Employees' ability to explore and exploit is a micro-foundational component of organizational ambidexterity and hugely influential for organizational performance outcomes. However, little research has directly examined the relationship between exploration and exploitation with a performance at the individual-level. Building on the hierarchical dynamic capability perspective of ambidexterity, we investigate how employee exploration and exploitation affect task performance. We argue that employees' ability to explore enhances task performance through employee exploitation. Furthermore, drawing on the strategic fit perspective, we examine how this employee exploration-exploitation-task performance relationship varies across different levels of organizational competitive orientation. Using a sample of 278 employees from three IT companies in China, our findings demonstrate that both employee exploration and exploitation have a positive effect on task performance, and employee exploitation acts as an effective mechanism which partially explains the relationship between employee exploration and task performance. Notably, we also find that the path relationship of employee exploration-exploitation-task performance is stronger when competitive orientation is low rather than high. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.