5 Ways to improve employee experience in 2025

While the indicators of a positive employee experience have largely trended upward globally over the last twelve months, it’s been a mixed year for businesses across Asia Pacific.

Businesses in Hong Kong, Japan, and New Zealand all made noticeable EX improvements across the board in 2024, according to the sixth annual Employee Experience Trends report from Qualtrics. But it was a different story for organisations in Singapore, the Philippines, India, and Australia, who often saw their EX indicators slide or remain stable.

For every HR and business leader, this annual EX scorecard serves as an important and valuable reminder of the strategic importance of these programs and initiatives, as well as a guide for what they need to do to drive greater or renewed success and impact in 2025.

Looking to the next 12 months, the advice for leaders is - at face value - simple:

Cut the workplace chaos that’s become endemic in recent years by focusing on making it simple for people to get the job done. 

Diving deeper into more than 14,000 responses from workers in Asia, the Qualtrics study highlights five impactful ways to improve employee experience in 2025:

2025’s hottest workplace perk: cut the chaos

It’s often said the only constant of business is change. The problem is, after years of relentless change most workers have now reached breaking point. Whether it’s having to adapt to fully in-office models overnight, getting to grips with new workplace tech, or dealing with the uncertainty of layoffs, bosses are increasingly burdening their teams with complexity. And this is having an adverse effect on performance.

Right now, four in ten employees in Asia feel under pressure to increase productivity at work. The greatest driver of this pressure is the pace of change being experienced. This productivity pressure is adversely impacting employee contributions to the business, with those feeling under the pump often less engaged, less likely to stay, and reporting lower levels of well-being.

With productivity pressure unlikely to go away in 2025 given the current economic outlook, businesses need to find a way to urgently and meaningfully address it without destroying their culture.

The secret to driving productivity is knowing what workers need to be successful at work - and for a number of years now some of the top drivers of employee engagement have been where cultures and processes empower employees to adapt to changing customer needs and where there’s a focus on continually improving how work gets done.

Harness the enthusiasm, drive, and optimism of younger workers

It’s time to end the scapegoating of young employees for workplace woes. These mindsets are crushing the optimism and fresh thinking younger workers bring to the workplace and ultimately benefit no one. Especially because the reality is this group is often a business’ most engaged, driven, and optimistic.

Yes, younger workers have the lowest intent to stay of any demographic in the workforce. However, rather than bemoan this, leaders should look to understand why this is the case and what they can do to get the most out of good talent while they are in the business. Central to the latter is a focus on ways to nurture growth and creativity, support career growth and development, and establish a more resilient and prepared workforce and workplace.

Improve the candidate and exit experience

In 2024, our research showed the honeymoon period was over for employees - whereby the positive sentiment often associated with starting a new job no longer occurred. An often-cited reason for this was that onboarding experiences had not been adapted for hybrid work. This year the research went deeper to more holistically understand if this is the case, and which employee journeys are falling below or exceeding employee expectations.

And it isn’t onboarding that’s the broken employee experience. It’s the candidate experience. The entry experience for an employee is rated lowest among several significant phases in the employee journey, including onboarding, changing roles or applying for a promotion. At the other end of an employee’s time with a company, the exit experience was poorly regarded too.

This trend matters on two fronts. Firstly, candidates and former employees can still influence others’ opinions about the company, good or bad. At the same time, if people are joining a company after a poor candidate experience they’re on the backfoot before they’ve even worked their first day.

Stop prioritising short-term gains costs, which come at the expense of long-term trust

Trust is becoming increasingly important for organisations as they navigate evolving environments. And in the context of whether employees trust their bosses, the situation is on a knife edge. While employees overall are somewhat positive about their leaders’ competence and integrity, workers are much less likely to believe bosses will choose their well-being over immediate profit or gain. 

This focus on short-term gains could be costing businesses much bigger long-term wins. Trust is highly correlated with employee engagement, as well as employees’ sense of inclusion and well-being. Employees who trust their leaders are more open to changes, receptive to communication and overall act in ways that ultimately benefit the organisation. 

Address AI inertia with training and enablement

Despite touting AI as the solution to lifting productivity, just half of employees in Asia say their organisation is providing AI enablement and training. A similar number say their company has AI guidelines, ethics or principles. This lack of AI enablement and training creates significant operational and organisational risk, with many employees opting to use AI tools they’ve found themselves on a daily and weekly basis.

AI training and enablement must be a key strategic priority as its impact is exponential - from addressing security and operational risks, driving improved business outcomes, and ultimately creating an environment where employees and employers co-create the future of work.

The best EX programs in 2025

People are excellent at adapting to change. But to be successful in doing so they need the support of their business. It’s a reality that means employee experience management has a critical role to play in helping organisations successfully navigate the current landscape.

In 2025, the best EX programs will be focused on equipping leaders with a deep understanding of what employees need to be successful and how everyday experiences are helping or hindering progress.

Knowing what matters is one thing, being able to take action is another. As a result, this deeper understanding will be supported by enabling all levels of management to take action on what matters to employees, when it matters, and where it matters.

Lastly, the best EX programs will be underpinned by a willingness from leaders to adapt and change their strategies too. Change is happening fast, and organisations should lean into it while keeping firmly focused on helping people to do their best work.