Executives consider — and rightly so — customer experience a critical factor for a company’s success, but employee experience (EX) is also an important element. Improving EX is a key goal for C-Suite executives, according to a report.

The reasons for this focus ranged from enhanced employee satisfaction, improved productivity, more speed in business, higher retention and improved automation, said NTT’s recent 2023 Global Employee Experience Trends Report. It delved into the impact workplace trends like hybrid work and artificial intelligence (AI) have on employee experience strategies and business performance. The IT services provider’s report underscored that EX focused on technologies that can enable and empower employees and drive efficiency, including through collaboration and mobility tools.

The EX impact

EX improvements do impact net profits, said 94% of the CEOs who participated in the survey for the report. While 81% said their organisations have a well-defined EX strategy, 44% said it was fully aligned with their business needs. Only 42% mentioned that their technology strategy was aligned with their EX strategy.

Given the importance of hybrid work on EX impact, 57% reported that they were working in remote/hybrid mode in 2023 and 43% were working from offices.

In terms of technology, 95% of the companies felt that cloud solutions were important enablers of higher productivity, improved legal compliance, security as well as workplace flexibility. This also necessitated more investment in security: 94% of the organisations said hybrid work has made them improve data security investments, while 46%  said they have the right cybersecurity controls to enable employees to work from wherever they wanted. Other tech investments have been in application, software development, mobile device security and support.

Improving EX has also had an impact on customer experience (CX). As many as 96% of the companies said EX and CX strategies must be aligned for enterprise growth.