Most leaders have an HR function. The bigger ones have People & Culture. Almost none have an Employee Experience function. That is the gap.
Human Resources counts heads. It manages contracts, payroll, leave, compliance, exits. Necessary — and not the same thing.
Employee Experience is the totality of a person's relationship with your organisation, from the moment they first hear of you to the moment they leave, and sometimes the moment they come back. Their manager. Their team. The work itself. The systems they use. The values they are asked to live. The room, the tools, the daily rhythm.
HR is administration. EX is design.
The same question, pointed inward
If customer experience asks "what is the journey a customer takes to buy from us, and how do we make it remarkable?", employee experience asks it of the people who work here.
Could your best person leave next month, and you would be the last to know?
That question is the whole chapter. If the answer is yes, the experience is not designed — it is happening to you.
Journey, promise, and the values underneath
The journey maps the real path — attract, hire, onboard, develop, progress, leave. The promise states what you commit to at each stage. Underneath both sit values, principles and behaviours: what you actually reward, which is what people believe regardless of what the poster says.