As our experience of brands and the services we consume changes, so do our expectations of the places we work. Today’s workers are becoming increasingly savvy and are expecting much more from experiences in and around the workplace.
The increased demand for an experiential workplace could explain the growth over the last decade for workplace features like ‘co-working’ space, with operators expected to lease around 7-9 million sq. ft by 2020. We are currently in the midst of the next socio-industrial revolution, which is changing our societal expectations of the businesses we align with.
The employee workplace experience may be subjective by definition, but the reality is there are multiple factors that determine an employee’s workplace experience: their needs, requirements, preferences, behaviour, organisational structure and dynamics. Although many factors may be out of an individual’s control, understanding the impact of how a workplace affects employee morale and productivity has never been so important.
Interestingly, it was discovered that 59.9% of employees globally agree that their workplace enables them to work productively. Despite this, surprisingly ‘Temperature control’ was the workplace feature with the largest percentage difference between employee satisfaction vs. importance. A staggering 77.8% of employees globally stated that temperature control was of importance. However only 30.1% stated that they were satisfied with the temperature control at their place of work (a difference of -47.7%).
Closely followed was ‘Noise levels’, which 72.5% of employees expressed as being a fundamental workplace element. Interestingly, though, only 30.7% of those surveyed claimed they were satisfied (a difference of -41.8%).
Thereafter, Reboot Digital PR Agency can reveal the other four office features which are among the top cited* with the highest negative percentage difference between employee satisfaction and importance are:
‘Quiet rooms for working alone’ with a difference of -31.7% (60.9% importance vs 29.2% satisfaction), ‘Air quality’ with a difference of -27.1% (68.4% vs 41.3%), ‘Toilets/W.C.’ with a difference of -24.8% (74.9% vs 50.1%) and ‘Restaurant/canteen’ with a difference of -23.4% (71.1% vs 47.9%),
On the reverse side, ‘Mail & post room services’ was the workplace feature with the highest positive percentage difference between employee satisfaction and importance, with 48.2% of employees stating this was of importance and a significant 69.4% feeling satisfied (+21.2%).
Finally, Reboot Digital PR Agency highlighted the other four features offered at work as among the best with the highest positive percentage difference:
‘Reception areas’ with a difference of +19.8% (42.1% vs 61.9%), ‘Health and safety provision’ with a difference of +18.5% (47.5% vs 66%), ‘Wired-in office connectivity’ with a difference of +18% (53.1% vs 71.1%) and finally ‘Security’ with a difference of +17.6% (56.5% vs 74.1%).
*The Leesman office survey was conducted with 401,362 employees, in 458 organisations across 90 countries. *Participants were given 50 workplace features to which they rank the importance and satisfaction of within their workspace.