The X Factor: 10 Things PEOs Need to Know about EX and UX

Employee experience (EX) has the power to make or break an organization.

Employee experience—the sum of how employees observe, perceive, and feel about interactions with your company, from their first day to their last—is what sets bad or middling employers apart from the great ones. The ability to win and keep talent is what makes you and your clients most successful, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that as the global talent squeeze intensifies, employee experience is getting a lot more attention from enterprises, small businesses (SMBs), and PEOs.

Employee experience is unique for PEOs because the vast majority of interactions with PEO end users take place through the mediation of technology. This makes employee experience and user experience (UX) both symbiotic and inseparable. As a PEO, if you aren’t mastering UX, you simply can’t hope to influence EX in any meaningful way. EX and UX must be considered as a blended experience.

As a PEO, this means your UX is also providing a big part of the EX for your SMB customers’ employees. SMBs may not be throwing around terms like EX, but it matters to them. Their businesses are smaller, but they are under equal pressure to create a strong employer brand. A great EX gives SMBs a much-needed edge in a highly competitive talent marketplace, where bigger companies may have broader benefits resources and deeper pockets. By offering a superior EX, your SMB clients can play to their strengths—differentiating themselves as employers and attracting top talent right out from under the big guys.

As their PEO, your UX can either enhance those efforts, or catastrophically undermine them.