Employees Compare Work to Every Other Experience They Have
- Nathan Bricklin
- 3 minutes ago
- 3 min read
The Consumerization of Work (Part 1)
One of the biggest shifts happening in the workplace right now has very little to do with office attendance policies or AI tools.
It’s that employees no longer compare work experiences only to other workplaces.
They compare them to every other experience they have throughout the day.
People order coffee from their phone in seconds. They track packages in real time. Their streaming apps know what they want before they search for it. Their maps reroute automatically around traffic. Hotels remember preferences. Airlines push updates instantly. Consumer technology has trained people to expect experiences that are intuitive, responsive, and easy to navigate.
Then they arrive at work and suddenly the experience often feels complicated.
Employees can’t find a place to sit. Conference room technology works differently from room to room. They need three approvals to complete a simple request. Systems don’t talk to each other. Information lives in multiple places. Basic workplace processes still require too much effort to navigate.
What’s interesting is that employees don’t consciously separate these experiences anymore. They simply experience friction when something feels unnecessarily difficult.
That shift matters because expectations are changing faster than many organizations realize.
The workplace used to operate differently from consumer experiences because employees had limited alternatives and limited visibility into what “good” could look like. Today, people interact with thoughtfully designed consumer experiences constantly, and those expectations naturally carry into the workplace.
This doesn’t mean work should feel identical to social media apps or online shopping.
Work is more complex. Security matters. Regulations matter. Enterprise systems support far more complicated workflows.
But the expectation that experiences should feel intuitive, connected, and reasonably easy to navigate is no longer limited to consumer products.
That expectation now applies to work too.
This is one reason workplace experience has started borrowing ideas from hospitality, retail, and customer experience design.
Organizations are recognizing that employees experience the workplace as one connected journey across spaces, services, systems, and support teams. They notice whether spaces feel welcoming, whether support is responsive, whether technology feels reliable, and whether processes help them move through the day efficiently.
The companies that adapt well to this shift focus less on adding more layers of process and more on reducing unnecessary friction.
Clearer communication. Simpler workflows. Faster support. Better integration between systems. More intuitive workplace experiences overall.
None of those things sounds especially revolutionary on its own. But together they fundamentally change how work feels day to day.
And increasingly, employees are noticing the difference.
Nathan Bricklin
Senior Consultant, Global Workplace Experience
Helping enterprise leaders close the gap between executive intent and lived employee experience at scale.
Read more about Nathan's approach and methodology when it comes to Workplace Experience here at his WPx STAR Page:
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