Hidden Economics - The Link Between Employee Experience & Stock Performance in the S&P 500

Understanding the true business impact of employee experience has long been a challenge for leaders. Is EX a cultural initiative or a measurable performance lever?

In this exclusive Welliba report, we analysed more than 25 million public data points from over 150,000 websites to build the most comprehensive view of employee experience across the S&P 500 to date.

The findings are clear: organisations that lead on employee experience outperform the market. Download the full report to uncover the hidden economics behind organisational success.

This large-scale analysis was powered by Welliba’s AI-driven EXcelerate platform, enabling consistent, comparable insight across all 500 companies.

For years, EX has been described as a “soft” metric. This research demonstrates it is anything but.

Companies ranked in the Top 100 for employee experience delivered 5% higher total shareholder returns over five years than the rest of the index.

The study also reveals:

Human interactions, particularly colleagues and direct managers, are the most consistent positive drivers of EX.
Blocking factors are highly contextual, meaning there is no single universal failure point.
Targeted improvement in weaker dimensions delivers faster gains than broad, unfocused investment.

This reframes EX from engagement reporting to strategic capital allocation.