SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Thrive Global, SAP, and Qualtrics are announcing the launch of the Thrive XM Index, a groundbreaking new diagnostic tool to be featured in Fortune Magazine. The Index will measure and recognize the world’s leading companies who deliver a meaningful people experience coupled with strong business performance. Thrive Global Founder and CEO Arianna Huffington, Jennifer Morgan, President of the Americas and Asia Pacific-Japan and Executive Board Member at SAP, and Qualtrics Co-Founder Jared Smith will make a formal announcement at the Fortune Brainstorm Health Conference in San Diego.
"The employee experience is the number one driver of sustainable success,” said Arianna Huffington, Founder and CEO of Thrive Global. “But until now, there hasn’t been a way to track the overall employee experience and show how it connects directly to business performance. We’re thrilled today to announce The Thrive XM Index to celebrate the companies worldwide that are investing in their own people -- and in turn, setting themselves up for sustainable business success.”
Using a combination of proprietary methodology, employee feedback, and HR expertise, SAP + Qualtrics, Thrive Global, and SAP SuccessFactors will generate a groundbreaking new index in partnership with Fortune Magazine. The Thrive XM Index will link the people experience of an organization to its business performance. Participating companies will be assessed at no cost in three distinct areas:
- The Thrive XM Employee Study: Distributed to a representative sample of the company’s employee population to gain insights around individual employee experience and well-being in five distinct categories of moments that matter in which an employee’s relationship with a company is made or broken: Family, Health, Job, Finances, and Time
- The Thrive XM HR Study: HR-reported data and performance insights
- Business Performance: Customer experience data (i.e. net promoter score or related data) and financial results
The Index will combine employee-reported experience information, HR-reported performance insights, and business performance data, allowing companies – for the first time – to receive a comprehensive view of the way experience metrics (X-data™) and HR metrics (O-data™) can collectively serve as leading indicators for business performance.
“Almost every conversation I have with other CEOs turns to their employee experience,” said Ryan Smith, Co-Founder and CEO of Qualtrics. “It is essential that organizations get the experience right and are prepared to address key moments in an employee’s life cycle. The Thrive XM Index assesses those key moments and helps organizations truly understand experiences from the employee perspective. There has never been a more critical time to get this right.”
What kind of experiences? The birth of a child. The death of a loved one. Someone’s first leadership role or a promotion that requires them to relocate, put their children in new schools, and put in extra hours. A health scare, or unexpected expense that affects one’s financial situation, just to name a few. In many ways, these experiences define our lives, but they are also often where the biggest pain points occur. When organizations zero in on these experiences they will see they often happen at the intersection of work and life. When organizations don’t handle these moments well, they will see the negative impact on their bottom line.
“In today’s experience economy, your company’s employees expect and seek out the same customer-grade experience of their favorite brands and products in their workplace. And the people experience -- how your company supports them in the moments that matter -- is indicative of your business's future performance, growth, and success,” said Jennifer Morgan, President of the Americas and Asia Pacific-Japan and Member of the Executive Board at SAP. “This index will prove one simple idea: when you focus on the people, the numbers will follow.”
The inaugural Thrive XM Index list will be published by Fortune. Fortune 500 companies with at least 1,000 employees are eligible to participate.
For more information visit: Fortune.com/ThriveXM. To read a co-authored piece on the business value and connection points between people experience and business performance, visit Fortune.com.
