Exploring the Experiential Office Concept

There’s a good chance that you’re reading this from your home office, or perhaps your kitchen counter, maybe even your living room; there’s a strong possibility that you’re attired in your pajamas, with background audio courtesy of your child’s kindergarten Zoom class singing, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” This is the “office” for many professionals today, but perhaps not for much longer. With vaccine distribution underway, the potential return to the workplace may finally be upon us.

Or is it? Has this great experiment in working from home forever altered what we mean when we talk about an “office?”

As individuals and entities throughout the real estate industry — from owners to architects to tenants — contemplate a return to office environments, there has been increasing discussion about how offices need to evolve in order to attract employees, who may no longer consider their daily presence in a cubicle to be a de rigueur aspect of their work experience. In the course of this chatter, one term has become increasingly linked with the future of the workplace: the experiential office.

To better understand this evolving concept, LoopNet spoke with an architect and a workplace strategist, and the first of those discussions, with workplace strategist Tamar Moy of Newmark, appears below.

“Work isn’t defined now as a place you go, it’s something that you do”

Tamar Moy

Let’s start simple: what does the term experiential office mean?

In short, offices should be designed for peoples’ overall experience when they’re in the space.

People today want the workplace to both satisfy the needs they have when they’re in the space and align with their individual values. An experiential design process won’t just drive straight into physical needs, but will look at what the workplace should do, should promote and should say about the company from a more holistic perspective.

At Newmark we use what we call the “five P” methodology.

People. Who do you want to attract and what’s important to their values, because more and more people are taking jobs at companies that they think align with their purpose and their values.

Process. What are the tasks that people are doing when they’re in the space?

Performance. What behaviors do you want people to have? What tools do they need to have?

Purpose. This ties back to the people, reflecting the organization’s culture and values and helping to promote those elements, and aligning with your employees.

Place. People now have a choice, and will likely continue to have a choice, as to where they want to do their work. Work isn’t defined now as a place you go, it’s something that you do.

How does this tie into bringing people back into the workplace?

To bring people back into the workplace, you need to kind of reestablish its value proposition, and make sure that you’re creating this unique, consistent, personal and bespoke experience. Because each employee is a unique person with individual desires, experiential workplaces offer a variety of space types and experiences. It’s multisensory, meaning that you’re not just expecting that people come into the workplace and they’re in this hermetically sealed box, and you’re expecting them to be happy and high-performing. That’s not the way humans are built.

For instance, employees need variety in lighting levels. Some workplaces now are creating their own scents, like a hotel might, where you walk into a certain hotel and there’s a branded aroma. I worked with Google and we put in ceiling fans, because it created just this slight breeze.

It’s really about helping to engage all the senses, because humans, based on our evolution, are attuned to work that way. All of this goes into creating an experience that’s unique and considers, from a brain science perspective and an evolution perspective, what we need to work our best. And it’s not putting everyone in a shoebox, with the same level of lighting everywhere and no airflow. So, all of these things that a space can do to be more reactive and to promote positive behaviors from a physical perspective, as well as connect people and engage people, all of those elements go into making up an experiential workplace.

Maybe the reason it’s been hard to define is because it’s a big concept. It might also be more about the types of culture you’re trying to build. Some firms now have a workplace experience manager embedded in their space. And it’s not the facilities person of yesteryear; it’s someone who’s much more empowered and much more people-skilled and trained in emotional intelligence, as opposed to only knowing how to run the mechanical systems.

“It’s about creating this unique, personal experience all the way through your workday”

Tamar Moy

What are some of the tangible elements that might define the experiential office?

I think technology is a big one, because that’s a way to connect people. At Newmark, we have the “Newmark Neighborhood” app. Someone would download the building app on their phone, it can be branded to the individual company that a person’s working for, and as you approach the building it will know where you are and welcome you. You have, on your phone, your employee badge that you can swipe to get into the building and at your elevator it will know what floor you’re supposed to go to. If you have an ergonomic, adjustable height desk, it could automatically adjust the desk to be the height that you want. When you walk into a conference room it knows that you like lighting at a particular level. You could also register your visitors, so you don’t need to call reception or call security. You could have vendors for lunch that are part of the “neighborhood” and provide discounts.

From a social aspect, it could promote different affinity groups. It could tell you that, for instance, there’s a yoga class being offered on the fifth floor. It could go beyond just your company, if your entire building is on the same app, and that’s what we’re trying to ultimately get to, this integrated approach. It’s about creating this unique, personal experience all the way through your workday.

What are some other tangible examples?

With more remote work and flexible work hours, companies are going to really need to understand how space is being used. If people are never in their offices, but always in conference rooms and open teaming areas, you want to know that so maybe you can convert some of the individual space to the type of space that people really use.

Using sensor and badging data, you would have a really good sense of the flow of people throughout the space to fine-tune your design and your space envelope. You can also feed it back into the experience of the space. If there’s a particular restroom or a pantry, for example, that’s being used a lot because of an adjacent event that’s happening, the sensors can alert facility or workplace managers to check on the status of it — and clean it or restock the supplies — even if it’s not due for another round of cleaning.

There’s also media architecture, which is technology embedded into the design — that’s another trend we’re seeing a lot. It can be really immersive, floor-to-ceiling screens, for example, that have programming looping on them that really speaks to the legacy of the firm or the way that you’re engaging with community today. It’s really about having a much more robust effort to celebrate what makes your company unique.

“The workplace experience now isn’t just physical, it’s virtual”

Tamar Moy

Another thing that companies are looking at now from a design perspective: how do we make the experience consistent across the different types of workforces that we have? If we have distributed teams, and you have some people that are in the office all the time, and some that are remote and some that are hybrid, we have to be really mindful about not creating different subcategories of employees. Because now your workplace is not just defined as the physical space; it’s now your intranet, your virtual collaboration tools, everything needs to be branded consistently. The workplace experience now isn’t just physical, it’s virtual.

At some of the more progressive firms, it’s not just about having Zoom up on the wall of a conference room. [Wide-camera lens] allow you to see people standing and moving around the room, and you can also use a touch screen to bring up data and manipulate it. It’s creates a much more immersive experience, and you feel like you’re a part of it even if you’re not physically there, as opposed to just seeing people in a room from the neck up.

“Instead of having IT or support staff in a different city, an experiential workplace might choose to take inspiration from the Apple Genius Bar”

Tamar Moy

How does the experiential office concept impact office layout?

An experiential workplace needs to speak to the unique personal needs of the employees — everybody’s different. Experiential workplaces will offer a greater variety of spaces that employees might chose to use. They’re tend to be more lounge spaces, standing-height meeting spaces that you can reserve for quick meetings, café spaces — you could list 50 different types of spaces that you might choose. So, from a layout perspective, the variety of amenity spaces and shared support spaces is greater.

Another example for some companies is instead of having IT or support staff on a different floor, or in a different city, an experiential workplace might choose to take inspiration from the Apple Genius Bar. So, next to the café space where everyone goes there might be something like a genius bar, and you’ll have your IT help desk there. And they’re highlighted as a service to make your life easier. You don’t have to go find them in another elevator bank; they’re literally right there where you’re going to and from every day.

Experiential workplaces, as another example, might have a coffee bar — and these are very specific examples — but the idea is that there’s someone there, that works there every day, that knows you. That personal experience is really part of it, as well. So, the same reason that you might choose to go to the local coffee bar in your neighborhood that’s smaller and you know the people, as opposed to the big chain store, they’re looking to mimic that experience in the workplace.

It sounds like experiential offices are also looking to provide all of the resources that you might need within the office itself. Whereas it used to be that maybe you would go outside of the office for a few minutes to get that cup of coffee or to pick up a sandwich, there is this emphasis on providing all those resources within your office space, or at least the property.

That’s the way that a lot of these technology campuses have been designed, and they’ve been talking about that for a while. And maybe it’s not the smartest from a square footage or a usage perspective, but the gains that it gives you in people feeling more engaged and connected, in the long term, make sense financially.

But I think for experiential workplaces, it’s about the idea of giving people choice. The old model, like those technology campuses, was designed so people never leave. It was about keeping people there, so you don’t lose that precious productivity time for them to go out into the world to get their coffee. In the experiential workplace, employees have those resources there if you want that, but you also are supportive if someone says, “I need to take a walk and go to the coffee place downstairs.” Let people have what they need, and trust them as adults to know how to get their work done.

“You have to elevate the workplace to be more reactive to peoples’ expectation of how things can be smart and efficient today”

Tamar Moy

How much of this is related to the pandemic, and how much is part of a larger ongoing trend?

It was definitely a topic of conversation beforehand. But COVID and the resulting conversation about needing to bring people back in to the office by offering them a really meaningful experience that they can’t get from home, has definitely evolved the discussion and put it on the front burner.

But it didn’t start from this. I think it started from newer generations learning to expect ease. Your home is a smart home, and you have to elevate the workplace to be more reactive to peoples’ expectation of how things can be smart and efficient today. Also, as a community, I think we’ve been more focused in the past few years on quality of life and wellness, and I think it’s a continuation of that trend.

And then there’s the war for top talent, and people demanding these sorts of things, as in, “I have three different offers, they’re all kind of the same financially. The experience, what my day-to-day life is going to be, is what’s going to help me make my decision.”

You’ve seen it too with not just workplaces and interior design, but even how developers now are developing cities and towns and buildings. From a building perspective, the idea of strengthening a community within an office has become a priority for developers. They’re thinking, “what can I offer tenants to make them want to come and be part of this building community?”

Early on in the pandemic, people talking about their workplace experience often said, “this is actually really good, I’m working pretty well and productivity hasn’t gone down, and I could see staying like this.” And then, four months later, it changed to “Stuff that was in the pipeline got done well and we had preestablished teams that knew each other before we went into quarantine, but now we’re at a point where we should be coming up with the next great thing. We need to be building new business or we’re at a point in the lifecycle where we’re supposed to be thinking of the next great product or service.” And that’s the kind of ideation work that’s really suffering now, because that’s harder to do when people aren’t together.

I think the shift in the experiential workplace will be more about not just collaboration, which has been the trend forever, it’s now going to be about ideation, and that creative thinking, outside-the-box brainstorming. You’ll have immersive environments where people can work together, and put up stickers or banners on the wall and move things around.

How do you think experiential offices will be implemented for smaller tenants?

It’s definitely harder when you’re a smaller group. But I think a lot of the stuff that isn’t specifically space-related — people, process, performance, purpose — four of the five Ps, that could still get implemented at any scale. So, if you want to make sure the process of logging in, and accessing files, resources and materials is consistent whether you’re in the space, at home or somewhere else — that could be done regardless. If you want to make sure that there’s really strong programming that brings people together — that could be done regardless of whether you have a scrum room or not, for example.

Also, I think for smaller tenants, they might be in a building that has some of these experiential centers that they can rent out or use and they share it with other tenants in a building; and then your community becomes larger than just your organization. I’ve seen some clients who are smaller in size that really value those types of building amenities, because it doesn’t really make sense to build it within their envelope, but they can use the building’s multipurpose room or lounge spaces.

You’ve touched on some of this already, but what do you think the benefits are to companies that implement experiential office concepts?

A lot of it is the soft and fuzzy — the qualitative stuff we’ve been talking about — the recruitment, the retention because of the engagement. But there is definitely some research out there that shows more financial benefits. I’ve seen research that says that companies that focus on the employees’ experience make approximately four times the average profit and twice the average revenue than companies that don’t.

There’s a research paper that I wrote for Newmark that talks about the “purpose” side of the five Ps. And there’s some statistics in there about how companies that focus on purpose and aligning it with their employees, over time, are shown to be more profitable. There’s Deloitte studies from before COVID that talk about employee engagement and found that more than 90% of employees believe that a distinctive workplace culture is really important to a business’ success.

There’s a lot of data that shows that it’s not just about salary and having a desk. There’s a lot about the culture of a workplace that feeds into the experience and will be really crucial going forward from a business perspective.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.