How to bridge the employee experience gap

by Tim Lotherington and Rebecca Reffell | Published on July 9th, 2025

Discover where your organization’s employee expectations diverge from reality and why this gap is undermining engagement, productivity, and retention. You’ll uncover actionable insights into critical areas such as leadership visibility, career development, purpose alignment, and wellbeing.

This session will go beyond the headlines, equipping you with practical strategies to bridge the gap, elevate your employee experience, and drive a culture where people and business thrive together.

Don’t miss this opportunity to turn global research into real-world impact.

Introduction
Hello and thank you for joining. We’ll get started now.

Welcome to our webinar on Bridging the Employee Experience Gap. I’m Tim Lotherington, Managing Partner in Employee Experience here at Havas People.

Hi, I’m Rebecca Reffell, Head of Strategy and Consulting.

About Havas People
Before we dive in, a bit about Havas People. Some of you may already know us, others perhaps less so. We’re a global, full-service talent communications agency, supporting clients across the entire employee lifecycle from talent attraction and employer branding to employee communications and EX engagement. We’re part of the global Havas network.

We’ll talk for around 25 minutes and leave 5 minutes at the end for questions. Feel free to drop them in the Teams chat or use the Q&A feature.

How can businesses create less uncertainty for their employees?

Let’s start with this image someone screaming into a phone. She’s overwhelmed by today’s nonstop negative news. The old term “VUCA” (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) barely covers the chaos we face.

This constant uncertainty has a direct effect on businesses and people causing burnout, absenteeism, and disengagement. And on top of that, many of you are managing tight budgets, shifting workforce plans, and ongoing organisational change all of which impact the employee experience.

So why are we here? Because dialling up your employee experience strategy can help you boost engagement, retain top talent, and reduce costs.

We may not have all the answers today, but we hope to spark some valuable ideas.

What are employees saying?
Let’s begin by identifying where to prioritise time and investment. Step one: understand what both businesses and people need to thrive.

We explored the employee experience at scale. First, a bit of shared language: EX (Employee Experience) includes every interaction someone has throughout their employee journey, from onboarding to exit. That includes big things like career development, manager relationships, and company values and small moments like tech issues or getting a coffee.

Get employee experience right and you unlock huge value: engaged employees are 21% more profitable, 12% more productive, and generate 37% more sales.

To dig deeper, we surveyed 5,500+ employees across the UK, US, India, Australia, and Singapore. They work in sectors like technology, pharma, FMCG, financial services, and engineering.

Our methodology included conversational AI to collect over 38,000 qualitative insights. We also interviewed employees and EX leaders to complement our findings.

A standout stat? 45% of employees plan to look for a new job in the next 12 months even though 73% report being satisfied in their current one. That signals a critical retention challenge.

What matters most to people? Unsurprisingly, pay and benefits lead. But close behind are recognition, appreciation, and a healthy work-life balance. People are asking: “Am I paid fairly? Am I valued? Is this working for my life?”

Surprisingly, meaningful purpose, while important, ranked lower when people had to choose between competing priorities.

We also found a worrying recognition gap: 84% of executives feel appreciated but only 45% of frontline employees feel the same. That’s a huge disconnect.

What are the biggest opportunities to improve performance?
So what are employees actually getting versus what they need? This graph shows the disconnect.

The bottom-right quadrant is key: these are employee experience factors that matter most to employees, but where current performance is lowest. That’s where the biggest opportunities lie.

Let’s zoom into three areas:

1. Where and when we work
2. Mental and physical well-being
3. Effective, supportive management

Let’s start with hybrid work and flexibility. 60% of employees are dissatisfied with their company’s hybrid work policy. Across sectors, satisfaction with work-life balance and the workplace environment remains under 50%.

To improve:

• Co-create hybrid policies that meet both business and employee needs
• Identify pain points and act on quick wins
• Be transparent about decisions, even if they’re unpopular
• Ensure your physical workplace supports productivity and collaboration

On to well-being. Companies are investing more than ever, but the results aren’t always there. One in five dreads Monday. 60% feel constant stress. Yet those who feel supported in well-being are far more likely to report job satisfaction and employee engagement.

So:

• Find out which well-being offerings are most valued and accessible
• Simplify access to resources like mental health support
• Keep up regular communication well-being isn’t a one-off campaign

Now to manager effectiveness. 74% of employees say people leave managers, not companies. But many managers are less engaged than ever, being asked to do more with less.

When we asked managers what they need most, the answers were clear:

• More transparent communication from their leaders
• Clearer articulation of company strategy and purpose

To support them:

• Create structured, engaging communication plans for managers
• Make leadership comms more inspiring and less jargon-heavy
• Offer tools and training to help managers communicate effectively

Beyond these three gaps, we found other opportunities. One of them: new joiners.

Our data shows that employees in their first year are less satisfied than longer-tenured staff 58% vs. 74%. That’s unexpected. It suggests a mismatch between employer brand promises and the onboarding experience.

To fix this:

• Ensure EVP (Employer Value Proposition) matches the reality
• Reinvent onboarding into an engaging, longer-term experience
• Find new ways to connect with new joiners early

What’s the best way to communicate change?
Now let’s talk about change.

Interestingly, 64% of employees feel optimistic about organisational change. But positivity drops as seniority decreases. People trust their managers most to communicate change 41% versus 21% who trust senior leaders.

To improve:

• Involve managers early in change planning
• Encourage transparency people value honesty
• Offer practical training and tools to help navigate change, especially around AI adoption

AI is already part of daily life for many employees. Over 50% use it weekly, 18% daily. But 1 in 5 say their company doesn’t communicate about it at all.

So:

• Communicate your AI strategy
• Provide practical, role-specific AI training
• Help managers lead AI-related conversations and changes

Finally, let’s look at why people leave. Aside from better job offers, the top reason was lack of career advancement 26% said this was their reason for quitting.

68% said strong career development opportunities were a major reason to stay.

So:

• Clarify career paths
• Encourage career mobility across teams or geographies
• Make sure employees are aware of internal opportunities

Top 3 takeaways to improve Employee Experience
To wrap up, here are our top three takeaways:

1. Build a strong data story
   Listen to people but also gather and connect data to drive informed employee experience decisions.
2. Join the dots
   From talent attraction to employee engagement, everyone owns EX. Ensure that what you promise aligns with what you deliver.
3. Prioritise meaningful, transparent communication
   Employees crave honest, straightforward messaging especially in uncertain times.

Conclusion
Thank you for joining us. Don’t forget to download our full report, The Employee Experience Gap, packed with actionable insights. And if you’d like to chat more, we’d love to hear from you. We’re always happy to talk Employee Experience.