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How Can You Measure Returns On Employee Experience?
Article written by Kate Williams
Product Marketing Manager at SurveySparrow
13 min read
23 February 2026
Best Of
Article written by Kate Williams
Product Marketing Manager at SurveySparrow
13 min read
23 February 2026
Looking to measure the returns on employee experience?
We often hear that employees are the most important asset in a company. We know that keeping your employees happy can greatly affect your business profits.
It holds power to make or break your organizational growth. But, when it comes to investing in employees, companies tend to ignore it the most.
And the main reason behind this is, only a few companies see employee experience as an urgent investment. They’re not aware of the benefits of employee experience, or they don’t know how to measure the returns on employee experience.
Investing in employees’ experience is probably the best decision you can make for the future of your company. The impacts of employee experience are enormous, and we should never ignore it. That’s why from Google’s pet projects to lego’s AFOL, many popular companies are introducing new programs for their people.
However, businesses may find it hard to measure the returns on employee experience. That’s why we make it easy for you by exploring the ins and outs of ROX. So, read on to know how you can calculate employee experience for the success of your company.
We are quite familiar with the term, ROI or returns on investment. When it comes to measuring the benefits of a particular cost-related investment, there’s no effective metric available then return on investment (ROI). But have you heard the term ROX?
ROX or returns on experience is a metric that inspects your company to measure different aspects that have a direct impact on your company, such as employee experience. Now employee experience is one of the most popular topics in today’s world. Organizations that think about their employees and invest in increasing their experience have better organizational culture.
ROI or return on investment determines success by focusing on the monetary investment and looking across your company’s overall profits. However, modern businesses understand that it’s not fair to judge a company’s success based on its financial aspects. It’s vital to measure the experience you create for your employees and customers, even if you don’t get any immediate returns by enhancing the overall experience.
Returns on employee experience mean having the proper employees’ experience management strategy to improve their employee journey. That means you have to be more focused on implementing an employee engagement plan in your company. Companies with high employee experience have 142% higher employer Net Promoter Score, 28% higher productivity, 37% lower turnover rates, and 59% higher job satisfaction. Here’s an employee engagement survey to boost employee pulse..
To create similar employee satisfaction or employee engagement surveys, you can create a free account on SurveySparrow.
By measuring returns on employee experience, you can access control over the relationship your employees have with your company and understand the experience you offer. Here’s how you can measure return employee experience to gain long term success.
Measuring the employee experience returns is all about determining the experience you provide that drive results. You can’t measure returns on employee experience with NPS or surveys. Gather insights about your employees’ engagement, work performance, and satisfaction to calculate the ROX. You can use both ROX and ROI to form a more controlled and better experience for your company’s success.
In this post-pandemic era, providing a good experience and work environment to employees has become more essential than ever. Gradually, companies are learning how to calculate returns on employee experience and invest more effort in enhancing employee engagement.
Before the pandemic, remote work was a dream for many of us. However, the post-covid world has adopted the remote work culture as a necessity, and we can say that it is here to stay for the long game. Also, remote work comes with many benefits like saving time in travel, work at your own pace, and reduction in cost.
However, remote work is not all summer and sweet! According to Forbes, 40% of people have faced mental exhaustion from attending video calls while working remotely. Another report by Buffer in 2019 showed that 19% of employees agreed that loneliness is the biggest challenge while working from home. That’s why companies should measure their employee engagement, culture, and problems, to provide better employee experience digitally and calculate the returns accordingly.
Investing in employee experience will surely give profitable returns in the future because your employees’ mental health has become a priority now. A recent study by SHRM shows that nearly 41% of employees in the US feel burnt out from work, and the other 23% said they feel depressed. This report is proof that the pandemic is taking a massive toll on employees health and wellbeing. And this is another reason for organizations to focus on improving their employee experience.
So keeping this in mind, we can say that the need for employee experience has become more crucial than ever. And investing effort to improve the overall experience can result in tangible profits in the future. Now how can you make sure you’re providing a great experience and keeping your employees engaged during these tough times? The answer is by measuring the returns on employee experience! How? Well, let’s get on that topic below:
Measuring ROI is a popular task for brands that helps to calculate the profits of their investment. In contrast, returns on experience deal with more wide aspects and come with different influencing factors. Returns of employee experience focus on your employee satisfaction, engagement and the benefits of their experience. You can easily measure your company’s returns on employee experience with this simple formula:
ROX(%)= Net value of benefits to experience / cost of investment X 100
In The Consumer Insight Survey, 2019, PwC made a model including five factors for measuring the returns on experience. With the help of these five elements’ h, you can create a framework to understand what experiences you provide to your employees and what can expect in return on these experiences. With the help of this information, you can decide what changes you can make in your organization to improve employee engagement and increase overall profits. Here are the five factors as described by the PwC:
Here we’ll give you an example to understand how to measure Returns on employee experience effectively:
Let’s say your company invested $60k in a survey tool to know about your employees’ needs and enhance employee experience. Now you can measure the returns of this investment by looking at the employee satisfaction and turnover rates. Now suppose, this new investment helped to reduce the employee turnover rates by 10% and saved $50k.
You can measure the increased value of employee satisfaction by measuring your employees’ past performance and satisfaction rates. For this example, let’s say your investment helped to increase ESAT(employee satisfaction) scores by one point. That means you measured your employees’ previous work performance against ESAT scores to know that one point of employee satisfaction scores is equal to $85k more revenue. And now you can apply the ROX formula: ROX= ($50k + $85k) / $60k x 100= 225. That means, according to our example, your returns on employee experience is 225%.
Now you know everything about returns on employee experience and how you can use that for your profits. But, before measuring the returns, you must be aware of the experience you provide to your employees. If your company is new in the game of measuring the employee experience, then here are some key metrics you can use-
Data collection is one of the most popular metrics to gather data to gain rich insights about your employees. 94% of businesses reported that data and analytics are crucial for their business growth. Collecting data doesn’t mean only learning basic information about employees like age, gender, race. If you want to get proper returns on employee experience, then you should collect data about in-depth information, such as:
You can collect employee data holistically, and use it to measure their performance, identify their growth pattern. If you use your employee data well, your employees will be much productive and happier. For instance, Google conducts a survey program called Googlegeist to gain from their employees.
Engaged companies earn 2.5x more revenues than companies with low engagement. If you want to get better returns on employee experience, you have to put more focus on improving employee engagement in your company. And the best metric to track your employees’ work engagement and loyalty is the eNPS or Employee Net Promoter Score. With employee net promoter score, you can decode your employees’ needs and feedback during their employee journey to improve the organizational culture. From gathering reviews from employees to analyzing the results, eNPS have the power to segment you, employees, easily.
Employee net promoter score also helps you lower the turnover rates. It lets you know about the bottlenecks of employees’ work-life, job roles, and more. You can pinpoint their problems and concerns immediately with an eNPS score.
Employee pulse surveys are slowly becoming the talk of the town. It’s an amazing tool to understand the biggest asset in your company, your employees. Employee pulse surveys are crisp and specific. You can conduct weekly, biweekly, or monthly surveys to take a look at your workplace culture. Pulse surveys are short and crisp in nature; that’s why they gain better responses than traditional surveys.
The best part about employee pulse surveys is receiving real-time feedback. With real-time feedback, you can take the first action to improve your overall employee experience. SurveySparrow’s online survey software is one such tool that is designed to craft beautiful personalized surveys. With this software, you can share, integrate, and analyze the survey results and enjoy a clutter-free survey taking experience. From the time your employee onboards in the organization to the time they leave the organization, you can expect 40% more response rates with SurveySparrow’s online survey tool.
So, these are some vital metrics you can use to measure employee engagement and calculate the returns on employee experience. If you’re still not sure whether you should measure ROX or not? Then below, we’ve mentioned some more factors to convince you about its importance.
The right way to measure employee experience returns is to invest in a proper employee experience plan beforehand. And look for the benefits you can get from it. Here are some returns or benefits you can get from investing in employees experience:
Employee turnover can cost a lot to your company. High turnover rates are expensive, and according to the catalyst, by 2030, the US will lose nearly $430 billion because of low talent retention. In fact, in 2019, the US’s national turnover rate was 36.4%, while in 2018 it was 27%.
Improving the overall employee experience lets you engage with your employees more directly. By conducting surveys, you can take feedback about their onboarding journey. Ask them whether they are happy with your organization or not. Are you able to provide them with a proper training and benefits program? These questions will help you to learn about them and reduce the turnover rates accordingly. This is probably one of the best returns you can expect from investing in employee experience.
One of the most crucial returns on employee experience is increased profitability. We will back up this point by giving you some awesome employee experience examples. For instance, in 2000, famous company Campbell’s Soup invested in improving their employee experience and increased the stock price by 30%, where others lost their stocks by 10%. Another great example is the tech company Nvidia. The people-focused company put the focus on strengthening their work culture and boosted their stock price of approximately $33.
The above-mentioned examples are clear proof of the credibility of employee experience. When you invest in employee experience and make your workforce productive, it will directly influence your company’s profits.
You already know the importance of customer satisfaction and how critical it is for the growth of an organization. But, customer satisfaction has a close connection with employee satisfaction. When your employees are happy with their work, satisfied with their roles and responsibilities, they help to make your customers happy.
For example, Hilton hotels are famous for serving their customers. The real reason behind this is their investment in employees. In 2018, the hotel upgraded its cafeterias, locker rooms, and employee benefits, to offer a better experience. This helped them to get steady growth and recognition in the market.
Increased productivity is another result of a great employee experience. Productivity is probably the most easily measured metric to understand employee engagement. But most companies fail to get a good return on their investment. Because they invest for short term programs rather than long term programs like employee experience.
When your employees are engaged in their work and feel happy to work, their productivity will increase equally. Again, a great employee experience means better customer service, work engagement, and profits. So, it’s definitely a must to measure the returns on employee experience and invest for long term employee benefit programs.
The modern world has changed the way businesses used to interact with their employees or customers. Today’s employees care more about their work-life balance than getting a promotion. Customers care more about building relationships with a brand than the product. And to gain success in today’s business world, you have to focus more on providing a better experience than selling your product.
That’s why it’s vital to invest in improving the employee experience and measure its returns. It comes with immense benefits for enhancing the growth of an organization. When you know how to measure the returns on employee experience, you can invest your effort in the right aspects. You can highlight the areas where you need new investments, new technology, training programs, or loyalty programs to increase profits.
If your company is still holding you back from improving the employee experience, this guide will hopefully help you convince them. With the right employee experience plan, your company can overcome any challenges effectively.
Thousands of brands trust SurveySparrow to turn feedback into growth. Try it free today!
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