Skip to main content

From employee experience to human experience

Putting meaning back into work

What creates a positive, motivating experience at work? Mainly, it’s the meaning and growth people find in the work itself—and to improve that, the entire organisation has to be involved.

Organisations are investing in many programs to improve life at work, all focused on improving the day-to-day experience workers have. While there is much that can be done to improve work/life balance, research shows that the most important factor of all is the work itself: making work meaningful and giving people a sense of belonging, trust, and relationship. We believe organisations should move beyond thinking about experience at work in terms of perks, rewards, or support, and focus on job fit, job design, and meaning—for all workers across the enterprise.

One of the biggest challenges we identified this year is the need to improve what is often called the “employee experience.” Eighty-four percent of our survey respondents rated this issue important, and 28 percent identified it as one of the three most urgent issues facing their organisation in 2019. It’s hard to question why: MIT research shows that enterprises with a top-quartile employee experience achieve twice the innovation, double the customer satisfaction, and 25 percent higher profits than organisations with a bottom-quartile employee experience.1 Yet as important as it is, only 9 percent of our respondents believed they were very ready to address this issue, making it a massive priority for organisations around the world.

Did you find this useful?

Thanks for your feedback

If you would like to help improve Deloitte.com further, please complete a 3-minute survey