Measuring employee experience: A strategic blueprint for internal communications

Measuring employee experience (EX) is key to improving it. This article lays out the strategies you need to spot what’s working and what isn’t using seven clear areas of EX. It includes starter metrics, examples, and tips to turn feedback into small, steady improvements – plus how the best employee experience tools and modern intranet solutions can help you along the way.

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Measuring employee experience (EX) doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Whether you’re just starting to think about internal comms measurement, looking to refine your approach, or want to understand what analytics modern intranet solutions can capture for you, this article will help you build a framework that demonstrates real business impact. It will also help you take the data that today’s best internal communications tools provide and use it to inform your employee experience strategy.

The stakes have never been higher. Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace report shows that global employee engagement remains stagnant at just 23%, with 62% of employees not engaged. Even more concerning, Gartner research reveals that only 33% of employees say their organizations consistently deliver on promises made to them. When you measure what matters and act on those insights, you’re not just improving communications – you’re directly impacting business performance.

What matters most when measuring employee experience?

The single most important thing to keep in mind when measuring employee experience is that there’s no one-size-fits-all measurement approach that works for every organization.

Before diving into intranet KPIs and dashboards, every EX leader must understand that measurement is deeply contextual. What works brilliantly for a 10,000-person enterprise may fall flat at a 200-person startup – even with the best internal communication tools and modern intranet solutions at their disposal. Your industry, culture, and organizational maturity all play a role in shaping the right approach for you.

The goal isn’t perfection – it’s progress and insight. You’re not trying to build the ultimate measurement system on day one. Instead, you’re trying to understand what’s working, what’s not, and where to focus your efforts next.

Start small and iterate often, choosing a few meaningful metrics from your intranet analytics, testing them, learning from what you discover, and adjusting as you go. Think of measurement as an ongoing conversation with your organization, not a one-time audit.

What employee experience metrics does leadership care about?

The metrics your organization’s leaders care about will vary based on their priorities, so you’ll have to do some detective work to uncover them. To figure out which areas of the business are keeping leaders up at night, try the following:

• Identify your key stakeholders. This includes your C-Suite, senior leaders, and department heads. These are the people who set direction and hold budget authority.
• Review existing strategic documents. Look at OKRs, annual plans, and employee engagement survey results. What themes emerge? What problems are they trying to solve?
• Observe what metrics leaders already track. Are they obsessing over retention rates? Productivity metrics? Engagement scores? Are they already reviewing intranet KPIs (e.g., successful search rate, time‑to‑first‑login, content reach) ? These existing metrics reveal what they value.
• Conduct discovery sessions. Consult with key leaders and influencers across your organization. Ask open-ended questions about their goals, challenges, and how they define success. Listen for recurring themes and pain points – they’ll become the foundation of your measurement strategy.

Once you get insight into what your leaders care about, use it to figure out what to measure. The best internal communication tools and modern intranet solutions provide a variety of metrics related to leaders’ top concerns. These are the employee experience metrics you should track, report on, and work to improve.

7 areas to focus on when measuring employee experience

Employee experience is complex, but it’s not random. Every interaction, from onboarding to recognition, contributes to how employees feel, perform, and stay. That’s why we use the seven EX pillars as a diagnostic framework: they help internal comms teams move beyond surface-level engagement metrics and uncover what truly drives experience across the organization.

These pillars – Communication, Self-Service, Tool Access, Knowledge, Community, Alignment, and Recognition – represent core employee needs. They’re not just categories; they’re lenses through which you can assess friction, identify gaps, and prioritize improvements. Each pillar connects employee expectations with business outcomes, giving you a shared language to collaborate across HR, IT, Legal, and beyond.

By anchoring your measurement strategy in these pillars, you shift from reactive reporting to proactive insight. You’ll be able to ask sharper questions, gather more meaningful data from your intranet analytics, and tell stories that resonate with leadership.

How do you measure employee experience?

Rather than guessing what to measure, use the seven pillars laid out above as a diagnostic tool to systematically uncover priorities across your organization. This will help you understand what to track and how to track it.

To assess these areas of EX, meet with leaders across every function – not just HR and communications. Talk to IT, Legal, Finance, department heads, ERG leaders, project managers, and frontline supervisors. Each brings a unique perspective on what employees need to succeed.

Use the pillars to guide your discovery conversations. For each pillar, ask targeted questions that reveal both current state and aspirations. Document the language leaders use, the metrics they mention, and the problems they’re trying to solve. Then, combine what you’ve learned with intranet analytics and other internal comms data to paint a full picture.

1. Measuring Communication

What it covers: Keeping everyone informed and aligned

Who to talk to: Internal Comms, HR, C-Suite, Frontline Operations

Discovery questions:

• “How do you currently communicate company-wide news and announcements?”
• “Do you feel employees are well-informed about strategic goals?”
• “What communication channels get the best response?”

How to measure employee experience in this area:

• Strategy recall rate in follow-up surveys
• Open enrollment participation rate
• Percentage of frontline workers reached by key communications
• Engagement rate on strategic communications (clicks, comments, shares)
• Intranet KPIs on reach

2. Measuring self-service

What it covers: Empowering employees to find answers

Who to talk to: HR, IT, Legal, Finance

Discovery questions:

• “What are the most common employee questions or requests?”
• “Do you offer self-service options for things like benefits, tech support, or payroll?”
• “Where do employees get stuck when trying to solve problems on their own?”

Internal comms measurement metrics:

• Support ticket volume before and after launching self-service content
• Completion rate of self-service forms (benefits, PTO requests)
• Reduction in repetitive HR/IT tickets
• Compliance rate for mandatory tasks like policy acknowledgments

3. Measuring tool access

What it covers: Removing friction from daily work

Who to talk to: IT, HR Onboarding, Operations

Discovery questions:

• “How do employees access the tools they need?”
• “Are there any access or adoption issues with key systems?”
• “How long does it take new hires to get fully set up?”

Measuring employee experience with tools:

• Survey new hires on ease of tool access during onboarding
• Login frequency and time-on-tool metrics
• Number of support requests related to tool access
• System adoption rate post-onboarding (treat “time‑to‑first‑login” and adoption as core intranet KPIs)

4. Measuring knowledge

What it covers: Making information findable and useful

Who to talk to: HR, Department Heads, Learning & Development

Discovery questions:

• “How do employees find information or subject matter experts?”
• “Is institutional knowledge being captured and shared effectively?”
• “What information do employees repeatedly ask for?”

How to measure:

• Time-to-productivity for new hires
• Percentage of successful searches versus failed or abandoned searches according to intranet KPIs
• Frequency of document reuse across teams
• Knowledge retention scores via quizzes or feedback

5. Measuring community

What it covers: Building connection and belonging

Who to talk to: ERG Leads, Team Managers, Culture and Engagement Leads

Discovery questions:

• “Do employees feel connected to each other and the company?”
• “Are there active communities or collaboration spaces?”
• “How do cross-functional relationships form?”

Measuring internal comms impact on community:

• Percentage of community-generated ideas that are actioned
• Percentage of employees engaging in cross-functional groups
• Peer-to-peer support rate (questions answered by peers vs. admins)
• Retention rate among active community members

6. Measuring alignment

What it covers: Connecting daily work to strategy

Who to talk to: Project Managers, Strategy Leads, Communications

Discovery questions:

• “How do you track progress toward business goals?”
• “Are employees clear on how their work contributes to strategy?”
• “What happens after you announce a new strategic initiative?”

Internal comms measurement for alignment:

• Engagement with strategic communications
• Time between strategy rollout and task adoption
• Project success rates and on-time completion
• Percentage of employees who understand how their work connects to company goals

7. Measuring recognition

What it covers: Celebrating contributions and values

Who to talk to: HR, Team Leads, Culture Champions

Discovery questions:

• “How do you currently recognize employee contributions?”
• “Is recognition visible and tied to company values?”
• “Do employees feel appreciated for their work?”

How to measure employee experience with recognition:

• Correlation between recognition frequency and performance review scores
• Employee perception of recognition impact via surveys
• Correlation between recognition and retention rates
• Percentage of employees receiving peer recognition

What is the best way to share employee experience findings?

Now that you’ve gathered rich qualitative insights from across your organization, it’s time to turn those conversations into quantifiable indicators that are easy to understand and relate to. The following tips will ensure your findings can be understood by even the busiest stakeholders and collaborators:

• Choose a balanced mix of metrics. Combine quantitative data (intranet analytics on traffic, reach, and engagement; email open rates; survey scores) with qualitative insights (sentiment analysis, feedback themes). Numbers tell you what’s happening; stories tell you why.
• Map each metric to a business priority. Every metric you track should connect to either a business goal or a specific communications objective. If you can’t explain why a metric matters, don’t track it.
• Keep it lean to start. Focus on three to five core metrics initially. You can always add complexity later, but starting with too many metrics leads to paralysis, not insight.

How do you share employee experience progress with stakeholders and leaders?

The best internal communication tools have a variety of data you can extract, but raw numbers won’t inspire action unless you put them to use. Your job is to transform data into narratives that demonstrate the strategic value of internal communications.

• Create a simple dashboard or monthly snapshot. Make your data visible and accessible with a small set of intranet KPIs tied to the pillars of the employee experience. Leaders should be able to understand your impact at a glance.
• Use storytelling to show impact. Instead of “Email open rate: 67%,” try “After we redesigned our strategy announcements, engagement rose by 24%, and strategy recall improved among frontline workers by 31%.”
• Share both wins and lessons learned. Transparency builds credibility. When something doesn’t work, share what you learned and how you’re adjusting.

Sample monthly reporting snapshot for measuring employee experience:

Metric category	Metric name	Value	Trend	Narrative insight
Communication	Strategy recall rate	68%	↑ +12%	After launching the new strategy video series, recall improved significantly among employees at all levels.
Self-service	Ticket deflection rate	42%	→ Stable	Self-service content is holding steady; next step is optimizing search functionality.
Tool access	Time-to-first-login	1.2 days	↓ -0.5 days	Improved onboarding communications helped reduce tool access delays for new hires.
Knowledge	Successful search rate	76%	↑ +8%	Improved tagging and content structure boosted findability across the intranet.
Community	Cross-functional engagement	58%	↑ +15%	New ERG campaigns drove broader participation across departments.
Alignment	Strategy adoption lag	5 days	↓ -3 days	Faster uptake after clearer messaging and manager toolkits were introduced.
Recognition	Peer recognition rate	72%	↑ +9%	Monthly spotlight campaigns increased peer-to-peer praise and visibility.

Real-world example: King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust reported that after launching its award-winning intranet – including a personalised onboarding homepage shown for two weeks after a new starter joins – and enabling mobile access, they saw smoother onboarding, fewer support requests, and a 75% positive rating in a pulse survey.

How do you improve the way you measure employee experience?

Measurement isn’t a one-time project – it’s an ongoing practice that evolves with your organization. Here are a few ways to improve your EX measurement strategy over time:

• Revisit your metrics quarterly or biannually. Business priorities shift, new challenges emerge, and what mattered six months ago may not be relevant today. Build regular review cycles into your workflow.
• Add complexity only when you have capacity and clarity. It’s tempting to track everything, but more metrics don’t automatically equal better insights. Only expand your measurement framework when you’ve mastered the basics and have a clear reason for the addition.
• Celebrate progress, not perfection. Every improvement – no matter how small – represents real impact on employee experience. Share those wins widely.

The difference between static EX reporting and dynamic EX reporting

The challenge with traditional measurement approaches is that annual employee engagement surveys and quarterly reports provide valuable snapshots, but they can’t capture the dynamic nature of the modern employee experience.

The limitations of static reporting include:

• Annual surveys reveal problems six to twelve months too late
• Quarterly reports can’t respond to real-time challenges
• One-time measurements miss trends and patterns

Modern internal comms measurement requires continuous listening. Consider implementing tools and approaches that enable ongoing feedback:

• Pulse surveys allow you to take the temperature of specific initiatives or topics quickly, gathering employee feedback when it’s most relevant rather than waiting for an annual cycle.
• Real-time signals from your communication platforms – such as engagement patterns, sentiment shifts, and information-seeking behavior – provide early warning signs of emerging issues or opportunities.
• Always-on feedback channels like digital suggestion boxes, monthly temperature checks, or integrated communication platform analytics help you stay connected to the employee experience as it unfolds.

The most effective measurement strategies combine periodic deep-dive assessments with continuous listening mechanisms. This approach allows you to be both strategic and responsive – understanding long-term trends while remaining agile enough to address immediate concerns.

Invest in modern intranet solutions with built‑in intranet analytics and pulse surveys – the best internal communication tools combine listening and intranet KPIs. These tools shouldn’t create more work – they should make it easier to gather, analyze, and act on insights that improve employee experience every day.

Start measuring what matters

Measuring employee experience doesn’t require a massive budget, a team of data scientists, or perfect conditions. It requires curiosity about what matters to your people, alignment with what matters to your business, and commitment to continuous improvement.

Start with one pillar. Choose three metrics. Build your first dashboard. Tell your first story about impact.

The journey from gut-feel communications to data-informed strategy begins with a single step – and that step can happen today.

Frequently asked questions about measuring employee experience