The debate over whether
That may seem like a bold claim. But when your research team
What our analysis demonstrates is that companies that ranked in the top 100 for employee experience outperformed the rest of the index by 5% in total shareholder return over five years. For the average S&P 500 firm, that gap is worth as much as $2 billion, according to Welliba research.
This means
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The method that didn't involve a single survey
What makes this research different, and I think more useful, is how it was done.
No surveys were sent. No questionnaires were distributed. No employees were asked to rate their managers on a scale of one to five.
Instead, our research team drew on publicly available signals, using review sites, forums, social platforms, and other public sources where employees already share, candidly and continuously, what it's actually like to work somewhere. We applied a validated framework measuring 24 factors across six areas of employee experience to that data and built what I believe is the most comprehensive outside-in view of EX ever assembled at this scale.
This isn't about surveys becoming a dying breed. They were just never designed to carry the full weight of understanding employee experience. They're slow, they're sporadic, and by the time results are compiled and turned into action plans, the moment has usually passed.
Meanwhile, your employees have been talking the whole time. And the chances are, nobody has been listening.
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What the data actually shows
One of the most striking elements of this research is how consistent the positive drivers are, and how variable the negative ones are.
Across the S&P 500, the dominant positive drivers of employee experience are related to people. Very simply put, it's about colleagues and direct managers. In 66% of S&P 500 companies, colleague relationships register as a key EX booster. Direct manager relationships show up the same way in 62% of firms, the Welliba research shows.
You didn't need 25 million data points to suspect that human connection matters at work. But having it confirmed at this scale, across every industry and every size of organization, tells you something important about where the non-negotiable foundation lies.
The blockers are a different story. Bottom-up communication is the most common lowest-ranking factor, affecting 56% of lower-performing firms. But after that, the picture fragments quickly. Poor processes, outdated rewards, physical workspace — no single blocker appears in more than 29% of companies.
What that means practically is that there is no universal fix. The organizations that improve EX fastest are the ones that identify their specific blockers and attack those, not the ones that roll out industry-wide best practices that may have nothing to do with their actual problem.
The research segments S&P 500 firms into four types:
- Powerhouses: High EX, strong growth
- Sleeping Giants: Strong EX, underperforming financially
- Unhappy Performers: Growing despite poor EX, a fragile position in my view
- Stragglers: Low EX, low growth
Each has a different problem. Each needs a different response. Generic solutions won't help you solve these challenges, but knowing your own organizational fingerprint does.
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Three things worth doing with this
Here's what I think HR and benefits leaders should actually do with this research.
- First, take the financial argument to your leadership team. A 5% differential in total shareholder return over five years is not an HR metric; it's a finance metric. If you've been trying to make the business case for investing in employee experience and getting politely nodded at, try leading with that number. It changes the conversation.
- Second, stop treating the annual survey as your only source of truth. Use it, but complement it. Public signals give you an up-to-date view of how people actually feel without asking them to take another questionnaire. A hybrid approach to listening tells a far richer story than either can alone.
- Third, compare against your peers, not an aggregated benchmark. Most organizations look at their insights either in isolation or using a pre-prescribed benchmark made up of the data of a composite of the other clients from their vendor. Using public data, you can compare yourself against the companies you want to benchmark against. You can also go a step further and see the same level of insight into them as you can for yourself.
The organizations paying attention to this now will have a measurable advantage over those that catch up later. The data already exists. The employees are already talking.
The only question is what you decide to do with it.
