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Do you have the right environment to achieve business success?
Do you have the right talent to achieve business success?
Do you know which part of your employees’ journey is responsible for the high turnover, dissatisfaction, or satisfaction?
Answer these questions honestly. If you answer ‘yes,’ then ask yourself, ' How do you know?’
Very few senior HR or business leaders can answer these questions with a ‘yes’ or be able to explain how they know and that’s a massive problem.
If you prefer listening to reading here is the podcast version.
Employee experience design answers these questions and more. The pioneers have proven EX works. The results aren’t just nice to have—they’re impossible to ignore. The question is, why are you still sitting on the sidelines? Others are making money through EX design while you are trying to cost-save yourself into success or while fiddling with the engagement surveys that did nothing for you in the past two decades. It is maybe time to change the approach.
Employee Experience Design is not new. Progressive organisations have been running with it for a while with fantastic financial and satisfaction results. As you can see Airbnb started it in 2016. Today, brands like ING, Philippines Airlines, or NatWest have changed their HR approach by applying the EX principle.
Let me take you back to 2016. Airbnb wasn’t just revolutionizing travel; they were flipping the script on how companies treat their employees. Mark Levy, their Global Head of Employee Experience at the time, had this crazy idea: What if everything that makes employees successful and happy at work falls under one roof? So, they merged talent, recruiting, and company culture into a single “Employee Experience” department.
From day one—scratch that—from the interview stage, candidates were screened to see if their personal values aligned with Airbnb’s core ones. The result? A 32% jump in employee satisfaction and a new benchmark for what it meant to work somewhere truly innovative.
Now fast forward to today. Airbnb isn’t the only one playing the EX game. NatWest and ING are showing us that employee experience isn’t just warm and fuzzy—it’s cold, hard business sense.
The NatWest Transformation
Picture this: It’s 2023/24, and NatWest realizes they’re wasting thousands of hours—literally. Employees are spending too much time trying to solve HR issues, pinging emails back and forth, and waiting for answers that should’ve been instant.
So, they streamlined their HR processesusing the EX principles. By the end of the year, they saved 385,000 employee hours—that’s nearly 44 years’ worth of work! And they’re just getting started. By 2025, that number will double.
Oh, and those pesky HR queries? Resolved correctly on the first try 64% of the time now—reaching 80% in areas like benefits. Imagine what it feels like as an employee to actually get your problems solved without jumping through hoops.
ING’s €8 Million Realization
Now, ING. They had a revelation during their EX redesign: their onboarding process was a mess. Sure, new hires showed up on day one, but what followed was 116,000 hours of idle time—hours where employees sat around unsure of what to do. In financial terms, that’s €8 million in wasted potential.
And the kicker? 61% of new hires left the onboarding process feeling underwhelmed and, frankly, disempowered. That feeling trickled into their jobs and their perception of the company.
But when ING redesigned its onboarding with an EX mindset, everything changed. Employee satisfaction with onboarding shot up by 24%, and managers felt way more prepared to welcome their new team members, bumping their confidence scores from 5 to 8.
What’s the Big Deal About EX?
You might be thinking, “Okay, cool story, but why should I care?” Here’s why:
Jacob Morgan, author of The Employee Experience Advantage, dug into the data and found that companies heavily investing in EX are:
4x more profitable
2x faster at generating revenue
Recognized 11.5x more often as Best Places to Work on Glassdoor
Featured 28x more often in Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list
Want to talk about efficiency? These companies are 25% smaller than their competitors but pack way more punch in terms of productivity and innovation.
Why You Should Act Now
So, here we are in 2025. The pioneers have proven EX works. The results aren’t just nice to have—they’re impossible to ignore. The question is, why are you still sitting on the sidelines?
Whether it’s saving millions in wasted time like ING, solving HR headaches like NatWest, or rethinking culture like Airbnb, the evidence is crystal clear: investing in employee experience pays off in ways that matter. EX is about creating a work environment that drives business success. Why are we so against it?
The best part? You don’t have to figure this out alone. We help organizations just like yours make EX a reality, and I’d love to help you do the same. Let’s make 2025 the year your company becomes the place everyone wants to work.
Ready to chat?
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