the feedback, and operationalize that back into the
organizational ecosystem. The reality is that employees
know what they need to be successful, and when they have 02. Form a cross-functional employee experience team
what they need to be successful, the company will in turn with a dedicated project lead
be successful. When everyone comes to work every day
and feels empowered, supported, and has an equitable Successful teams usually have one central lead or a small
voice in your environment, that can have ripple effects team of people leading the program who will be held
across all of your most important business indicators." — accountable for its success. Usually this lead is someone
Karen Iacobucci, SVP, People Operations & Technology, from within HR and people and culture organizations with a
People and Culture background in something like industrial and organizational
psychology or change management. This lead typically
01. Find your executive champion works alongside a steering committee made up of additional
collaborators from across the organization. Optimizing
Ideally this would be your CEO, but at the very least one employee experience is the responsibility of every leader
other C-level executive should be on board, such as the throughout the company.
Chief People Officer.
"That way it's not just HR taking action to fix HR problems,
"This person has an immediate responsibility to align and but people from across the organization are involved in
get other folks interested in and on board for the work that's using the input to make improvements in their own lines of
going to come, because a lot of employee experiences are business," says Daum.
interwoven across the organization," says Bianchi.

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EX leaders create a dedicated
employee experience function
Among companies with top employee experience
programs, nearly all (93%) indicate that they
have a dedicated employee experience team,
compared to only 59% of EX laggards.2

"Ultimately, employee experience is the job of

every employee," says Demers. "In particular,
leaders and managers play an even more critical
role in the organization to ensure that employees
within their team or within their part of the
organization feel heard."

"We really encourage leaders at all levels of the

organization to be involved in listening to their
people, digging into the insights that surveys
and employee signals shed light on in terms of
what's working really well, understanding what
their people are telling them, taking action based
on challenges the organization is facing, and
celebrating wins," says Ostberg.

https://www.medallia.com/resource/mi-ex-research-rpt-2021/
2

©2022 medallia.com 11
03. Spend time defining your why, what, how, and who —
your objectives, stakeholders, and other key inputs —
and establishing your governance process

For example, if your organization has been working hard

recruiting and onboarding people, you may want to learn
what you can do to improve retention and make sure new
hires feel connected to your organization's culture and
values and their peers, according to Ostberg. Others may
want to explore whether there are gaps in diversity, inclusion,
and belonging for different groups of people.

"When you think about embarking on an employee

experience journey, it can be overwhelming — it can
feel like you have to boil the ocean," says Iacobucci.

"When launching our internal employee experience program

at Medallia, we grounded ourselves by thinking through our
vision and the outcomes that we wanted to drive."

"Creating goals and governance structure — deciding what

will be part of your program and what won't be, who makes
decisions, and so forth, is a helpful starting point," says Daum.

04. Get the right technology set up to collect and analyze

employee feedback

"What organizations need is the ability to collect feedback

and ideas from employees in real time, at any point during
their workday. It has to be convenient, a tool they can access
directly from the palm of their hand. It needs to be quick
and easy for staff to submit their thoughts in the middle
of working on a manufacturing line, loading a truck in the
warehouse, or serving customers in a restaurant, grocery
store, or retail environment. And it needs to provide essential
feedback and ideas to managers quickly and easily so that
they can see obstacles workers are facing and solve these
challenges in the moment, enabling employees to not only
provide feedback, but offer suggestions for how to solve
these challenges themselves," says Arronte.

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Questions to Ask and Answer

Guide your program, the questions you ask in your • How are you going to take action on your employee
employee feedback surveys, and the types of data you listening data once you collect it?
collect and analyze. • How does your organization want to see the data once
it's collected?
WHY?
• Why are you launching an employee experience program? "Companies that do this really well reflect on how they'll act
Define the mission and vision of your program. on the data, who is going to be responsible for acting on
it, what the timeline for action will look like, and how the
WHAT? team is going to communicate actions taken as a result of
employee feedback back to the organization," Black says.
• What's your north star?
• What are your goals and objectives?
• What are you trying to understand, improve, and
accomplish — what business problems are you trying
to solve?
• What are the metrics that matter to you?
Metric Mixup
• What are your key employee touchpoints?
• What questions are you going to ask?
"A customer approached us to work on an
• What data are you trying to collect?
employee listening survey they already had in place
• What data do you already have? — they told us they didn't want to change their
• What is going to be your organization's process for survey, so we launched with what they had," says
tracking the data, analyzing it, taking action on the Black. "Then, when we got ready to do the post-
learnings, and measuring your progress once you begin survey analysis, they said, 'We're really focusing on
your employee listening initiatives — using surveys and empowerment and we want to know how we're
other forms of data collection to gather insights? doing on empowerment.'

• What training will you offer managers to interpret and

But when we looked at the survey they'd created,
make use of the data?
they didn't have one single question about
empowerment. That's why it's important to align
WHO?
your program to the business outcomes that
• Who are your employee experience program's key matter. Use this stage of launching your program to
stakeholders and what information do they need? ask yourselves: 'What is our north star, where do we
want to go?' And work from that point backward."
HOW?
• How are you currently capturing data and insights?
• How are you going to involve your employees in the process?

©2022 medallia.com 13
Key Offerings to Look for in an Employee
Listening & Experience Management
Technology Partner & Platform

AI-powered insights

• Delivers actionable insights across all levels of

the organization
• Determines the top themes for organizations
• Uses machine learning to generate employee
experience predictions

Data aggregation and deep analysis

• Structured and unstructured data (open-ended text

and comments)
• Qualitative and quantitative data

Integrations with other platforms, such as HRIS, ATS,

onboarding, and training platforms to capture indirect
employee signals

• PTO usage
• Performance reviews
• Website activity
• Use of internal systems and tools
• Helpdesk tickets
• Chatbot transcripts
• Operational facilities data

©2022 medallia.com 14
Measuring the impact of employee engagement, Automated feedback collection triggers to capture insights
satisfaction, and experience on important KPIs in real time, such as prompts that appear after employee
• Innovation submit a help ticket

• Productivity
Support for a variety of survey cadences
• Efficiency
• Always-on, anytime feedback via pulse surveys (to
• Customer experience
empower employees)
• Intent to stay
• Annual benchmarking (engagement surveys)
• Retention
• Triggered surveys in the flow of employee work in
• Employee performance response to direct employee actions
• PTO usage • Milestone surveys tied to key moments in the employee
journey (onboarding, learning and development, exit, etc.)
• Uses machine learning to generate employee
Pre-built, science-backed employee listening surveys for
experience predictions
collecting direct feedback about core topics
• Onboarding
Automated alerts that notify stakeholders when
• Learning and development
employee experience KPIs change, such as when there
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion are signs of increased burnout or disengagement
• Well-being and burnout
• Employee engagement (for benchmarking purposes) Training and coaching for employees, to ensure leaders
and people managers understand how to interpret results
• Hybrid work
and what they're supposed to do with the employee
• Ad-hoc topics insights they have access to
• Employee exits (to learn why people leave)

Options for employees to share feedback within the

flow of their everyday work
• Email
• Web
• In-app
• QR codes/kiosks
• Messaging (Slack, SMS, WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, etc.)
• Connected devices
• Video
• CRM (Salesforce, etc.)
• Help desk

©2022 medallia.com 15
Part III: Getting Started

Launching Your Employee • What you're going to do with the data you collect
• Who will have access to the data
Experience Program • How you'll take action based on employee feedback

"It's really important to acknowledge and accept that there's • How managers will be held accountable to making sure
a need for change management at all levels, because that they're doing the right things so the organization
employee listening is a new muscle, and with that it's OK can improve the employee experience for everyone
if it takes longer to roll out. People often want to come in • How you're going to share your company's successes
and launch an employee experience program and get this and areas of opportunities and how you'll follow up as
immediate gratification, and you can get quick wins, but it things change
really is a long game.
• Whether the feedback you collect will be anonymous
or if employees have the option to have their name
Manage stakeholder expectations, but also make sure that
associated with the feedback they provide
you're focusing on the incremental wins, so people do feel
successful. Focus on one or two things that you need to do
"Make sure that your organization's communication team is
right now to start making incremental changes, build that
engaged in the efforts from the start and has a really good
muscle, practice, get comfortable, and then tackle bigger
strong plan for year-round communications about your
initiatives," says Iacobucci.
employee experience program," says Black. "The goal of any
communications plan is to ensure employees feel heard and
Communicate your employee experience plan with the
they know what to expect."
whole organization. Set realistic expectations about your
efforts. Let your people know:
"It's important to acknowledge that while the organization
will be collecting feedback on a variety of different topics,
• What you're doing to invest in employee listening and
the initial efforts will be focusing on a few key actions that
experience — and why
can be taken at the organizational, department, and team
• What they can do to take part levels," says Ostberg.
• How they can share feedback
• What the timelines are for the major components of
the program

©2022 medallia.com 16
 Ask the Right Questions
"Balance what you as the organization want to
Get a clear understanding of your current state. Determine
know and what your employees want to tell you,"
a baseline assessment of your employee experience using
says Daum.
an annual employee engagement survey to see how your
employees feel across a variety of core dimensions that drive
• Ask questions that are important to
employee engagement.
your organization

"You need to know how things look now before looking • Include some open-ended questions for
into what to do in the future," says Land. "Make sure your employees to share what they think is
assessment is representative of the organization across important for you to know about
all disciplines, ethnicities, educational levels, and gender
identities." "It's frustrating for employees to take a survey
— especially if they're frustrated about things at
These results will reveal key drivers of employee work at the time — and they get to the end of it
engagement — what you're doing well and areas of without any opportunity to say what's really on
opportunity — and you can use this data to advance your their mind," she adds.
future employee experience priorities and efforts.

Select the top areas where you plan to take action and
share your learnings with the organization. Pick a few
key themes and priorities to start. Identify what people
care about the most, what's having the greatest positive
impact, what's having the greatest negative impact, and
plan a timeline of action. Create specific goals for the
organization as a whole and for individual departments,
suggests Iacobucci.

Communicate your plans with the organization, sharing the

two to three areas where you plan to make changes based
on your learnings or areas where you plan to gather more
insights by conducting follow-up feedback, suggests Ostberg.

©2022 medallia.com 17
 Make Meaning of Insights &
Translate Them to Action: How We
"Your team won't expect you to take action on every single Took Action at Medallia
thing they share feedback about, but they do want to feel
heard," says Land. "As leaders, the best thing you can do is Once you begin your efforts, you're going to have
to be transparent about the suggestions you've received and a wealth of employee experience insights and data
report back on what you plan to take action on (and what at your fingertips. "The last thing you want to do
you don't) and why." is leave your executives with mountains of data to
comb through and figure out what to do, so it's
Medallia studied what happens when organizations lack really important to simplify it as best as you can
formal employee experience programs and the impact on into concrete learnings and recommendations,"
frontline employees 2: says Demers.

28% 25%
Internally at Medallia, she and her team identified
two key strengths and two key areas of opportunity
for each area of the organization to focus on. From
Only 28% of frontline Only 25% of frontline workers
there, they held insights-to-action consultations with
workers whose companies whose companies ask for
DON'T ask for feedback feedback but DON'T take action every member of the executive team to get them
would recommend the based on the feedback would aligned with these priority areas. Each executive was
company as a great place recommend the company as a responsible for creating an action plan. Once leaders
to work great place to work began taking action and saw scores improve, they
were able to recognize the ROI of their efforts and

80%
become more committed to taking action.

80% of workers whose

companies DO ask for
employee feedback and then
DO act on that feedback
recommend the company as
a great place to work

https://www.medallia.com/resource/mi-ex-research-rpt-2021/
2

©2022 medallia.com 18
Part IV: Making Improvements

Your Employee Experience "Like customers, employees leave signals everywhere, and
companies that are not picking up these signals are looking
Program: How to Progress at feedback in isolated views," says Kurtjian Hernandez.

"Employee experience leaders listen to deeply understand "Employee experience leaders capture feedback from
their employees' needs. In doing so, they move beyond multiple data sources. They not only look at direct data
the traditional approach of capturing feedback solely sources, like surveys, but they also collect indirect data, such
through quarterly or annual engagement surveys. Employee as calls to the employee service center."
experience leaders are not prescriptive about when they
want to hear from employees. They're also not prescriptive Among companies with high-performing employee
about what specific subjects or topics they want to collect experience programs2:
feedback on. Instead, they engage employees in the
moment. They make it easy to submit feedback on anything
and at any time. They don't shy away from asking difficult
questions." — Lorena Kurtjian Hernandez, Senior Director, 43% 43%
Solutions Principal, Travel, Hospitality, and Restaurants. collect and analyze monitor community
text-based feedback channels
Bring together your data sources to supplement your
survey insights. Determine what other sorts of data your
organization has that can be used to understand not only
what people are feeling, but what they're actually doing to
supplement your survey-based listening efforts. You may
31% 40%
find that some of your best performers are now skipping use crowdsourcing analyze contact
meetings or spending more time communicating with their software to collect further center calls
peers and less time connecting with their managers, or that ideas and insights from
some groups of employees are accessing the learning and employees
development platforms more frequently or submitting help
tickets more often.
"Combining these multiple sources of feedback provides
companies with a holistic view of what's on employees'
minds," says Kurtjian Hernandez.
https://www.medallia.com/resource/mi-ex-research-rpt-2021/
2

©2022 medallia.com 19
Consider what happens when companies fail to
diversify their data sets, says Kurtjian Hernandez. Those
organizations risk not picking up on clear signals of
employee distress. For instance, when an employee has to
call into the benefits service center multiple times to get
their family member added to the company's benefit plan.
Or the negative sentiment an employee feels after being
passed up for a promotion.

"It's really hard to uncover these issues unless companies

have everything tied together in one place and are able to
decipher it all into insights that they can then take action
on," she adds.

Common signals organizations track include:

Interactions employees have with the organization

Service Slack / Email Systems

Tickets Usage & Tools

Anything that impacts employees’ work environment, goals,

and ways of working

Org Org Manager / Team

Culture Redesign Changes

Data that provides perspective into employee expectations,

behaviors, habits, and feelings

Absences Meeting Benefits

& Breaks Attendance Usage

©2022 medallia.com 20
Understanding employee signals Case Study: How the Automotive Industry Is Harnessing
Employee Signals to Fight Turnover
Signals are what your employees say about your company
through direct and indirect experience data points, such Manufacturers are creating B2B2C employee experience
as surveys, transactions, chats, voice calls, website visits, and listening programs in tandem with their dealership
PTO patterns, performance reviews, and more. partners to capture insights of the dealerships' employees—
who are not the brand's own workers, but have a direct
impact on their customer experience—to capture employee
Direct signals signals to understand why certain dealerships are able
to retain people and see what factors drive retention,
What your employees say about your company, as directly whether that's pay, bonuses, flexible schedules, PTO
solicited via annual and pulse surveys, idea factories, social offered, working conditions, training and development
media conversations, and crowdsourcing. opportunities, or culture, particularly for high-turnover roles
within the industry.

"When manufacturers are able to capture those signals

Idea Social Media Crowdsourcing from those employees along the way, they're able to
Factories Conversations
figure out the ideal circumstances that drive employee
and customer experiences and offer the right recruitment,
onboarding, continuing education, and environments to
Indirect signals drive engagement," says Jodi Searl, JD, PhD, Vice President
Industry Solutions and Global Head of Automotive Practice.
Data that indicates how employees feel about your Prior to joining Medallia, she was the Head of Global Dealer
organization, collected via channels that aren’t Training for the Harley-Davidson Motor Company.
expressly designed for gathering feedback, such as chatbot
transcripts, helpdesk tickets, performance
reviews, and more.

Chatbot Helpdesk Performance

Transcripts Tickets Reviews

©2022 medallia.com 21
 Employee Experience
Self-Assessment
Evaluate your efforts. Track how the KPIs you established
when defining the why of your employee experience • Are your survey scores improving around the
program have changed since introducing your initial baseline specific dimensions or actions that you're
annual engagement survey and implementing changes. trying to improve on?
• What actions are being taken and what
The process of employee listening & optimizing the impact are those having?
employee experience
• What are you doing well, and what are your
areas of opportunity?

"Get feedback from employees about what

Listening Understanding Taking Testing & Iterating
Action Evaluating actions managers or leaders have taken since
the employee experience program launched,"
Look for changes in measures like: says Ostberg. "One of the biggest complaints
we hear from employees is, 'We gave all this
• Retention rate
feedback. We heard that there were going to be
• Productivity action taken or improvements in these areas, and
• Performance outcomes then we never heard anything about it again.'
When that happens, we actually see scores go
• PTO usage
down because people had expectations that
• Customer experience and customer service scores weren't met and that leads to even greater
• Sales disappointment."

• How employees are using tools

"Once your team is successful in solving some
• ROI key problems, the next piece is to ensure these
problems stay solved," says Bianchi. "If you're not
"Change doesn't happen overnight," says Demers. "We've building trust and proving that you're listening
seen from our own data that it usually takes about a full six and taking action, the program will fizzle
months to a year of implementing an action for you to see and people will become cynical, so it's really
those changes in your feedback, but it is really critical to important to be very strategic about what you're
continuously listen, understand, take action, and then test to asking, how you're taking action and then, how
see what's working and what's not." you scale that over time."

©2022 medallia.com 22
Move beyond your annual engagement survey to USDA Pulse
ongoing employee listening and build a holistic employee
experience strategy to help guide the direction of your During the onset of the pandemic, the USDA sent a quick
program as you advance your efforts. pulse survey to their employees asking simple questions like
the following, with a goal of a 40% response rate, or almost
Typically organizations branch out beyond annual 40,000 employees:
engagement surveys after the first year of launching an
employee listening program. Apply the data and learnings • “What do you need for optimal success in working
from your first year's efforts to drive your strategy going from home?”
forward. Here are some common employee listening
• “How does teleworking impact your well-being?”
methods organizations start using as they grow their program.
Bianchi says they found out that some employees needed
• A three-stage, always-on onboarding survey to
technology upgrades, while others needed adjustments to
identify what sorts of experiences new hires are
their schedules.
having at the end of week one, month one, and the
first three months.
"The basics of asking people what they need, and then
leaders truly being held accountable to making some of
• Anytime, always-on listening: A quick, three-question
those changes happen is simple but can be extremely
survey with a couple of open-ended questions that
impactful," she explains.
encourages employees to share whatever is on their
minds, using AI-backed text analytics to identify the top
The agency ultimately received responses from 54% of
topics employees are talking about and evaluate the
employees before the survey closed two weeks after it started.
overall sentiment to pinpoint drivers of engagement,
friction, or stress. (For instance, you may start by asking, • Digital feedback: Companies can ask for employee
"How do you feel about the company?" "How would feedback right where employees are engaging, with the
you describe your relationship with your manager and organization's intranet, service desk, or HR platform to
leaders?" says Iacobucci.) measure employee satisfaction with these tools

• Pulse surveys: Surveys built around topics like diversity Come up with a quarterly or biannual plan laying out what
and inclusion, or well-being and burnout. you want to do, but adopt an agile mindset.

"There's a lot of value in being agile in your approach and

changing course if need be based on the feedback that
employees are providing or based on big events that may
be happening in the world that shift the way everyone's
working," says Ostberg.

©2022 medallia.com 23
Determine your employee listening collection and employee feedback sharing cadence and democratize access to the insights
you uncover. "Establish a regular cadence of collecting feedback from your team members and ensure transparency of that data by
reporting it back to the team on an ongoing basis," says Land. "This can be as often as weekly — whatever makes the most sense for
your organization."

At Medallia, Demers and her team have democratized access to their employee experience insights by creating self-service insights that
anyone can access independently.

Don't shy away from asking employees about difficult topics, but make sure employees feel safe sharing feedback. When we asked
companies with employee experience programs about the topics they cover in their employee experience surveys, we found that EX
leaders were much more likely to ask their employees about rapidly changing and sensitive topics.2

Figure 1

Leaders Laggards

62% vs 61% 28% vs 21% 52% vs 31% 31% vs 18%

Training Processes & policies impacting Diversity & Inclusion Job change or recognization
Small differences in
customer interactions
54% vs 52% “traditional” topics 40% vs 17%
54% vs 38%
Career development 39% vs 33% Workplace services or amenities
Compensation & benefits
32% vs 37%
Technology & IT support 64% vs 48%
Onboarding
Big differences in Health & wellness 39% vs 26%
rapidly changing &
52% vs 54% sensitive topics 25% vs 13% Interviewing & hiring process
49% vs 56% Workplace environment & safety Personal needs or life events
Team & Manager
Interactions

At the same time, we also found that EX leaders were much more likely to agree (3.37 out of 4) when compared with EX laggards (2.06
out of 4) that they provide their employees with an environment in which they feel secure enough to be truthful in what information they
provide about the company.

Give your employees the chance to share identifiable feedback, if they want to. Employee experience is evolving to become
personalized at the 1:1 level.

"We've started to move away from fully anonymized feedback," says Demers of Medallia's internal employee experience program. "We're
starting to make more and more touch points identifiable, or at least give team members the option to be identifiable, if they want to
share their name and be contacted after they give their feedback. What that enables us to do is have our center of excellence team
respond directly to that employee about their feedback so that employee feels heard and so that we can internally resolve that problem
or that issue for that employee."

https://www.medallia.com/resource/mi-ex-research-rpt-2021/
2

©2022 medallia.com 24
Bring EX + CX data together. See how employee
experience impacts customer experience and vice versa.

"Employee behavior is customer experience, and if

employees aren't having exceptional, high-quality
experiences themselves as employees, then the likelihood
of them delivering great customer experiences is very low,"
says Bianchi.

Companies that are not focusing on employee experience

are not going to evolve and improve their customer
experiences, and are at a great risk of becoming extinct,
she adds.

Develop a continuous response strategy to hold your

organization accountable to ensuring ongoing progress.
Over time, your process of sharing feedback and taking
action will become a continuous improvement cycle
throughout the year, says Land. Doing this will empower
you to:

• Hold the organization accountable to listening to your

employees and improving the employee experience
• Build employee trust
• Demonstrate results
• Ensure transparency across the company

Create a predictive analytics framework. "Once you have

enough data from your employee experience program
and you're collecting and analyzing these insights on a
quarterly basis or more frequently, you'll be able to take
advantage of predictive analytics, using your employee
employee feedback to predict drivers of KPIs like
retention," says Iacobucci.

©2022 medallia.com 25
Ready to Launch Your EX Program?
We're here to help you unleash your organization's full employee experience potential.

Our team of in-house employee experience experts is made up of leading professionals with deep real-world expertise across industries.

Reach out to our experts today to discuss how you can launch your own program.

About Medallia

Medallia is the pioneer and market leader in customer, employee, citizen, and patient experience. As the No. 1 enterprise experience
platform, Medallia Experience Cloud is the experience system of record that makes all other applications customer and employee
aware. The platform captures billions of experience signals across interactions including all voice, video, digital, IoT, social media,
and corporate-messaging tools. Medallia uses proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to automatically
reveal predictive insights that drive powerful business actions and outcomes. Medallia customers reduce churn, turn detractors into
promoters and buyers, create in-the-moment cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, and drive revenue-impacting business decisions,
providing clear and potent returns on investment. For more information visit www.medallia.com

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