Workplace experience: What Is It and how can you improve it?

Whether your organisation’s top-level goals are to maximise profit, maximise impact, or balance the two, success will rely on hiring the best people and providing them with a workplace experience and environment in which they can do their best work. 

A sure-fire way to give yourself a helping hand is to offer a great experience at work. 

But what exactly does that entail, and what can you as an organisation do to get yourself to a point where your work related experience is truly exceptional? 

What is workplace experience – and how does it differ from employee experience?

The terms ‘workplace experience’ and ‘employee experience’ sometimes get used interchangeably. But there are some differences to be aware of. 

Employee experience is the wider concept. It refers to the experience that someone who works for you has, from the moment they become aware of you during the hiring process, to the day they leave. It includes everything from your recruitment to your internal comms, and from your pay and benefits packages, to your offboarding. It also encompasses work related experiences. 

Workplace experience focuses on how people feel about you your working environment – whether that’s remote, hybrid, or in-office. It covers three main pillars: your people and culture, your physical sites, and your workplace technology. 

Let’s have a closer look at each area. 

People and culture

Will employees find an open, inclusive and supportive environment, where they feel empowered to do their best work, and develop into their best selves? 

Your physical sites

Do people have access to the workspaces they require, to suit different situations? In one day, someone may need space for individual focus time, informal team collaboration, private phone calls, and formal round-table meetings.  

Are these workspaces easy to discover and book? Do you have enough of each type? Are they attractive and comfortable?  

Staff may need to host visitors on-site as part of their jobs. How easy is it to invite guests or contractors, sign them in, keep them safe, and sign them back out? 
 

Workplace technology

What technology is there to support people’s productivity and happiness, and ultimately leave them with more time to focus on the high-value tasks you want them doing? 

Is it convenient to use, and does it all integrate nicely? Or are people expected to remember lots of different login details, switch between systems, and generally spend their time battling tech? 

Workplace technology isn’t all necessarily employee-facing. There will also be tools for workplace experience managers (more on them shortly) to use to ensure they’re always providing the right workspaces, and that these are safe and comfortable. 

We’ll look in more depth at some technology below. 

How does a good workplace experience drive business success? 

Offering an exceptional experience at work is a powerful way to support your employees’ happiness, and thereby their loyalty and engagement levels. And by doing this, you’ll set yourself on the path to greater success in whatever your mission is. Because research shows that organisations with high levels of employee engagement tend to enjoy greater productivity, staff retention, customer engagement, and profitability. 

How does a great workplace experience encourage a return to the office? 

You may have taken a ‘magnet’ approach to getting people to come to your offices, or have opted for a ‘mandate’. Whichever you’ve gone with, a great experience at work is a must-have. 

If you’re requiring people to come in, particularly after a lengthy period of working remotely, offering a truly exceptional experience at work will help colleagues re-engage and minimise resistance. 

And if you’re simply trying to encourage people in, then what better way than by offering workplaces that foster and inspire creativity and collaboration? Make the office somewhere people want to be. 

What is a workplace experience manager?

From what we’ve talked about so far, it’s clear that the role encompasses multiple disciplines, notably:  

Even with the best will in the world, coordinating something as wide-ranging as experiences at work when there isn’t a single person or team with overall responsibility, is challenging. 

That’s why increasing numbers of organisations are appointing dedicated workplace experience managers, coordinators, or employee experience managers (though the latter is a wider-ranging role). Others are taking it a step further, and appointing someone at C-leve 

Whatever the job title, they bring together the elements of all these areas in a holistic way, working closely with colleagues in the above departments, to improve experiences for every employee. Their aim, ultimately, is to ensure people are happy and productive, so that the organisation is successful. 

The will typically include responsibility for: 

What is a workplace experience software, and how does it improve workplace experience?

Technology is there to help people achieve their goals when coming to one of your sites. It can be a powerful and effective way to improve your overall experiences at work. 

In particular, it ensure employees know they’ll have access to the workspaces and resources they’re going to need, if they’re to be comfortable and productive. After all, the last thing you want is people turning up to your offices to find there’s nowhere to work. 

Software avoids this by offering the ability to book resources such as: 

What else should you look for in workplace experience software?

Desk booking and meeting room booking are just part of good workplace apps. Look for software that includes capabilities to support collaboration, productivity, wellbeing, visitor management, and strategic work related planning. Let’s briefly explore some of these, so you know what to look out for.

Collaboration support

Resource booking software can aid collaboration by letting people find when and where colleagues have booked desks, or book on behalf of their team, so that everyone can work in the same area together. The software should also allow you to give teams a regular office base to foster in-person collaboration, through priority access to selected zones on certain days.  

Support for occupancy sensors in your informal areas, so you can display live availability, will further boost teamwork by enabling people to quickly find somewhere for ad hoc chats and breakouts. 

Other productivity and wellbeing support

Elsewhere, environmental factors such as temperature, noise, and air quality, will be key considerations for people when deciding where to work, given the impact they can have on productivity and comfort. 

Software can help by displaying data from in-building sensors during the booking process, or on live screens around your sites. As well as letting people choose suitable space to work, environmental sensors can help you ensure you’re meeting your health and safety requirements. 

Visitor management

When people visit your sites, you want to make sure they’re welcomed, kept safe, and able to get where they need to go as quickly as possible. A Visitor management system that does this and more will be a core part of your overall technology stack. 

Workplace planning and optimisation

As your organisation changes, so will the use of your offices. The mix of sites, buildings, rooms, desks, and other resources will need to adapt to align with your employees’ needs.  

To ensure your workplace experience managers can make the right changes at the right times, they need to know exactly how people are using your buildings. Good software will collect and present insights to inform this. 

These should include: 

Let’s look briefly at how this level of insight can help you respond better to your employees’ needs – and save you money. In a traditional office with a basic room booking calendar, employees may be complaining that meeting rooms are always fully booked. The data from the room booking calendars will confirm this, thereby suggesting you need more meeting rooms.  

But do you actually? A system that incorporates people-counters in your meeting rooms may show that large rooms are frequently being used for small meetings. This would suggest an opportunity to split larger rooms into smaller spaces, or put up movable partition walls so you can operate them as combination rooms. Doing so will be significantly more cost-effective than leasing more floorspace. 

Begin your journey to a better workplace experience today

Technology is a central enabler of exceptional overall work related experiences. Whether you operate a single, small office, or an international network of multi-building campuses, software helps you turn these offices into places people want to come to work – and where they’re empowered to be creative and collaborative.  

If you’d like to find out more about Matrix Booking’s software, book your demo today.