Creating a positive and impactful employee experience (EX) is a tough task, let alone sustaining it throughout periods of economic and market turbulence.

But it’s a task facing many HR leaders globally in 2025, as ongoing geopolitical and social uncertainty is creating anxiety and concern about job security, financial stability and the overall future among employees.

Mercer’s 2025 Employee Experience and Engagement Survey canvassed 1,500 HR professionals globally and found that EX is evolving beyond a simple check-box exercise for organizations, requiring intentional design, effective communication, and capability building.

At the center of this are three key areas of investment focus for HR leaders: aligned strategies built on stable structures, investment in EX skills and capability and data-informed action.

The research also shows challenges to implementing EX fell into three main categories: resources, accountability, and EX team skills.

Respondents said limited resources (37%), leadership support (31%), insufficient budget (30%), measuring the impact of EX initiatives (29%), an inability to change manager behavior (23%) and insufficient skills in EX design (22%).

The tricky job of measuring the impact of employee experience initiatives was further evidenced by the research findings.

Although 85% of respondents stated they were able to obtain actionable insights from EX listening efforts, around one third (30%) also said their organization’s ability to assess effectiveness and justify expenditures, particularly during budget evaluations, was held back by insufficient metrics.

Meanwhile, 86% of HR leaders surveyed said their organization would benefit from combining additional data sources with employee listening data in order to accurately gauge employee sentiment and advocate for continued investment.

HR is ‘best placed’ to lead on EX

Speaking exclusively to UNLEASH, Director of Talent & Transformation at Mercer, Jenny Merry, says that organizations which want to attract, retain and motivate staff can only do so by understanding how they can impact the experience of employees.  

“HR is best placed to do this and is usually an executive team’s first port of call to make positive changes for their employees,” Merry explains.

“Despite this, our global research paints a mixed picture of the state of EX and employee listening.”

Merry highlights that less than half (43%) of HR leaders say they are ‘very satisfied’ with their organization’s employee experience initiatives, while a similar percentage (39%) are ‘very dissatisfied’.

This reflects the challenge HR professionals, like other business areas, have in making a meaningful difference with less resources,” Merry adds.

“Our research shows that even with a sufficient level of leadership sponsorship or corporate support, making progress can still be a challenge.”

However, there are also areas of opportunity which are “proving to be impactful in those organizations that have the greatest satisfaction with their EX initiatives today.”

Ensure EX initiatives are aligned and based on solid foundations

One such area is developing formal structures that underpin, drive and support EX initiatives – a responsibility that the research shows should be assigned to HR but extend beyond the department. 

Mercer found that while nearly nine out of ten (86%) organizations stated that HR “owns and leads the employee listening process and follow-up actions,” teams that consistently collaborate across functions, beyond just HR, to design the EX are “2.5 times more likely to surpass ROI expectations.”

Merry says there were common themes identified among organizations that succeed in driving EX improvements: “Not only did they have support from the executive leadership team, but they also had clearly defined roles for EX shared across the business. 

“They established cross-functional teams with clear, tangible and collective goals, which creates a sense of ownership,” she explains.

However, due to the “broad range” of factors that can impact on an employee’s experience, Merry also highlights that it is “critical to the right people involved” and the “right governance in place for understanding and implementing improvements.”

An important follow-on from this is then being clear about the vision and roadmap for evolving employee experience and being disciplined and intentional about how this is done and communicated.”

Invest in EX capabilities beyond the HR department

It’s no secret that skills have become like a currency in the contemporary workplace and this also extends to HR and managerial capabilities when it comes to shaping employee experience.

Organizations that proactively enhance HR and managerial capabilities with respect to shaping EX are the ones recording success returns on EX investments, Mercer noted, being four times more likely to intentionally invest in EX design capabilities among HR teams.

Merry warns that the “responsibility for EX can’t sit with HR alone” and this “has implications for shifting the skills and capabilities of both HR and other organizational players – such as leaders and managers.”

“For many organizations, work in the EX space means building and maintaining employee listening systems and processes and indeed this is a very important input into creating the experiences that employees expect today,” she details.

“However, HR needs to move beyond being the employee survey administrator and be seen as a facilitator of change.”

In order to achieve this, HR professionals should ensure that all managers are furnished with survey reports to actively facilitate experience redesign where needed.

At the same time, administrative burdens can be reduced with technology, but it is “ important that technology is seen as an enabler and not the driver of any EX program or initiative.” 

Data management remains a critical skill development area – particularly being able to leverage AI and also apply some of the same segmentation skills that marketers use to analyze employee feedback,” Merry says.

She adds that clarity around what is expected of managers and providing the right tools and training is a further aspect of EX capability development. 

“While we can say that ‘people join organizations and leave managers’ we can’t overlook the fact that managers need to be properly equipped to deliver on their people responsibilities,” Merry explains.

“That includes understanding the role they can play in enriching the day-to-day experiences of their team members and how to practically deploy the myriad of policies and procedures that almost certainly exist in their organization.”

Focus on turning data into meaningful change

The third facet that plays a crucial role in shaping EX is the frequency and quality of data collection, Mercer’s research shows.

“It was interesting but sadly not surprising to see that the number one improvement to the employee listening experience is more targeted action as a result of findings,” Merry says.

While two-thirds (67%) of organizations conduct large-scale employee listening surveys annually (35%) or biannually (32%), these efforts were deemed to now be considered little more than “table stakes” the report said.

Merry tells UNLEASH that while much organizational effort is still focused on conducting surveys and data collection, this leaves “little bandwidth for really working on using the insights to drive change.”

The research found that organizations that adopted a more granular and frequent data collection model, such as weekly pulse surveys for real-time data collection, were found to be 2.2 times more likely to report that this investment pays off.

“Organizations need to break away from the survey-action plan-survey vicious cycle and embrace the need for agility and listening to support course correction – i.e. don’t hold off doing your next survey until you are confident that leaders and managers have had enough time to complete their action plans,” Merry concludes.

“Survey to get feedback from employees about how effective those action plans are in improving experience and gather insights on where plans should be adjusted.”