Insights from Independent Studies:
How Employee Experience Shapes Business Outcomes
Written by Christian W. Schnepf
Updated September 2026
From engagement to retention and profitability, discover how experiences at work affect the outcomes businesses care about. Organizations inevitably shape the life experiences of their people. When work provides attractive experiences and outcomes (Good Times in the present and/or future), people have reasons to give attention, invest energy and show initiative. When work and its anticipated outcomes do not promise Good Times (that is, feel subjectively unattractive), resistance emerges, while engagement, performance and the associated business KPIs suffer.
While employee experience was once treated as a nice-to-have item within wellbeing budgets, more companies are recognizing its effect on measurable business outcomes and giving it greater importance. But how significant is the effect in practice? See concrete figures for business metrics and outcomes shaped by employee experience and discover why becoming a source of more Good Times can indeed be a practical business priority.
#1 Engagement at Work
80% of employees worldwide are not engaged or actively disengaged
Engagement is where the effects of employee experience become immediately visible. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 reports that only 20% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. The remaining 80% are either not engaged (64%) or actively disengaged (16%).
Viewed through the Good Time framework, being not engaged indicates too little attraction to move forward and occurs when people no longer feel the link between their work and what constitutes a Good Time for them. They may continue to fulfill their responsibilities, yet only to the extent required to avoid negative consequences, naturally reducing their attention, initiative and energy.
Active disengagement goes even further and reflects “Bad Times” that people proactively resist. In effect, the company fights against itself, making it easier for competitors to gain market share.
In Good Time terms, the vast majority of employees in companies worldwide are either insufficiently convinced that their work moves them toward Good Times or encounter too much resistance for progress to feel possible. While this represents a global problem, it also reveals a massive, largely untapped opportunity for organizations capable of creating experiences people genuinely want to contribute to.
#2 Motivation & Resilience
The #1 quality people desire in leaders is hope
Engagement describes whether people invest themselves in their work. The next question is what gives them a reason to do so. In Good Time terms, motivation arises when people feel attracted to an experience or outcome—something worth moving toward in the present or future.
Hope is central to this: it is the belief that such an attractive future—a future Good Time—can exist and be achieved. It is like a captain who shows people where they are sailing and gives them confidence that they can get there. If the destination is attractive, it becomes reasonable for people to invest energy, take action and continue through difficulties because they have a reason they understand and personally care about. Resilience, therefore, is not simply the ability to endure pressure but it is strengthened by the belief that continuing can still lead somewhere worthwhile.
Gallup’s global leadership research aligns with this. It found that 56% of the desired attributes people mention in influential leaders relate to hope, making it the #1 need people have of their leaders. This challenges the common assumption that leadership is primarily about management. Leaders who make an attractive future visible and achievable can therefore strengthen motivation, resilience and wellbeing.
#3 Sales Productivity
Highly engaged teams achieve 18% higher sales productivity
When people have an attractive outcome to move toward, motivation becomes visible through their contribution. They naturally invest more attention, initiative and energy because achieving the outcome matters to them.
Gallup’s extensive meta-analysis revealed that highly engaged teams achieve 18% higher sales productivity than teams with low engagement. In sales-driven organizations, employee experience can therefore be reflected directly in measurable results.
Worth noting, the effect goes beyond the amount of effort invested. The energy a sales representative brings to a customer interaction can communicate a genuine belief that the work will lead to a better future. That conviction can, in turn, ignite hope in the client and make the proposed outcome—and therefore the collaboration—attractive.
#4 Sick Days
Employees experiencing frequent burnout are 63% more likely to take a sick day
Sales productivity shows what can happen when people are motivated and able to contribute. The other side of the equation is what happens when the experience of work gradually drains that capacity. Gallup found that employees who experience burnout very often or always are 63% more likely to take a sick day.
In Good Time terms, burnout can be understood as the result of continuing to work against prolonged inner resistance until the capacity to recover from strain declines and the body begins limiting further effort. What starts as internal friction can gradually become visible through reduced physical, cognitive and emotional energy.
While burnout lies closer to the end of this development, the underlying friction can reduce performance long before it results in absence. Reducing unnecessary workplace friction can therefore not only support individual wellbeing but also protect the organization’s available capacity.
#5 Profitability
Highly engaged teams achieve 23% higher profitability
At this point, it becomes clear that the effects described so far do not remain isolated and can ultimately manifest in profitability. Gallup’s meta-analysis supports this, finding that highly engaged teams achieve almost 25% higher profitability than teams with low engagement.
No surprise, as profitability is the accumulated result of many organizational factors that can be traced back to Good Times—attractive experiences and outcomes that make people naturally invest more of their available capacity in the organization.
When an organization enables people to contribute, grow and experience meaningful progress, the resulting engagement and dedication can lead to lower absence, greater output, fewer errors, more creative problem-solving, higher-quality products and services, and stronger customer relationships. As we will see in #7, it can even support recruitment and ease marketing efforts.
Good Times at work are therefore no longer solely a concern for culture or HR teams. They are central to the organization’s ability to perform and grow sustainably.
#6 Turnover
Employees experiencing frequent burnout are 2.6 times as likely to be actively seeking another job
One of the most consequential ways employee experience can affect profitability is through unwanted turnover. Returning to the burnout findings from #4, Gallup found that employees who experience burnout very often or always are not only more likely to take a sick day but also 2.6 times as likely to be actively seeking another job.
One way to understand this is that sick days are an attempt at temporary recovery. However, people seek sustainable Good Times. If the pressure continues and the workplace remains its perceived source, leaving the organization can become the most promising and attractive remaining path toward relief and recovery.
Here too, we keep in mind that burnout is a late-stage manifestation, while workplace friction builds long before that point is reached. Retention risk therefore emerges much earlier. People approaching exhaustion may not yet be actively seeking new opportunities, but they can already be more open to other attractive options that arise.
Retention therefore depends not solely on compensation, but also on whether the workplace is a source of Good Times.
#7 Company Recommendation
Millennials who experience a great workplace are 5x more likely to recommend it
Retaining people is great to prevent organizational loss. But ideally, a company wants not only to retain its employees; it also wants to grow. Great Place to Work found that millennials who say they work at a great workplace are five times more likely to endorse their company.
The underlying principle is simple: people naturally recommend experiences that bring them Good Times. When an organization becomes a reliable source of Good Times, employees have an authentic reason to speak positively and proactively about it.
A genuinely attractive workplace can therefore strengthen reputation and recruitment from the inside out. Authentic advocacy becomes an outcome of the lived experience in a way that employer-branding instructions alone cannot reproduce. This not only helps the organization attract more high-quality candidates; the potential effect of positive employee word of mouth on customer trust and acquisition should not be underestimated either.
Good Times at work can therefore do more than improve the experience and contribution of current employees. They can help the organization attract the people and customers who enable its future growth.
Conclusion
Good Times are a business condition
Taken together, the studies reveal a consistent pattern:
When an organization becomes a reliable source of Good Times, people have attractive reasons to engage.
When people are attracted to both their everyday experience and the outcomes they are working toward, contributing is not merely something demanded from them. It becomes something they personally have a reason to do. The result is not only a better experience for employees, but also greater available capacity for the organization and stronger conditions for sustainable growth. It strengthens motivation and resilience, encourages people to invest more attention, energy and initiative, and lets the organization benefit through greater productivity, profitability, retention and proactive, authentic advocacy.
Conversely, when work provides too few attractive reasons to engage or creates too much inner resistance, attention and initiative decline, with the consequences becoming visible through disengagement, reduced performance, absence and unwanted turnover.
These symptoms are often addressed individually by selecting from a generic employee-satisfaction toolbox and hoping that something fits the organization and its budget. Yet the studies indicate that they share the same underlying condition: whether people experience enough attraction to move forward and whether resistance remains low enough for progress to feel possible.
To enable employers to change this systemically, The Science of Good Times has informed a framework that addresses this condition both holistically and with greater precision. It helps organizations understand what makes work and its outcomes attractive or unattractive to their people, identify where resistance emerges, and design conditions that naturally strengthen engagement, collaboration and performance by transforming the workplace into a Good Time Space.
If your organization is affected by disengagement, unwanted turnover, absence or declining performance, or you simply want to create a workplace that gets people out of bed with a smile, let’s explore what your people are experiencing and where more Good Times could make a meaningful difference.