Your boardroom battle lines are drawn. On one side, CEOs wielding return-to-office mandates like medieval maces. On the other, employees holding onto their WFH privileges like shields.

But here’s the thing, while everyone’s been arguing about where people should work, the smartest companies have quietly moved on to asking how they should feel when they get there.

With immediate results showing increased occupancy, engagement and performance, workplace experience is emerging as a powerful alternative to policy-driven mandates. From early adopters to fast-followers, UnWork have identified four key lessons from financial workplaces that are transforming experience for employees and visitors.

Having spent the past year working with some of the City’s most competitive and forward-thinking financial firms, we have witnessed a quiet revolution happening. These aren’t traditional banking floors: endless rows of terminals, soulless fluorescent lighting and intimidation. These companies are designing their workplace experiences around their employees’ needs. And the results are transformational.

First Lesson: AI-powered workplaces personalise your experience (HSBC)

AI-powered workplaces are anticipating your needs before they arise, offering help when it matters, removing barriers before you encounter them and understanding the context of your workday.

UnWork supported one global investment bank to pilot a workspace app that automatically prompts you with one-click reservation, allowing you to book everything you need for the week in one go, around your schedule and which of your colleagues are in the office. The Design My Day feature learns and adapts from your personal preferences and even adjusts your environment based on team proximity, lighting and temperature. The backend supporting AI-powered experience is driven by location-aware, authentication, smart assistants, intelligent integration and autonomic systems.

These features aren’t just gimmicks, they are driven by real demands for removing friction from daily routines and allowing talent to focus on high-value work.

Second Lesson: Neuro-inclusive workplaces improve experience for everyone (Thames Water)

It turns out inclusive design improves day-to-day experience for everyone, not just those with formal diagnoses. 83% of surveyed employees said their daily experience improved in workplace environments that included: sensory spaces (high to low stimuli), bespoke non-disturb destinations, additional focus settings, additional community and collaboration features, inclusive technology and hybrid meeting systems, improved acoustics and sound masking, clear wayfinding, signage and directions, excellent internal communication.

Interestingly, only 25% of those surveyed self-identified as neurodiverse or as having invisible disabilities. Which means the impact is far broader than the legal compliance checkbox, it’s a universal uplift in how people navigate and enjoy their day.

Third Lesson: Amenity-rich workplaces enable and inspires tomorrow’s workforce (Mastercard)

Gone are the days when an untouched bar, bowl of fruit and a ping-pong table qualified as culture. The smartest financial firms aren’t simply improving their offices, they are creating destinations of choice, or, simply places where people want to be.

Mastercard are investing in hospitality-grade services as productivity enablers to activate and engage their employees. Rooftop terraces with skyline views, food halls with 15 chef-led counters, AI-personalised coffee stations and wellness lounges that double as therapy spaces. Places where you can grab a green smoothie, host a client dinner, recharge in a sensory room, or take a hybrid call from a plant-filled terrace.

This is a strategic response to a changing workforce that values convenience, experience, and authenticity. Gen Z and millennial talent will make up most of our workforce in 2030 and expect workplaces that are convenience driven, psychologically comfortable, support growth and learning, build community, are digitally advanced and experience-focused.

Fourth Lesson: Space is the new competitive advantage (JPMC)

2026 brings critical workplace transformations: offices are no longer just places to work but they are seen as products in themselves, with users who expect collaboration, flexibility, wellness and seamless digital integration. There’s a growing demand for activity-based working, hybrid-ready collaboration areas and environments that support learning and work-life balance.

At the same time, cost pressures and growth uncertainty are forcing financial firms to rationalise their real estate footprints. The leaders are those who are using space strategically. And because of this, evidence-led insights about where to focus and where to intervene in space planning is more important than ever. Booking.com consolidated 14 sites to 1, offloaded their leases and closed underused floors based on real-time data, reducing ghost bookings, no shows and increasing utilisation.

Modular platforms now integrate with existing tech to benchmark utilisation, model demand and forecast occupancy based on mandates, anchor days and events. With these AI-powered insights, firms can make real-time decisions about space, unassigned seating and peak usage – turning static portfolios into dynamic spaces. At JP Morgan Chase, insight-driven space is already delivering sharper efficiency and a workplace that adapts to the people inside it.

The future of work is human. The firms getting ahead are the ones engineering magnetism and increasingly, it’s not salary, title or tenure attracting and retaining talent. It’s the vibrancy metric.