A good employee experience is not made solely by a benefits program, an ERG, career-development opportunities, or a community-building event. Instead, it’s a confluence of things that result in the way employees are made to feel. Do they feel respected or valueless, trusted or micromanaged, taken care of or left to fend for themselves?

In a From Day Webinar titled, “The Hidden Impact of Positive Employee Experience–and How to Enhance It,” four corporate HR and talent leaders explored the secrets of creating a positive employee experience. The panel, which I moderated, concluded that the quality of worker experience depends largely on four factors: connection, communication, consistency, and choice.

Connection

Attrition doesn’t necessarily happen because employees aren’t happy with the work itself, said Kat Anderson, the director of corporate HR at gaming company Light & Wonder, but because they don’t feel a connection with their manager and colleagues. “The connections keep people at companies for a very long time because we like to connect and work with one another. We like that sense of teamwork.”

The most important relationship when it comes to experience, according to the panel, is between an employee and their manager. Tending to this relationship is imperative for a positive employee experience. But the reality is that any program meant to improve the employee experience at the individual level has to be administered on the corporate level in order to maintain efficiency and consistency. So, how to make the connection between corporate administration and individual experience?

Annie Rosencrans, director of people and culture for the U.S. workforce at HR-tech company Hibob, said understanding who is responsible for what is important. “At the corporate level, the people responsible for the company-level initiatives and employee experience, that’s senior leadership, that’s people in culture or HR. They’re looking at the big picture of ‘What do we need to drive engagement and retention and attract talent?’ At the individual level, I think that ultimately comes down to management. That’s managers that are closest to their team and understand what’s going on.”

Communication

Once you establish ownership, open the lines of communication. To accomplish this, global tech company HP created a kind of council comprising representatives from a variety of locations and departments.

Luciana Duarte, the company’s VP and global head of employee experience, emphasized the value of “representing different parts of the organization–be it in internal communications, or engagement, or even in change management–having that input from people around the company, at different levels, in different roles, and certainly across different locations.”

Consistency

To have an effect on overall experience, connection and communication must be consistent from the moment an employee walks in the door to the moment they leave. If you’re waiting until an employee’s last day to ask them why they’re leaving, “that’s already too late,” said Larry McAlister, VP of global talent at cloud-computing platform NetApp. He identified the negative “micro-moments” that can be harmful, like feeling ignored by one’s boss or having too many one-on-one meetings canceled, which may ultimately add up to an employee’s decision to quit.

To tie individual experience to corporate effect, managers have to be able to recognize patterns in what they hear from their direct reports. Panelists recommended quick polls of two to three questions, longer quarterly surveys, and keeping employee Net Promoter Scores (eNPS). For those who need to go further, perhaps to suss out bigger problems, focus groups and regular one-on-one conversations are worth it.

Managers should be given plenty of ways to stay connected with their teams. “[Individual challenges] will inevitably happen, and it’s ultimately on the manager to have their ear to the ground and address this,” said Rosencrans.

Choice

Finally, giving employees some measure of control over their experience is important to fostering a positive one. “Giving them choices is a really great way to make sure that the resources that companies are investing in are actually used fully,” said Duarte. “That’s one area we can learn from and perhaps apply to other parts of the employee experience.”

Plus, giving employees choice in their experience is both a talent attractor and a talent retainer, according to McAlister. “Being able to give people the opportunity to express, ‘Here’s how I want to work,’ [and we can say], ‘That’s what we want you to do here.’ I think a lot about this idea of individual choice and individual power.”

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance reporter based in Richmond, VA, who writes about workplace culture and policies, hiring, DEI, and issues faced by women. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Fast Company, and Food Technology, among others, and has been syndicated by MSN and The Motley Fool.