Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Employee Experience Specialist

🎯 Role Definition

The Employee Experience Specialist is responsible for designing, implementing and continuously improving programs and touchpoints that shape an employee’s journey. Using engagement data, employee feedback, behavioral insights and cross-functional collaboration, this role optimizes onboarding, recognition, manager enablement, internal communications, wellbeing, and offboarding to create a scalable and consistent people-first culture. The specialist is a hands-on program owner who partners closely with HR Business Partners, Talent, Learning, IT and leadership to translate strategy into measurable operational programs.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

HR Coordinator or HR Generalist
Internal Communications Specialist
Learning & Development or Talent Operations Associate

Advancement To:

Employee Experience Manager / Senior Employee Experience Specialist
Head of People Experience / People Programs Lead
Director of People Operations or Director of Talent & Culture

Lateral Moves:

Talent Development Manager
HR Business Partner
DEI Program Manager
People Analytics / HRIS Analyst

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Design, own and execute end-to-end onboarding programs (pre-boarding, day 1, first 90 days) that accelerate time-to-productivity and improve new hire engagement across remote, hybrid and in-office populations.
Build and manage a scalable offboarding and alumni engagement process that captures feedback, preserves employer brand and identifies retention risks.
Create, implement and iterate recognition and rewards programs to reinforce desired behaviors and improve employee retention and morale.
Develop and maintain the employee experience roadmap, prioritizing initiatives that deliver measurable impact on engagement, retention, and performance.
Lead regular employee listening programs including annual engagement surveys, pulse surveys and focus groups; design survey instruments, manage vendor relationships (e.g., Culture Amp, Glint, Qualtrics) and drive action planning.
Analyze engagement and HR data (eNPS, turnover, manager effectiveness, onboarding completion, time-to-fill) to identify trends, generate insights and recommend programmatic changes to leadership.
Partner with People Operations and HRIS teams to ensure employee experience initiatives integrate with systems (Workday, BambooHR, Lattice) and automate lifecycle workflows where possible.
Develop manager enablement tools, playbooks and training sessions that equip leaders to support career conversations, onboarding, recognition and performance check-ins.
Own internal communications strategy for people programs: craft messaging, publish intranet content, design campaign calendars, and measure communications effectiveness.
Lead cross-functional project teams to roll out new people programs (flex work policies, wellbeing initiatives, career paths) and ensure timely adoption and compliance.
Serve as subject matter expert for employee experience, advising leadership on cultural initiatives and change management best practices to maintain morale during organizational change.
Design inclusive programs that support diversity, equity and belonging (DEI) objectives and remove barriers across the employee lifecycle.
Manage vendor relationships for engagement platforms, learning solutions and wellbeing partners, including scope, SLAs, contracts and implementation oversight.
Create and maintain employee journey maps and personas to identify friction points and prioritize experience improvements by employee segment (e.g., frontline, knowledge worker, sales).
Design and drive events and community-building programs — onboarding orientation, manager roundtables, town halls, virtual socials — to strengthen culture and cross-team collaboration.
Conduct exit interviews, synthesize qualitative feedback and partner with HR leaders to surface retention risk drivers and corrective actions.
Establish KPIs and dashboards (eNPS, engagement score, onboarding satisfaction, time-to-productivity) and deliver monthly/quarterly insights to People leadership and stakeholders.
Develop and manage the employee experience budget, ensuring cost-effective program design and measurable ROI for initiatives.
Ensure employee data and feedback is handled in compliance with privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA) and company policies, maintaining confidentiality and secure storage of sensitive information.
Pilot and scale innovations such as microlearning, peer recognition platforms, manager nudges and career pathing tools to enhance continuous experience improvement.
Collaborate with Total Rewards and Benefits to communicate benefits enrollment, wellbeing resources, and programs that impact retention and overall employee health.
Troubleshoot complex employee experience issues escalated from HR Business Partners, ensuring timely resolution and consistent escalation paths.
Drive continuous improvement by collecting qualitative feedback, conducting A/B tests on communications and iterating program components based on measured outcomes.
Maintain and update employee experience documentation, toolkits and FAQs for both employees and managers to ensure consistency and self-service.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc employee experience data requests and perform exploratory analysis to answer business questions and support program decisions.
Contribute to the organization’s people strategy and employee experience roadmap with prioritized, evidence-based recommendations.
Collaborate with business units and HR partners to translate employee feedback into operational action plans and engineering or IT requirements when integrations are needed.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies with project teams when delivering platform or process improvements.
Provide day-to-day administrative support for program launches, including scheduling, vendor coordination and materials preparation.
Assist with change communications and training rollouts during policy shifts, merger & acquisition integrations, or system migrations.
Maintain stakeholder RACI matrices, steering committee materials and project plans for multi-month experience initiatives.
Monitor program adoption and compliance, escalating areas of low engagement and working with local HR to tailor solutions.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Employee engagement program design and execution (annual surveys, pulse surveys, action planning).
HRIS proficiency (Workday, BambooHR, UKG, ADP) for lifecycle automation and reporting.
Experience with engagement and survey platforms (Culture Amp, Glint, Qualtrics, Lattice) including survey design, distribution, and analysis.
Data analysis and visualization skills (Excel advanced, SQL basics preferred, Power BI or Tableau) to create dashboards and interpret HR metrics.
Project management skills with proven experience running cross-functional launches; familiarity with Agile and Kanban is a plus.
Vendor selection and vendor management experience including scoping, contracting and SLA management.
Knowledge of employment law basics, data privacy (GDPR, CCPA) and compliance best practices for handling employee data.
Familiarity with learning platforms and microlearning tools for manager enablement and onboarding content delivery.
Experience designing and measuring internal communications campaigns (messaging strategy, channel optimization, open/click metrics).
Budgeting and ROI analysis for people programs, including cost-benefit assessments.

Soft Skills

Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills; able to build trust with business leaders and cross-functional partners.
Excellent written and verbal communications; experience creating clear, persuasive messaging for diverse audiences.
Empathetic listener with strong interview and facilitation skills for focus groups, workshops and listening sessions.
Strategic thinker who can translate data into compelling program recommendations and actionable roadmaps.
High emotional intelligence and confidentiality, comfortable handling sensitive employee feedback and HR matters.
Problem-solving mindset with comfort running experiments, iterating quickly and measuring impact.
Strong organizational skills and ability to manage multiple concurrent programs with shifting priorities.
Collaborative team player with a bias for action and a track record of delivering results in matrixed environments.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Human Resources, Organizational Psychology, Business, Communications, or related field (or equivalent work experience).

Preferred Education:

Master’s degree in HR, Organizational Development, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, Business Administration (MBA) or related advanced credential.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Human Resources Management
Organizational Psychology
Communications
Business Administration
Sociology / Behavioral Science

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

3–7 years of experience in HR programs, employee engagement, internal communications, or people operations.

Preferred:

5+ years designing and delivering employee experience or engagement programs in medium to large, matrixed organizations, with demonstrated success using survey platforms and HRIS tools. Experience with remote/hybrid workforce programs, DEI initiatives, and people analytics preferred.