Employee Experience Examples: 9 Companies Excelling in Work EX

The best employee experience examples come from companies that treat every stage of work, from hiring to growth to everyday recognition, as something to design on purpose. Synchrony, Hilton, NVIDIA, Wegmans and The Cheesecake Factory show that a strong employee experience pays off in retention, customer service and even shareholder returns.

Employee experience examples are real practices companies use to shape how employees feel at work: how they are hired, onboarded, paid, recognized, developed and supported. Below are nine companies excelling at work EX, what each one offers, what it achieved and what you can borrow. For the fundamentals, start with this guide on what employee experience is.

What makes an employee experience example worth copying

A great employee experience is not about the office or the perks. It is about belonging: employees feel included, trusted and able to do meaningful work. When that sense of belonging is missing, people disengage and leave.

The payoff for getting it right is measurable. Great Place To Work's 2026 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For analysis found that employees at the 100 Best companies rated their psychological and emotional health at 81%, compared with 56% at a typical US workplace, and that publicly traded 100 Best companies delivered a 13.4% annualized stock return over 28 years, against 9.2% for the Russell 3000.

Meanwhile, most companies have plenty of room to improve. Qualtrics' 2026 Employee Experience Trends study found that only 39% of employees globally say their experience exceeds their expectations, down 4 points in a year. The companies below are closing that gap.

9 employee experience examples from leading companies

These nine companies were chosen because each one shows a different lever: pay and growth, recognition, frontline support, flexibility or technology. The first five are among the highest-ranked large employers in the US, and the last two are Empuls customers that rebuilt recognition from scratch, so you can see examples at very different scales.

1. Synchrony

The consumer financial services company ranked No. 1 on the 2026 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list, taking the top spot from Hilton.

• Experiences offered: Flexible ways of working, a strong focus on career growth and leaders who connect new technology to each employee's development. Great Place To Work found that Synchrony employees are 9 times more likely to embrace AI when leaders connect it to growth conversations.
• Result: The top ranking among large US employers, earned through confidential employee survey feedback rather than self-nomination.
• What to copy: When you introduce new tools such as AI, frame them as a growth opportunity for each person and talk about it openly.

2. Hilton

Hilton ranked No. 1 on the Fortune list in 2025 and No. 2 in 2026, which is remarkable for a company whose workforce is mostly frontline hotel team members.

• Experiences offered: A Team Member Travel Program that gives employees discounted hotel stays, recognition of frontline service, wellbeing support and clear paths from hourly roles into management.
• Result: Consistent top-two rankings that help Hilton recruit and keep frontline talent in an industry known for high turnover.
• What to copy: Design benefits around your own product or service, and make sure frontline employees get the same quality of experience as head office.

3. NVIDIA

This tech giant is famous for more than its graphics chips. It ranked No. 6 on the 2026 Fortune 100 Best list and is the only "Magnificent Seven" technology company on it.

• Experiences offered: A workforce-centric culture, a family-first approach, flexibility, community volunteering and donation-matching opportunities, and an employee stock purchase plan with stock refreshers that let employees share in the company's growth.
• Result: A top-10 place on the 2026 list, based on employee survey responses, and strong financial results that employees share through equity.
• What to copy: Give employees a real stake in success, whether through equity, profit sharing or bonuses tied to company results.

4. Wegmans Food Markets

The family-owned grocery chain ranked No. 5 in 2026 and has appeared on Fortune's list for 29 consecutive years, every year since it began.

• Experiences offered: Heavy investment in training and education. Wegmans' employee scholarship program has awarded more than $155 million to over 49,500 employees since 1984, and it named 1,500 new recipients for 2026, including part-time employees.
• Result: Nearly three decades of top rankings and a reputation for customer service built by well-trained store employees.
• What to copy: Invest in education and development for part-time and frontline staff, not just salaried roles.

5. The Cheesecake Factory

The Cheesecake Factory was named to the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list for the 13th time in 2026, and it is one of very few restaurant companies to make the list year after year.

• Experiences offered: An initiative called Wow Stories recognizes frontline staff by sharing stories of great service, which boosts morale and spreads best practices. The company also prioritizes training and offers many development paths. Its leadership's long-standing philosophy is to treat staff the way you would want to be treated: respectfully, and like family.
• Result: More than a decade on the Fortune list in an industry where high turnover is the norm.
• What to copy: Turn recognition into storytelling. Sharing specific examples of great work teaches everyone what good looks like.

6. SAP

The enterprise software company has long been known on employee review sites for keeping its employees' interests at heart.

• Experiences offered: SAP builds innovation, inclusion and diversity into its employee experience initiatives. It offers a wide range of development and upskilling opportunities, flexible working, autonomy in how work gets done and supportive leadership that respects work-life balance.
• Result: Strong employee recommendation and leadership approval scores on review sites, and a reputation as a place where people can build long careers through internal moves.
• What to copy: Make upskilling and internal mobility easy, so employees can grow without leaving.

7. Workday

Employee reviews of this cloud software company regularly praise its culture and how it looks after its people.

• Experiences offered: An inclusive environment that emphasizes collaboration and personalization at work, internal career development opportunities, a supportive work environment, a balanced social life at work and flexible working patterns.
• Result: Recognition on best-workplace lists over the years and a culture that employees often describe as collaborative and supportive.
• What to copy: Personalize the experience using what employees tell you in regular feedback, rather than guessing.

8. Gulf Taleed

Gulf Taleed, a retail distributor in Saudi Arabia, wanted a people-first culture across a 250-person workforce. Recognition was centralized and rare, and communication relied on email.

• Experiences offered: Gulf Taleed adopted Empuls as one platform for recognition, rewards, surveys and communication. It decentralized its "Rockstars" recognition program with peer-to-peer appreciation and multiple award categories, replaced email-only updates with a social intranet and used new-joiner surveys to hear fresh perspectives on its culture.
• Result: Recognition grew from 3 awards per quarter to more than 300 appreciations in six months, the platform reached 90% active adoption and new-joiner surveys reached a 70% completion rate within seven days. Read the Gulf Taleed case study.
• What to copy: Let everyone recognize everyone. Peer-to-peer recognition multiplies appreciation without adding work for HR.

9. Luminous Power Technologies

After 25 years of manual rewards and recognition, including printed T-shirts and certificates, Luminous Power Technologies wanted a consistent, digital approach for its 6,000 employees.

• Experiences offered: Empuls integrated with the company's existing ERP, anchored recognition in its five core values and offered a reward catalog broad enough for every generation, from adventure trips to fine dining and spa experiences.
• Result: Strong adoption across both office staff and blue-collar manufacturing plant employees, many of whom had never used a digital recognition tool before. Read the Luminous case study.
• What to copy: Tie recognition to your company values, and design for the least connected employees first.

Employee experience examples at a glance

The table below sums up the standout practice at each company and the lesson you can apply. Most of these ideas work at any size.

Employee experience programs examples you can adapt

You do not need a Fortune 100 budget to borrow these ideas. Here are seven employee experience programs, listed roughly from quickest to set up to most involved:

1. Peer-to-peer recognition: Let anyone thank anyone in public, with points that convert into rewards employees choose. See how to run an employee recognition program.
2. Milestone and life-event celebrations: Mark birthdays, work anniversaries, weddings and new babies automatically with Empuls celebrations.
3. Buddy-led onboarding: Pair every new hire with a buddy and a 30-60-90 day plan, and send a welcome gift before day one.
4. Continuous listening: Replace a single annual survey with short pulse and lifecycle surveys, then share what changed as a result.
5. Flexible work and benefits: Offer schedule flexibility and a lifestyle spending account employees can use on what matters to them.
6. Learning budgets and internal mobility: Fund courses and post open roles internally first, as SAP and Wegmans do.
7. Wellbeing support: Provide mental health resources, an employee assistance program and manager training on spotting burnout.

Employee experience best practices these companies share

Investment in employee experience is still led by a select few, but it has pushed startups, mid-sized companies and established organizations alike to raise their game. Companies that lead on employee experience tend to share four habits, and they enjoy similar results.

• They listen and act: Feedback leads to visible changes, which keeps employees giving it.
• They invest in managers: Great experiences depend on the person each employee reports to.
• They include the frontline: Benefits, recognition and growth reach hourly, part-time and field staff, not just head office.
• They personalize: Choice in rewards, benefits and schedules lets each employee get what they value.

The examples of good employee experience above show the same outcomes again and again: easier hiring and retention of frontline talent, stronger revenue growth, lower costs from turnover, better performance across the organization and a better customer experience, because emotionally engaged employees create happier customers. To turn these ideas into a plan, read this guide on how to improve employee experience.

Build your own employee experience with Empuls

Empuls, Xoxoday's employee engagement platform, gives you the building blocks these companies use in one place: peer-to-peer recognition and rewards across 150+ countries, pulse and lifecycle surveys with AI insights, a social intranet for company-wide communication, flexible benefits and automated celebrations. Gulf Taleed and Luminous Power Technologies used it to build their own employee experience examples, and you can too.