Qualtrics and Mercer are joining forces in a partnership to help companies provide a more meaningful employee experience (EX), a news release from Qualtrics indicated on the company’s website.

The joint initiative, which will enable organizations to combine the offerings of the Qualtrics XM Platform, along with the human resources (HR) expertise and EX advisory services of Mercer, will help organizations around the world understand employee sentiment and identify actions that HR managers could take to improve the daily experience of their workforce, the announcement added.

With employee expectations continuing to evolve following the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on workforces everywhere, companies must listen to their employees closely and often to contend in a competitive labor market, said R.J. Filipski, global head of ecosystem at Qualtrics. Using the Qualtrics software, companies can create employee listening programs that help leaders quickly understand and act on insights on workplace elements, such as benefit preferences, hybrid work models, and manager effectiveness.

Ilya Bonic, president of Mercer’s Career business and head of Mercer Strategy, said that organizations that have invested in digital tools to gather employee input can derive the maximum impact from such an investment by strategically designing their employee listening and response programs and then leveraging Mercer’s employee expertise to create and improve company cultures.

Citing the results of its own research, Qualtrics stated that nearly half of the workforce today say they intend to look for a new job in the next 12 months, and that a generous package of benefits is a top perk that employees are requesting in job searches. “Companies that focus on improving the employee experience will be able to set themselves apart in a competitive labor market,” the Qualtrics news release said.

The new partnership marks the newest merger or collaborative move for Qualtrics, which provides software for customer experience management (CXM) and is based in Provo, Utah. At the end of July, it acquired omnichannel conversational analytics provider Clarabridge on the heels of an earlier July buyout of marketing software startup Usermind.

For its part, Mercer, headquartered in New York City, provides consulting services and is said to be the world’s largest outsourced asset manager, with more than $300 billion outsourced assets under its management and $15 trillion under advisement in total.