The Workplace Is Becoming an Experience Platform

Nathan Bricklin
Jul 15
3 min read

The Consumerization of Work (Part 4)

For a long time, organizations primarily thought about the workplace as a place to house work.

People needed desks. Meeting rooms. Phones. Computers. Space was largely designed around efficiency, hierarchy, and accommodating headcount.

That thinking has shifted quite a bit.

Today, many organizations recognize that employees often choose where and how they work based on the quality of the experience surrounding the work itself.

That’s one reason the role of the office has changed so much over the last several years.

The office is no longer just a place people go because they have to. Increasingly, it needs to support things that are harder to replicate elsewhere: collaboration, connection, learning, culture, mentoring, relationship building, and shared experiences.

In a lot of ways, the workplace is becoming more similar to hospitality, retail, and higher education environments.

Those industries learned long ago that people remember how environments make them feel long after they leave them. They remember whether experiences feel welcoming, intuitive, social, energizing, and thoughtfully designed around human behavior.

The same thing is happening in the workplace.

Employees notice whether the office feels active or draining. Whether spaces support the kinds of interactions people actually need. Whether the environment helps teams connect naturally or creates additional friction throughout the day.

That doesn’t mean every workplace needs expensive amenities or highly designed showcase spaces.

What matters is whether the workplace supports the experience the organization is trying to create.

If collaboration is important, the environment should make collaboration easier. If relationship building matters, employees need spaces that support informal interaction and connection. If flexibility is part of the culture, the workplace should feel adaptable rather than rigid.

The strongest workplace experiences feel intentional.

The physical space, technology, operations, services, and culture reinforce each other instead of functioning as disconnected pieces. Employees can tell when the experience has been thoughtfully designed around how people work and interact.

This is another reason hospitality thinking has become increasingly relevant in workplace strategy.

Hospitality focused organizations spend a tremendous amount of time thinking about transitions, service quality, atmosphere, behavior patterns, and how people emotionally experience environments. Those same ideas increasingly apply to workplaces as organizations compete for engagement, connection, and talent.

Because at the end of the day, employees experience the workplace much more like a service than a piece of real estate. And the organizations that understand that shift design workplaces very differently.

Nathan Bricklin

Senior Consultant, Global Workplace Experience

Helping enterprise leaders close the gap between executive intent and lived employee experience at scale.

Email Nathan

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