We have all seen the headlines about how work and workplaces are changing. These reflect complicated challenges, which include:
– Workplace productivity in crisis: Just 10% of UK employees are actively engaged at work (Gallup 2024).
– Real estate is being rethought: Companies are actively reviewing portfolios, balancing space reduction with strategic investments.
– Workforce demographics will change by 2030: Gen Z and Millennials will make up your largest headcount in 2030. Unlike previous generations, they expect meaningful workplace culture. If they’re not satisfied, they’ll move on (McKinsey, 2023).
– Technology is accelerating faster than workplaces can adapt: AI adoption is outpacing organisational readiness (Gartner 2023).
– Meeting higher expectations of experience: 65% of employees cite the workplace as triggers to leave. People will brave a commute to collaborate, connect and access key technologies (Leesman Index, 2023).
– People don’t take jobs, they join vibes: Talent expects support to achieve their goals through connection, cohesion, learning and premium amenity (HBR, 2024).
– Friction is a productivity tax: Every daily password reset, connection drop and “where’s the Zoom link?” compounds over time (Microsoft, 2023).
These changes make it rather more urgent to have a strategy around experience, rather than leaving it to chance.
The workplace is about more than desks and data, it’s about shaping behaviours. Meeting employee expectations of the office requires understanding them first. Defining and clearly communicating the workplaces’ purpose is crucial. While this varies across organisations and should depend on employee’s needs, for 70% of senior leaders’, the main reason for maintaining an office is to foster collaboration and knowledge exchange (Leesman Index, 2023).
Experience mapping and user-centred design gives our clients the capability to understand who exactly they are designing for and what critical experiences need to be designed for their future workplace.
It reveals friction points, missed connections and opportunities for transformation. Good design targets these outcomes of improved productivity, reduced friction, higher engagement, genuine wellbeing and increased satisfaction.
At UnWork, when a client approaches us for Experience Mapping, we treat their workforce like they are our customers. Clients will typically get a strategy playbook with user personas and user journey maps explaining what their customers will get in various scenarios. And how these solve for friction or improve productivity.
The generic experience map will look something like this:
In a very straightforward way:
If you provide your employees with a bad workplace experience, you will lose productivity.
If you provide them with a good workplace experience, you will gain productivity.
If you provide them with a very good workplace experience, you will gain even more productivity, as well as attract and retain talent.
You have to tailor the workplace experience to your individual workforce, so that each user is having workplace experiences that are just slightly beyond their expectations. Experience mapping is the tool that allows our clients to achieve this, so they remain at the very top of their game.
