The landscape of employee experience (EX) management is undergoing a significant transformation. As organisations increasingly recognise that a thriving workforce is central to business success, the tools and strategies used to understand and improve EX are evolving at pace. A pivotal new guide for navigating this complex market is The Forrester Wave™: Employee Experience Management Platforms, Q2 2025. This comprehensive report offers crucial insights for EX and HR professionals, business leaders, and people teams striving to enhance their workplace strategies.
The evaluation highlights how the EX management market continues to evolve, driven by changing industry needs and the promise of emerging technologies such as generative AI (genAI). It firmly positions “deep listening” and the intelligent application of AI as the cornerstone of future EX management.
Beyond Traditional Surveys: The Evolution of EX Management
Forrester observes that for many firms, EX initiatives often begin with, or gain strong momentum from, customer experience (CX) initiatives. This indicates a growing understanding that positive employee experiences directly contribute to better customer outcomes. Other catalysts for EX efforts include compelling events such as unexpected employee attrition or failed organisational changes that underscore the need for greater awareness of employee perspectives.
For many firms, EX initiatives often begin with, or gain strong momentum from, customer experience (CX) initiatives.
On the vendor side, innovation is rapidly responding to these realities. The traditional approach of periodic employee surveys is being augmented, and in some cases transformed, by advanced technologies. GenAI, natural language processing (NLP), and emotion detection models are enabling platforms to passively distil powerful insights from the “digital exhaust” of employees’ daily communications and work. This passive data collection, combined with CX and EX data, allows for a much richer, continuous understanding of employee sentiment and engagement than ever before possible.
Choosing the right vendor for an EX platform is no longer merely a technological decision. It must be profoundly influenced by the level of organisational support available, the company’s tolerance for “deep listening” and its potential implications, and its overarching business and strategic goals.
Deep Listening: The New Frontier of Employee Insights
The core message from the Forrester Wave™ is clear: “Deep Listening Is The Future Of EX Management”. But what does this truly entail for HR and EX leaders?
Deep listening extends beyond structured survey responses. It involves the sophisticated analysis of unstructured data from various internal sources, such as collaborative platforms, communication tools, and internal social channels. This “digital exhaust” contains a wealth of implicit feedback that, when processed by advanced AI and NLP models, can reveal nuanced insights into employee sentiment, pain points, and engagement levels. The ability to combine this passive listening with active feedback (surveys) and even CX data creates a comprehensive picture of the employee journey and its impact on the business.
The goal is to provide continuous, real-time understanding, allowing organisations to respond proactively to emerging issues rather than reactively to symptoms like attrition. This proactive approach supports a culture of continuous improvement and employee success.
Navigating the Landscape: Understanding the Forrester Wave™
The Forrester Wave™ evaluation serves as a guide for buyers, highlighting Leaders, Strong Performers, and Contenders in the market. It assesses vendors across three key categories:
- Current Offering: This represents the strength of the vendor’s existing product capabilities, indicating its position on the vertical axis of the Wave graphic.
- Strategy: This assesses the strength of the vendor’s future plans, including their vision and innovation roadmap, determining their placement on the horizontal axis.
- Customer Feedback: A “halo” on a vendor’s marker signifies above-average customer feedback, while a “double halo” denotes outstanding feedback, making the vendor a “Customer Favourite”.
Forrester encourages clients to use this evaluation as a starting point only, adapting the findings based on their specific organisational priorities.
Leaders in the Field: A Closer Look
The report identifies several key players leading the charge in EX management platforms:
Qualtrics
Founded in 2002, Qualtrics is highlighted for its ability to integrate CX and EX capabilities within a robust experience management platform. Its strengths lie in a rich set of surveying capabilities, offering myriad targeting, deployment, and triggering options, alongside a large library of survey templates for benchmarking. Qualtrics leverages AI to analyse comments and detect trends like attrition risk, providing actionable recommendations. A key selling point is its customisability and flexibility for large, complex organisations. Critically, its ability to gather insights from social messaging data makes it a strong option for organisations planning deep listening through enterprise social and activity analytics. Customers value its capacity to analyse CX and EX data together to identify patterns and correlations, thereby improving business outcomes.
Medallia
Medallia, established in 2001, stands out for its fusion of CX and EX capabilities with advanced AI and machine learning. This enables it to integrate both structured and unstructured data, including text, video, and speech, to deliver predictive insights and actionable recommendations. Medallia’s EX strategy focuses on empowering employees and integrating feedback collection into the flow of work. Its capabilities extend to features designed for deskless workers, such as mobile video and audio feedback processed with AI. Medallia is considered a good fit for larger organisations aiming to link their CX and EX initiatives.
PG Forsta
Formed in 2022 from the acquisition of Forsta by Press Ganey, PG Forsta offers a potent mix of capabilities for EX and CX listening and research. Their strategy focuses on deep listening through passive sources, connecting insights across experience domains. Strengths include strong surveying, data analysis, and visualisation, combined with effective AI and NLP capabilities, and analysis of passive listening data. A unique feature noted is support for virtual focus groups. PG Forsta is particularly well-suited for larger organisations looking to link EX and CX, especially within the healthcare industry, and those keen to experiment with deep listening through passive data sources.
Perceptyx
Founded in 2003, Perceptyx specialises in employee listening and EX. Its distinction comes from its employee crowdsourcing, and ability to drive behaviour change and talent development through strategic acquisitions. Perceptyx’s strategy centres on transforming employee experience through listening, analytics, and behavioural science, empowering managers and activating employees for meaningful organisational change. Its strengths are highlighted as intuitiveness, configurability, ad hoc listening capabilities, and a comprehensive full-service approach to EX programme design. The platform’s coaching and nudging capabilities are particularly strong and well thought out. Perceptyx is a good fit for large- and medium-sized enterprises seeking a full-service approach and the ability to drive behaviour change to improve culture.
Strong Performers and Contenders: Diverse Offerings
Beyond the leaders, the report also highlights strong performers and contenders, each with unique strengths:
- Quantum Workplace: Best known for its “Best Places to Work” data and awards, it offers a platform for EX research, analysis, visualisation, and performance management. It’s ideal for organisations focused on improving EX through surveys and actions, and those seeking to raise their public profile as an employer of choice.
- Microsoft: Its EX management solutions under the Viva brand, notably Glint, benefit from deep integration into the Microsoft 365 platform with Viva Engage, Viva Insights, and Teams. This is an easy add-on for firms already using Microsoft 365, suitable for small to medium-sized organisations with simpler EX research requirements.
- Culture Amp: Offers a comprehensive, well-integrated EX-focused platform, built around organisational psychology and data science. It is a good fit for medium and larger organisations seeking a proven methodology for elevating their culture through listening and subsequent behaviour change.
- Effectory: With a focus on Europe, Effectory offers a “tech and touch” approach, guiding clients to move beyond data collection to driving action. Its strengths include well-honed survey methodologies and a prescriptive consultative approach, particularly advantageous for GDPR compliance.
- WTW: Known as a commercial insurer and HR consultancy, WTW’s Engage platform is a key component of its overall consultative approach. It offers unlimited surveying using science-based methodologies, predictive analytics, and industrywide benchmarks. It is suitable for organisations looking for a consulting-led EX approach.
- Workday (Peakon Employee Voice): This platform focuses on employee retention and happiness with prescriptive surveying capabilities and predictive analytics for attrition risks. It is a good fit for medium and larger organisations, particularly existing Workday customers, with global or distributed workforces.
- Leapsome: An integrated HR platform appealing primarily to HR leaders in midsized firms. It offers robust employee experience surveys and analytics, alongside other HR functionalities like performance management and learning.
- Workleap: Formerly GSoft, this platform is tailored for small- and medium-sized businesses in hybrid and distributed work environments. It integrates tools for engagement surveys, performance management, and learning, emphasising simplicity and flexibility.
Strategic Considerations for HR Leaders
For HR leaders and business executives, the Forrester Wave™ report underscores that selecting an EX platform is a strategic decision that goes beyond feature lists. Organisations must consider their unique needs, the level of internal support for EX initiatives, and their comfort with integrating “deep listening” technologies.
The market offers a diverse range of solutions, from highly customisable platforms ideal for complex global enterprises to more prescriptive, out-of-the-box options suitable for smaller or less mature EX programmes. The key is to choose a partner that not only meets current requirements but also aligns with the organisation’s long-term vision for employee experience and its readiness to leverage advanced analytics for actionable insights.
The Future of EX: A Strategic Imperative
In conclusion, the report reaffirms that EX management is no longer a peripheral HR function, but a central strategic imperative. The shift towards deep listening, powered by AI and integrated with CX data, represents the next frontier in understanding and enhancing the employee journey. By carefully evaluating the offerings of leading providers against their specific needs, organisations can invest in platforms that truly foster engagement, drive retention, and ultimately, future-proof their workforce for sustained success.