When I first entered the workforce several decades ago, I experienced plenty of jobs around the world, and I tended to find myself in sales or customer experience roles. These roles helped put me through university and funded my early explorations of the world. At this stage, I was working in places like England, France, Germany, Japan, and Australia - they were profoundly formative experiences. I learned a lot from observing and experiencing the good and the bad of business and leadership.
Through these jobs, I quickly realised that creating great experiences for customers was the secret sauce for any company to succeed, and I dedicated myself to understanding how customer interactions could impact brand loyalty and business results. My work within companies across the world, from bustling corporate offices to humble start-ups, and in every environment, I found the same critical link between satisfied customers and thriving businesses. But over time, I realized there was something more fundamental at play.
The breakthrough came as I observed what was happening behind the scenes, beyond the reach of frontline customer service.
In every successful company, I noticed a key difference: the employees were just as engaged, valued, and fulfilled as the customers they were serving, even more so in many cases. That was the epiphany - a simple yet profound insight that I couldn’t shake: customer experience is only as strong as the employee experience. This was 2002 though and it was not a thought that found favour in many businesses. Yet, it's a powerful thought, and the implications are significant. Thriving employees created a thriving customer base, and the employee experience (EX) was, without question, at the heart of it all.
Armed with this insight, I made a conscious choice to start my career again. I dived into the one function that I thought would be a natural home for this insight, Human Resources, though as a field - while essential in some ways - it wasn’t exactly known for being people-centred. In fact, I found it was quite the opposite and many colleagues in HR agreed. As I worked my way into HR departments, I encountered a shockingly common thread: many organizations were failing to prioritize the employee experience, let alone focusing on the broader human experience. They were set-up very well to treat humans like resources, and that is exactly what they did. Processes, metrics, and systems often took precedence over the very people those structures were meant to serve. The realization struck me deeply:
HR had the potential to change everything, but not if it was ignoring the employees’ lived experiences.
This was my defining moment. I committed to leading and creating a new agenda, one that would make the employee experience the top priority. And thus began my journey to reshape how organizations think about their people. I began building my ideas from my context at the time – I wasn’t yet a senior employee working in HR, but I did have leadership over key elements of organizational development. By proving the point in practice, I made rapid progress in my career. I co-built award-winning human-centred programmes and policies that put employees first. I saw how people thrived when their work environment empowered them to go beyond what they thought was possible. We know what happened next.
Throughout my career, I’ve pursued one mission with unwavering commitment: putting employee experience on the global map. Through books, speeches, and masterclasses around the world, I’ve helped to elevate this topic from an HR discussion to a core business imperative. A milestone in this journey was becoming the first thinker focused exclusively on employee experience to be ranked by Thinkers50, the world’s most respected management-ranking organization.
Today, my work in employee experience has scaled to new heights, and the impact of EX is undeniable. We now have powerful data and countless case studies proving that a positive, engaged employee experience drives not only well-being but also business performance, innovation, and growth. Employee experience isn’t just a “nice-to-have” that follows customer experience - it's the foundational element of sustainable business success.
If I’ve learned one thing, it’s this: when companies put people first, they unlock a level of success that benefits everyone. And that’s a mission worth dedicating a career to.
Ben Whitter is the author of the ground-breaking book, Employee Experience (2019).
Employee Experience Strategy (2023) and Human Experience at Work (2021) completed his experience trilogy, which was published globally by Kogan Page.
Following the success of his first book, Ben was named one of the top emerging management thinkers in the world by Thinkers50 in 2021, recognized for his "compelling" research on employee experience (EX). He was also a top 8 global finalist for the prestigious Distinguished Achievement Award in Talent, which was won by Reed Hastings of Netflix.
Ben is widely credited for pioneering and popularizing the concept of employee experience worldwide. In 2021 he was named as one of the Most Influential HR Thinkers by HR Magazine and one of the top 30 global keynote speakers for workplace culture by Global Gurus. His work has reached 18 million people, inspired the first EX conferences, and has been featured in publications including The Times, The Telegraph, Forbes, The Financial Times, The Economist, and MIT Sloan.
A prolific global keynote speaker on human and employee experience topics, Ben has introduced his ideas to audiences in more than 40 countries.
KEYNOTE SERVICES: To book Ben for a keynote speech (virtual or in-person) at your company, please contact us for availability.
COACHING & LEARNING: You can join the next public and virtual HEX Practitioner Programme here. 3 months access, live coaching and content on employee experience with Ben Whitter.