June 09, 2026
Forrester’s Total Experience Score Now Grades Employee Experience – and the Early Data Is Sobering
Employee experience has, for years now, been the overlooked cousin of customer experience, searching for a way to prove its value to the business. Forrester is now giving it the attention it deserves, but with this comes a hard reality check.
For the first time, a global Employee Experience Index (EX Index) has been added to Forrester’s Total Experience Score. The move places EX alongside the established Customer Experience Index (CX Index) and Brand Experience Index (BX Index) as the ‘final piece’ to the index set. This new approach is designed to show whether the organisation’s brand promise, customer experience, and the employees delivering on both, align within one connected system.
For years, employee experience has been managed in its own silo, with its own budget and its own engagement metrics. Forrester is now arguing that employees are not adjacent to the experience a company delivers. Rather, they are the driving force making it happen.
As Keith Johnston, VP, Group Director at Forrester puts it, EX is not a “culture talking point or an HR side conversation – it’s an operational reality”.
This move arrives against a backdrop where total experience management is gaining traction. Not only does this approach bring each ‘experience’ strategy together into a single framework, it also invites companies to treat those strategies as connected parts of the same picture. Forrester is doing exactly this with its Total Experience Score.
How EX Impacts CX in 2026
The new data does not paint a pretty picture for most organisations. In the US, only 25% of brands with EX data showed a positive EX impact on their total experience, while 37% showed a negative one. In other words, employee experience is currently dragging more brands down than lifting them up. Many companies, Forrester suggests, are attempting to build customer loyalty and brand strength on top of an internal ecosystem that compromises both.
To reach this conclusion, Forrester analysed sentiment data from around half a million employees across 3,000 organisations. It then focused on the nearly 200 firms in seven industries and 11 countries where it also holds customer and brand data. Scores draw on 10 variables grouped into three dimensions: how far employees feel empowered, enabled, and inspired.
From Engagement to Impact
There’s also a deeper shift worth noting. Forrester frames the future of EX as impact rather than engagement. To reach that judgement, it compares each company against its industry peers, then sorts the scores into categories that leave each one with a positive, neutral, or negative EX impact.
This is a distinction that will resonate with anyone who has watched engagement scores climb while business performance stayed flat. Organisations have measured engagement for decades without reliably improving it. Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report found global engagement fell to 20% in 2025, a second consecutive annual decline.
Forrester argues this is partly because organisations can rarely connect EX to outcomes leaders actually fund against. Another contributing factor is siloed working, where teams don’t hold each other accountable and business inertia ensues.
Forrester points to research showing that firms with high EX quality enjoy 2.3 to 3.8% higher annual stock returns than their peers, alongside stronger customer satisfaction and brand equity. The same studies show earnings predictability and adaptability in uncertain times also link with EX quality.
The main takeaway according to David Johnson, Principal Analyst at Forrester, is: “If your firm isn’t linking EX, customer experience (CX), and brand experience (BX) today, you have both untapped growth potential and hidden, unpriced risks.”
Regional Differences in Total Experience
The Total Experience rankings give the EX story a regional anchor. Across 406 brands in 13 countries, Nationwide Building Society led Europe for the second year running with a score of 63.3. Meanwhile, Santander in Spain was the most improved, up 4.0 points.
Halifax Share Dealing posted the smallest gap between how customers and non-customers rated it, which Forrester treats as a competitive asset in its own right. UK investment firms also moved up.
In the US, hotels showed the highest industry average at 61.7, while auto and home insurers improved the most, gaining 4.5 points.
In Asia Pacific, Australia and India showed uplifts in the banking sector, while Singapore saw dips in investment firms and health insurers.
These are not coincidental winners. They sit in CX-intensive sectors where frontline behaviour visibly shapes customer relationships.
Nuances To Pay Attention To
There are a few points to be cautious of. First, the starkest figure – 37% of organisations showed a negative EX impact – is US-only and should not be read as a global verdict.
Second, the index judges EX largely by its contribution to customer and commercial outcomes. But there is an argument that wellbeing, belonging, and psychological safety matter on their own terms.
These areas, although difficult to measure, are significant contributors to employee experience. But without a clear link to customer and commercial impact, there is a risk investment in these areas gets shifted to a more visible contributor.
Used well, though, the index gives EX leaders a seat at the table where growth is discussed. The challenge now is that their work will be scored on customer and commercial impact, not engagement alone.
Forrester’s Total Experience Score changes enrich the experience conversation. But they also leave EX leaders with greater accountability to prove their worth.
