The employee experience: exploring the relationship between employee experience engagement strategies and employee appraisals of the company

Abstract

This study explored Morgan’s (2017) employee experience, an engagement strategy with multiple variables in the cultural environment, physical environment, and technological environment. Research was conducted through quantitative content analysis by examining employee experience variables that companies have currently implemented and an analysis of employee sentiments and external communication behaviors towards the organization as a reflection of impacts of the engagement strategies. Internal employee engagement initiatives reflected in the CSR reports and websites of the 2022 top Fortune 100 companies (Forbes, 2022) and the companies’ corresponding Glassdoor reviews were analyzed. Employee engagement is fundamental to organizational success as it promotes motivation, productivity, and efficiency (Maslach & Leiter, 2008; Meskelis, 2017; Kahn, 1990; Kahn, 1992; Gruman & Saks, 2014). However, many companies still lack successful engagement efforts in spite of the empirical research of organizational benefits of having an engaged workforce. The findings of this study indicated that a majority of the companies actively participate in many of the employee experience engagement initiatives as reflected in their CSR reporting and corporate website. However, employee communication behavior revealed that employees are not successfully experiencing a majority of their company’s CSR employee engagement efforts. Therefore, the companies are externally sharing their employee engagement efforts, but the development and implementation of these engagement initiatives are often subpar internally.