Why workplace discovery needs to follow how work actually happens Only 21% of global office workers whose workplace had been updated in the previous three years said they felt included a great deal in the decision-making process, according to Gensler’s 2025 Global Workplace Survey That figure is a useful reminder that workplace change is still often done to people rather than developed with them. But there is a further issue. Even a well-run consultation can stop short of understanding the work itself. Surveys, interviews and workshops may tell us what people like, what frustrates them and what they hope a new workplace will provide. They do not automatically show how work moves through the organization, where it catches, or which informal arrangements keep it moving. Before we design the workplace, we need to understand the work. The Workplace Brief Often Starts Too Late By the time a workplace project reaches design, many of its boundaries are already fixed. The portfolio decision has been made. A budget and program may be in place. The project team needs answers about capacity, desk ratios, meeting rooms, technology and finishes. Those choices matter. They describe what will be built. They do not yet explain what the investment must make possible. Briefs often use broad aspirations such as better collaboration, more effective hybrid working or an improved employee experience. All are reasonable. None of these tells the designer what needs to become easier during an ordinary working day, which points of friction matter most, or what else around the workplace must change. If that work has not been done, the gaps are usually filled with benchmarks, preferences and familiar design responses. The project can become increasingly well-defined while the job it is meant to do remains loose. “A workplace brief should begin with the work, not the rooms.” Work As Described Is Not Always Work As Done Most organizations can explain how work is supposed to happen. There are organization charts, job descriptions, policies, process maps and systems. Speak to each function, and people can usually give a coherent account of their responsibilities. Reality becomes clearer when a piece of work is followed from beginning to end. A request enters the formal workflow, but some of the information is missing. An analyst messages someone in another team because they know who can interpret it. An exception is agreed during a short call. A more experienced colleague checks the judgement informally, and the system is updated later so the record catches up with what has already been decided. The process map may show a straight line. The work relied on judgement, relationships, interruptions, access to expertise and a workaround that everybody involved now treats as normal. This is not necessarily evidence of a broken process. It is often how an organization adapts to complexity. But it matters when we are deciding what the workplace should support. A request for ‘more collaboration space’ tells us very little. Following the work may reveal a need for quick confidential conversations, a way to bring remote specialists into an unplanned discussion, or easier access to someone whose knowledge is frequently needed but whose role sits elsewhere in the organization. Counting activity tells us how often people meet. Understanding the work tells us why the interaction exists and what makes it useful. Consultation Is Not The Same As Discovery Employee consultation is important. The people using a workplace should have a meaningful voice in shaping it. But consultation and discovery are doing different jobs. People tend to describe the work they remember, the problems that are most visible, or the environment they would prefer. They may not mention a workaround because it has become routine. Senior leaders can explain the intended operating model without seeing the small acts of coordination that make it viable. Interviews held separately by function can produce several accurate accounts without revealing how the work joins up between them. The harder work is more direct. Sit with people and watch what they do. Trace a recent case through the organization. Look at the tools, messages and documents used along the way. Bring together people from either side of a handover and compare their accounts. Examine the quiet periods, the peak periods and the moments when something unusual happens. The aim is not to document every task. It is to identify the recurring patterns, dependencies and constraints that have a consequence for place, technology, policy or behavior. “Workarounds are not noise around the process. They are evidence about how the organization really operates.” Follow The Work Across Organizational Boundaries Workplace discovery is often organized around functions because functions are easy to identify. Work is less respectful of those boundaries. A customer issue may cross operations, finance and technology before it is resolved. A product decision may depend on people in several countries who rarely share the same working hours. An employee joining the organization may experience a single process that is owned in fragments by HR, IT, security, facilities and their line manager. Looking at each group separately risks designing for a collection of local preferences. Following the work exposes the handovers, competing demands and shared conditions that the organization needs the workplace to support. It also reveals variation. The same role may work differently by location, market, seniority or point in the business cycle. Some of that variation is unnecessary. Some is essential. Treating it all as one average pattern may create a standard workplace that fits nobody particularly well. Good discovery therefore asks where work starts, how it reaches a decision, what information people need, where it waits, and what happens when the formal route does not work. It pays attention to who is brought into the conversation late, which relationships carry knowledge across boundaries, and which parts of the work need privacy, concentration, immediacy or physical presence. Turning Observation Into An Investment Brief The opportunity is not to create more research for its own sake. It is to give an expensive workplace decision a clearer line of sight to the work it is intended to improve. Suppose an organization wants project decisions to move faster. Observation shows that issues stall when local teams cannot quickly reach the specialists or decision-makers they need. That finding can be translated into a workplace requirement: easy access to small hybrid settings where a short, focused conversation can happen without booking a large meeting room days in advance. The workplace is only one part of the response. Availability norms, decision rights, technology, and leadership behavior may also need attention. An operational owner needs to remain responsible after the project team leaves. Early evidence might include fewer handovers, less time waiting for clarification and shorter decision cycles. The design has not been asked to solve the whole organizational problem. It has been given a clear job within a wider response. That creates a more useful investment brief. It connects the expected change to an observed pattern of work, then to a workplace condition, the supporting organisational changes, an accountable owner and evidence that the change is beginning to happen. “The building creates the conditions. The return comes from what people can then do differently.” A Mini Diagnostic Before Moving Into Design We have surveyed employees and run focus groups. Have we understood the work? Perhaps. The test is whether the findings explain how work moves across roles and boundaries, not only what people say they need from the workplace. If the output is mainly a list of preferences, the discovery is not yet complete. We already have process maps. What else would observation add? Process maps usually show the agreed route. Observation reveals the judgement, delays, interruptions, and informal coordination around it. Both views matter, particularly where the real work depends on relationships or exceptions. How much of the organisation needs to be studied? Enough to see the recurring patterns and the meaningful variation. Sample different roles, locations, levels of seniority, handovers and operating conditions. The purpose is not exhaustive documentation; it is confidence that the workplace brief is not built around a partial view. Can the workplace team do this alone? The workplace team can lead the enquiry, but the work belongs to the business. Operational leaders, employees, technology, HR and service teams may all hold part of the picture. Someone must join those perspectives without reducing the discovery to separate functional wish lists. How do we know we are ready to brief the design? The organization should be able to name the observable changes it expects in an ordinary working day, show which workplace choices support them, identify what must change beyond the physical environment, and say who remains responsible for realizing the value. If the answers still center on desks, rooms, attendance and amenities, the project may be ready to discuss space. It is probably not yet ready to describe the return. Before asking what the workplace should become, how much do we really know about the work it is expected to support? Source: Gensler, ‘Designing Workplaces That Work — With Your People’, August 2025: https://www.gensler.com/blog/designing-workplaces-that-work-with-your-people Howard Murray Senior Consultant, Global Workplace Operations Drives strategy, operations, and transformation excellence, aligning people, processes, and governance to deliver sustainable business performance. 4xi Global Consulting & Solutions is a team of talented leaders from both the client-side and service provider side, impacting the Human Experience (HX) for people at work, in education, rest, and at leisure. We believe in a people-first, experience-led philosophy. Whether client, employee, or guest – their experience is the fundamental foundation of success. WHAT WE DO We work with corporations, service providers, and innovators: Strategic Advisory & Special Projects (SPx) Headquarters Fractional Support On-Demand Evolving Experiences© - Employee (EX) & Customer Experience (CX) Design4Life©: Environmental, Physical, and Experiential Design Global Amenities Strategy, Design & Operations TRUE NORTH©: Strategic Partnership & Growth Sustainability Simplified©: Supply Chain & Innovation Market Research Reports & Benchmarking Project Management Office Food Craft Culinary Consulting CREATE. : Graphic Design and Creative Services DATAxi: Data Ingestion and Visualization Explorers Innovation Directory: Gateway to Innovation 4xi is proud to be Chair of WORKTECH Academy for North America and a member of its Leadership Advisory Board. 4xi is a Global Ambassador for WORKTECH Academy. 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The Workday During Change, Part 1 Some of the most consequential change meetings I’ve been part of ended with a very different feeling depending on which side of the announcement you were sitting on. For the people who had spent months designing the change, the announcement often felt like a major point of completion. They had worked through the decisions, agreed on the new structure, prepared the communication, and aligned on how the change would be introduced. For the employees hearing it, though, the announcement was usually the beginning of a much more practical period of trying to understand how the work would now get done. The questions that followed were rarely abstract. Employees wanted to know what would happen to work already in motion, who would make decisions that had previously belonged to someone whose role was changing, whether current priorities still held, and how long old processes would remain in place while new ones were being built. Those questions were often difficult to answer because an organization chart can change much faster than the relationships, routines, and informal knowledge that have developed around the work. People continue using the pathways they know because those are the ones that have worked. They call the person who has always been able to solve the problem. They keep including a former leader in decisions because nobody is completely sure where the authority now sits. They maintain an old process alongside the new one because the new process has not yet proven that it can support the work. From a distance, some of that behavior can look like reluctance to move on. Up close, it is often employees trying to keep commitments, protect customers, and make sure important work does not stall while the organization is still figuring itself out. I saw this repeatedly while leading change across a large organization. An enterprise decision could be reasonably clear at the top, but by the time it reached different businesses, markets, buildings, and teams, it had to be interpreted through dozens of local realities. A decision about how and where people would work, for example, affected much more than office attendance. It changed staffing patterns, technology needs, meeting practices, workplace services, leadership expectations, and how teams coordinated across locations. The communication could explain the direction and the reasoning behind it, but it could not anticipate every question that employees and managers would encounter once they began working within the change. The organization still had to work through how the decision would function in practice. That part tends to receive less attention because so much energy has already gone into reaching the decision and preparing the announcement. Once the message is delivered, the work often moves into implementation mode. A program team takes over, training is scheduled, communications continue, and progress is reported against milestones. All of that matters, but employees experience the transition in a much less orderly way. They are trying to complete today’s work while responsibilities are moving, priorities are being reconsidered, and new relationships are still forming. A process may be changing before the replacement is ready. A new leader may officially own the work without yet having enough context to make decisions confidently. Employees may find themselves keeping the old organization running while also helping build the new one. No announcement, however, carefully prepared, can account for every dependency or answer every question that will surface. The more useful test is whether leaders stay close enough to the work to see where confusion is building and whether managers have enough room and clarity to make reasonable decisions when the official guidance runs out. Employees will usually tolerate a fair amount of uncertainty when they know what has been decided, what is still being worked through, and where they can go when the change creates a problem nobody anticipated. What wears people down is having to fill those gaps on their own while continuing to deliver as though the transition were already complete. The formal change may have been announced. The organization employees actually work in will keep taking shape for quite a while afterward. Nathan Bricklin Senior Consultant, Global Workplace Experience Helping enterprise leaders close the gap between executive intent and lived employee experience at scale. 4xi Global Consulting & Solutions is a team of talented leaders from both the client-side and service provider side, impacting the Human Experience (HX) for people at work, in education, rest, and at leisure. We believe in a people-first, experience-led philosophy. Whether client, employee, or guest – their experience is the fundamental foundation of success. WHAT WE DO We work with corporations, service providers, and innovators: Strategic Advisory & Special Projects (SPx) Headquarters Fractional Support On-Demand Evolving Experiences© - Employee (EX) & Customer Experience (CX) Design4Life©: Environmental, Physical, and Experiential Design Global Amenities Strategy, Design & Operations TRUE NORTH©: Strategic Partnership & Growth Sustainability Simplified©: Supply Chain & Innovation Market Research Reports & Benchmarking Project Management Office Food Craft Culinary Consulting CREATE. : Graphic Design and Creative Services DATAxi: Data Ingestion and Visualization Explorers Innovation Directory: Gateway to Innovation 4xi is proud to be Chair of WORKTECH Academy for North America and a member of its Leadership Advisory Board. 4xi is a Global Ambassador for WORKTECH Academy. San Francisco | New York | Philadelphia | Orlando | North Carolina | Seattle | Silicon Valley | Santiago | London | Tokyo

The Customer Experience Bank Transparency: The Currency of Customer Experience Why customers forgive mistakes, rarely forgive being misled, and remember both for decades. "We apologize for the inconvenience." Possibly the four most overused words in customer service. They're usually delivered with a sympathetic smile, a rehearsed script, and just enough sincerity to make you wonder whether anyone actually believes them. After a recent journey that involved restaurants, hotels and airlines, I came to one simple conclusion. Transparency isn't just part of the customer experience. It is the customer experience. Before anyone says, "We're not in hospitality," let me stop you right there. At 4xi, we often say that every organization is in the Customer Experience business. Whether you're manufacturing aircraft parts, serving coffee in a railway station, operating a hospital, educating students, running corporate workplaces, advising Fortune 500 companies or operating a stadium, you are fundamentally in the people business. Without customers... Without employees... Without trust...most businesses simply wouldn't have a business at all. Take a moment to think about that. Trust Is the Foundation of Every Partnership One of the recurring themes in our TRUE NORTH© methodology is that trust is the foundation of every successful partnership. That doesn't just apply to billion-dollar outsourcing contracts. It applies equally to: The commuter grabbing the same cappuccino every morning at 7:42 a.m. The family visiting their favorite neighborhood restaurant. The hotel guest checking in after a long day of travel. The passenger boarding a flight. People don't simply buy products or services. They buy confidence. They buy predictability. They buy consistency. Above all...they buy trust. And trust is earned through one behavior more than almost any other: Transparency. The Emotional Bank Account Imagine every interaction with a customer as a transaction in an invisible bank account. Every honest conversation. Every promise kept. Every proactive update. Every employee who says, "Let me fix that for you." Makes a deposit. Every hidden fee. Every misleading explanation. Every broken promise. Every excuse instead of ownership. Every time a customer discovers the truth before you tell them... Makes a withdrawal. Eventually every organization arrives at one of two places: A healthy balance where customers forgive occasional mistakes because trust has been built over time. Or... An overdrawn account where even a minor issue becomes the final straw. Customer loyalty is rarely destroyed by one catastrophic mistake. It is usually eroded by hundreds of tiny withdrawals organizations never realize they are making. The Emotional Bank Account of Trust Deposits, Build Trust Honest communication Admitting mistakes quickly Setting realistic expectations Proactive updates Employee ownership Fair, transparent recommendations Consistency Fast problem resolution Listening with empathy Keeping promises Withdrawals, Destroy Trust Hidden charges Excuses and blame Overpromising Silence and uncertainty Passing responsibility Upselling without disclosure Inconsistency Bureaucracy and delays Defensiveness Breaking commitments Customer loyalty isn't built by perfection. It is built by consistently making more deposits than withdrawals. Three recent experiences showed me exactly how quickly an account can be drained. Case Study One: Death by Extra Bread Roll One of our favorite local restaurants served outstanding food. We visited regularly. Recommended it. Introduced friends. Then one evening our bill included several items we'd never ordered. An honest mistake. It was corrected. No lasting damage. A few weeks later we asked the waiter to recommend "the best wine to complement the meal." He certainly did. Unfortunately, it also happened to be the most expensive glass on the wine list, by quite some distance. Perhaps it genuinely was the perfect pairing. Perhaps. But nobody mentioned the price. Nobody asked if we had a budget. Nobody offered alternatives. Was it dishonest? Perhaps not. Did it feel transparent? Absolutely not. We've never been back. Not because the food wasn't exceptional. Because the trust disappeared. Case Study Two: The Curious Case of the Missing Steak Next stop...A beautiful five-star hotel just outside a major European city. The dinner menu featured several delicious steak options. Perfect. Except... "We don't have them tonight." Why? Apparently, there wasn't a barbecue. Fair enough. "So could the chef cook them in the kitchen?" Silence. Eventually the truth emerged. The kitchen simply hadn't ordered the steaks. Now we're getting somewhere. Imagine instead if someone had simply said: "We're really sorry. Unfortunately, our supplier couldn't fulfil today's delivery, so we don't have our premium cuts available this evening. However, Chef has prepared some fantastic alternatives we'd love to recommend." Problem solved. Honest. Transparent. Human. Instead, guests were left trying to solve a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes. Case Study Three: The Departure Lounge, The Sequel Nobody Wanted Then came the airline. A major international carrier, on a long-haul flight home. We departed...only to return to our original airport five hours later because of technical problems. Disappointing? Of course. Understandable? Absolutely. Aircraft are incredibly complex machines. Safety always comes first. Nobody complains about that. What happened next was the problem. The following day we waited. And waited. And waited. Repeatedly asking airline staff whether our boarding pass from the previous day remained valid. Every single time we were reassured. "Yes." "That's all you need." "You'll be fine." Until... Three hours before departure. Our replacement flight disappeared. Cancelled. Another hotel. Another day waiting. Another round of uncertainty. Imagine instead hearing something like this: "Firstly, we're genuinely sorry. The aircraft experienced technical issues and safety must always come first. Re-accommodating more than 300 passengers isn't something we can solve immediately. It may take a couple of days to secure onward flights. Rather than have you spend the day waiting in uncertainty, we'll arrange accommodation immediately, explain exactly what happens next, and keep you updated every step of the way. We can't promise miracles. But we can promise honesty." Would I still have been disappointed? Yes. Would I have trusted them? Far more. Customers Can Handle Bad News Here's the interesting thing. Customers are remarkably forgiving. They understand mistakes. They understand delays. They understand shortages. They understand mechanical failures. What they struggle to forgive...is feeling manipulated...Or misled...Or kept in the dark. Transparency doesn't eliminate disappointment. It prevents disappointment becoming distrust. Once trust disappears...Recovery becomes extraordinarily expensive. Sometimes impossible. So, What Does a Healthy Account Look Like? If a handful of withdrawals can end a relationship in a single evening, the opposite question is worth asking. What does it look like when the deposits keep landing, year after year? Let me make this personal. For me, loyalty has meant a decade and more of BMWs. Then, after moving to the U.S., another decade with my trusty Ford Explorer STs. I am an American Airlines loyalist, now approaching a million miles, wasn't how appreciated I felt as a 150,000 mile a year flyer. It was the constant upgrades. Being greeted by name. And the efficient, seamless re-routes in the inevitable circumstances that arise when you fly that many miles. Note what that last one really is. It is the airline version of Case Study Three, handled properly. I remain a loyal Hilton Honors member. My status has slipped from Diamond to Gold as my business travel has reduced, but the accumulation of points and rewards, and that familiar experience whether in Santiago, San Francisco or Slough, is always worthwhile. Knowing what to expect, wherever you are in the world. The list goes on. The seamless ease of Apple, products and services alike. The unique experience of Diptyque 34 Boulevard Saint-Germain. Polo Ralph Lauren, because I always know what to expect, and because the garments have lasted me decades rather than weeks or months. None of these are the cheapest option available. All of them are predictable. That is not a coincidence. Memories That Last a Lifetime Deposits do something else that rarely appears in a customer satisfaction score. They become memories. On a recent trip to Paris, I revisited the Au Pied du Cochon restaurant my father had taken me to when I was six years old. It was like walking back in time. On that first visit, he trekked us around Paris for hours looking for his favorite restaurant. It was dark by the time we eventually found it, and starting to rain. We sat as a family in the corner, underneath the tilted mirrors (a French restaurant trick to make the room feel bigger and fuller). We ordered the menu. And the veteran waiters remembered my father from years earlier. Decades later, I returned. Same spot. Steak Frites with Béarnaise sauce. Crêpes Suzette. Both my father's favorites sampled all those years earlier. I was following in his footsteps. The waiters, unsurprisingly, didn't remember me. But I remembered that place, carried from a long distant memory into a reminder of what was, today. The Crêpes Suzette brought back the table-side ritual I'd watched as a boy. Which brought back the table-side guacamole prepared in the cocinas of Mexico. And the unforgettable table-side tiramisu at a classy and delightful L'Oscar Hotel restaurant in Holborn, London. I won't go on to list the bad memories. But the point is this. Memories, good and bad, last a lifetime. Only the ones that leave a lasting positive impression bring you back for more, sometimes decades later. The bad ones keep you away for decades, if not forever. There is something to learn in this. Not one of those loyalties was created by a policy document, a loyalty tier or a marketing campaign. Every single one was created by a person. Employees Need Permission to Tell the Truth Which is why this isn't only about customers. It's about employees too. Too many organizations unintentionally train their frontline teams to become professional excuse-makers. Instead of saying, "I don't know, but I'll find out." employees feel pressured to invent answers. Instead of admitting, "We made a mistake." they search for someone else to blame. Instead of solving problems...they protect policies. Why? Because many organizations empower compliance rather than judgement. If you genuinely want exceptional customer experiences, empower your people to be transparent, own the problem and solve it. Customers remember honesty long after they've forgotten the inconvenience. The $2,000 Ritz-Carlton Lesson Ritz-Carlton understand this better than almost anyone. Under the leadership of a founding executive who became legendary in the industry, every employee, from housekeepers to senior leaders, was empowered to spend up to $2,000 per guest, per incident, to solve a problem or create a memorable experience. No lengthy approvals. No committee meetings. No management sign-off. Just..."Fix it!" That philosophy wasn't about giving money away. It was about demonstrating trust. Trust in employees. Trust in judgement. Trust that solves problems immediately costs far less than creating unhappy customers. The results became legendary. Customer retention in excess of 90%. Higher guest loyalty. Lower marketing and acquisition costs. Greater employee engagement. Reduced staff turnover. Extraordinary word-of-mouth advocacy. A globally recognized benchmark for service excellence. Ritz-Carlton understood one simple financial truth. The lifetime value of a loyal customer is almost always worth far more than the cost of making things right today. The amount doesn't matter. The principle does. Multiply it by a decade of BMWs, a million airline miles and a lifetime of hotel stays, and the math stops being a debate. Three Questions Every Leader Should Ask Before the next customer issue lands on your desk, ask yourself: Do you tell customers what they need to hear, or what you think they want to hear Do your frontline employees have the authority to solve problems in real time? Are you measuring trust with the same discipline that we measure revenue? Because if trust isn't on your leadership dashboard...it probably isn't driving your decisions. A Different Way of Thinking Perhaps it's time we stopped asking: How do we avoid upsetting customers?" And instead started asking: "How quickly can we build trust, even when things go wrong?" Ironically, the strongest customer relationships are rarely created when everything goes perfectly. They're created in those defining moments when something inevitably goes wrong......and an employee has the honesty, confidence and authority to make it right. Those are the moments people still talk about decades later. Transparency may never appear on your balance sheet. It won't be listed as an intangible asset. It won't show up in your quarterly financial statements. Yet it is one of the most valuable currencies any organization possesses. Spend it generously. Invest in it consistently. Protect it relentlessly. Because unlike discounts... Unlike loyalty programs... Unlike marketing campaigns... Trust compounds. And memory keeps a very long record. Trust is what earns you the next transaction. Memory is what earns you the next thirty years. In today's experience economy, that may just be the highest-return investment your organization will ever make. About the Author Simon Elliot is Managing Partner and Co-founder of 4xi Global Consulting, where he advises organizations around the world on the human experience, workplace hospitality, strategic partnerships and organizational transformation. Through the firm's TRUE NORTH© methodology, Simon helps leaders build high-performing partnerships founded on trust, transparency and shared values, because exceptional experiences are never accidental; they are intentionally designed. 4xi Global Consulting & Solutions is a team of talented leaders from both the client-side and service provider side, impacting the Human Experience (HX) for people at work, in education, rest, and at leisure. We believe in a people-first, experience-led philosophy. Whether client, employee, or guest – their experience is the fundamental foundation of success. WHAT WE DO We work with corporations, service providers, and innovators: Strategic Advisory & Special Projects (SPx) Headquarters Fractional Support On-Demand Evolving Experiences© - Employee (EX) & Customer Experience (CX) Design4Life©: Environmental, Physical, and Experiential Design Global Amenities Strategy, Design & Operations TRUE NORTH©: Strategic Partnership & Growth Sustainability Simplified©: Supply Chain & Innovation Market Research Reports & Benchmarking Project Management Office Food Craft Culinary Consulting CREATE. : Graphic Design and Creative Services DATAxi: Data Ingestion and Visualization Explorers Innovation Directory: Gateway to Innovation 4xi is proud to be Chair of WORKTECH Academy for North America and a member of its Leadership Advisory Board. 4xi is a Global Ambassador for WORKTECH Academy. San Francisco | New York | Philadelphia | Orlando | North Carolina | Seattle | Silicon Valley | Santiago | London | Tokyo

The Consumerization of Work (Part 5) For years, organizations competed on things like compensation, office size, location, and perks. Those things still matter, but increasingly, I think another factor is becoming just as important: How easy the company feels to work for. Easy in the sense that employees can move through the workday without constantly fighting unnecessary friction, while still operating in high-performing environments with clear expectations. Priorities are reasonably clear. Technology works consistently. They can find information quickly. Decisions don’t get trapped in endless approval loops. Processes support the work instead of slowing it down. The workplace feels navigable instead of exhausting. In a lot of ways, this is the same shift that happened in consumer industries. The companies people became most loyal to were often the ones that reduced effort. Ordering became easier. Navigation became easier. Support became easier. The experience felt intuitive and responsive instead of complicated and time-consuming. Workplace expectations have been moving in the same direction. Employees increasingly notice how much effort it takes just to get work done inside an organization. They notice how many systems they have to navigate. How difficult it is to get decisions made. How much time gets consumed by avoidable friction. Over time, those experiences shape how people feel about the company itself. That’s one reason workplace experience has become much bigger than office design. It now includes the operational systems, leadership behaviors, communication patterns, technology experiences, and support structures that shape how work actually feels day to day. Organizations sometimes think improving employee experience requires massive transformations or highly visible programs. In many cases, the biggest improvements come from simplifying the environment employees already operate within. Clearer priorities. Better coordination between teams. Faster support. More consistent experiences. Fewer unnecessary approvals. Better communication around decisions and expectations. None of these things sound particularly groundbreaking on their own. But together they influence whether employees feel supported or constantly slowed down by the organization around them. Hospitality organizations learned long ago that people remember how easy or difficult an experience felt overall. The same principle increasingly applies to work. Because increasingly, employees are evaluating organizations the same way customers evaluate brands. Not just on what the company says. But on how the experience actually feels. Nathan Bricklin Senior Consultant, Global Workplace Experience Helping enterprise leaders close the gap between executive intent and lived employee experience at scale. 4xi Global Consulting & Solutions is a team of talented leaders from both the client-side and service provider side, impacting the Human Experience (HX) for people at work, in education, rest, and at leisure. We believe in a people-first, experience-led philosophy. Whether client, employee, or guest – their experience is the fundamental foundation of success. WHAT WE DO We work with corporations, service providers, and innovators: Strategic Advisory & Special Projects (SPx) Headquarters Fractional Support On-Demand Evolving Experiences© - Employee (EX) & Customer Experience (CX) Design4Life©: Environmental, Physical, and Experiential Design Global Amenities Strategy, Design & Operations TRUE NORTH©: Strategic Partnership & Growth Sustainability Simplified©: Supply Chain & Innovation Market Research Reports & Benchmarking Project Management Office Food Craft Culinary Consulting CREATE. : Graphic Design and Creative Services DATAxi: Data Ingestion and Visualization Explorers Innovation Directory: Gateway to Innovation 4xi is proud to be Chair of WORKTECH Academy for North America and a member of its Leadership Advisory Board. 4xi is a Global Ambassador for WORKTECH Academy. San Francisco | New York | Philadelphia | Orlando | North Carolina | Seattle | Silicon Valley | Santiago | London | Tokyo

This week, I read a fascinating paper exploring the impact of Generative AI (GenAI) on consumers in the hospitality and tourism industry. While the paper focuses on a specific sector, it made me think about a broader question that applies well beyond: As AI becomes better at predicting human behavior, are we becoming better at understanding people, or simply better at predicting their next action? As a psychologist now working in market research, I find that distinction fascinating, and honestly a little uncomfortable. AI can identify patterns, anticipate decisions, and process enormous amounts of data at a scale no human team could match. But understanding why people make those decisions is a different challenge altogether, and it's the challenge our industry keeps quietly skipping over because prediction is faster to ship than understanding is to build. What the paper set out to do and what they found out This is a systematic review, meaning the authors didn't run one new study - they mapped the entire current landscape of GenAI research in hospitality and tourism at the consumer level, pulling together what the field has learned so far about why consumers adopt (or resist) these tools, and what effects that adoption has on their behavior. Two things stood out to me as relevant well past this one industry. First, most existing research has concentrated on GenAI's positive impact on operational efficiency, largely from the perspective of industry practitioners, service providers, and technology suppliers. In other words, the field has mostly studied this technology from the business's point of view: how much time it saves, how much it cuts costs, how much it scales - far less from the consumer's point of view. Second, and more strikingly, critical concerns related to consumer experience: ethics, psychology, social dynamics, and security have received limited attention, despite posing significant risks to the successful adoption and sustainable development of GenAI technologies in the industry. The paper names those four areas directly. Not as a footnote, as a warning. You can build a highly efficient system that consumers still don't trust, don't feel comfortable with, or quietly abandon, and the research base right now isn't equipped to tell you why, because it wasn't set up to ask. Because of that, the authors call for research that identifies strategies to mitigate GenAI's risks while maximizing its benefits and argue future work should take a consumer-focused approach to understanding what actually motivates or blocks adoption. As they put it directly, the field's attention to “ethics, psychology, social dynamics, and security” has lagged far behind its attention to efficiency. That's a paper about hospitality and tourism, essentially asking the same question I keep coming back to: We've built excellent tools for measuring what GenAI does for operations. We haven't built the same rigor around what it does to the person on the other end of it. Prediction vs. Understanding: where the line actually is Prediction asks, “what will this person likely do next?” Understanding asks, “why does this person do what they do, and what would change if their circumstances did?” Prediction is built entirely on what's already happened: past clicks, past purchases, past behavior captured in a dataset. Understanding is what lets you anticipate what hasn't happened yet: a shift in trust, a change in life stage, a need nobody typed into a form because there was no field for it. AI is remarkably good at the first. It has no access to the second unless a person builds that context in through the questions asked, the segments defined, the follow-up conversation that catches what the dashboard missed. This is exactly the gap the paper points to when it separates “operational efficiency” research from “consumer experience” research. Efficiency is a prediction problem: did the system do the task faster, cheaper, at scale? Experience is an understanding problem: did the person feel respected, safe, and genuinely helped? A model can ace the first metric and fail the second completely, and you often won't see it in the data until adoption stalls or trust erodes, by which point it's expensive to fix. Human behavior is shaped by emotions, experiences, context, relationships, and trust: factors that aren't always visible in the data. AI can recognize patterns and generate insights, but it doesn't inherently understand the people behind those patterns. It can tell you that something is happening well before most humans would notice. It still can't tell you why, and increasingly, that's the more valuable question, and, per this review, the one our field has spent the least time answering. I see this gap in something as ordinary as my own workday: In my own work, I speak both Spanish and English, but there are moments: writing outreach emails, phrasing something delicately for a prospect, where I lean on AI to help me get the English right. And it genuinely helps - it predicts natural phrasing, catches grammar, suggests a register that reads well. What it doesn't know is that a specific contact prefers a warmer opening because of how a past conversation went, or that a phrase that sounds perfectly direct in one business culture can land as too blunt in another. AI can get the words right. Knowing which words are right for that person, in that relationship, is still on me. That's the whole distinction in miniature: prediction gets me fluent text; understanding is what makes the message actually land. Why this matters for how we work That's why the future isn't about choosing between AI and human expertise, it's about combining both, deliberately, rather than assuming one will eventually absorb the other. Generative AI is an incredibly powerful tool, but its value depends entirely on the expertise that guides it. AI doesn't develop judgment or understand context on its own - it learns from the data, prompts, and direction provided by people. Without that guidance, it can identify patterns, but it cannot fully understand the motivations, relationships, and complexities that influence human behavior. This is where experts continue to play a critical role, and I don't think that role shrinks as the technology improves - if anything it gets more important. They ask better questions, challenge assumptions, interpret findings, and provide the context that allows AI to generate meaningful insights rather than simply more information. A model without a good question behind it just produces confident noise faster. At 4xi, we believe AI enhances human expertise rather than replaces it. We combine AI-powered insights with deep expertise in workplace, customer, and employee experience to help organizations make informed decisions, facilitate meaningful conversations, and design solutions that technology alone cannot deliver. The tools change every year. The discipline of asking why doesn't. But it's not enough to combine both quietly and hope people notice. Communicating that combination - being explicit that the insight in front of a client is AI-accelerated and human-verified, not one or the other - is, to me, one of the most important things we can do right now. Organizations are being sold two competing stories: that AI will replace expertise, or that AI barely matters next to human judgment. Both are wrong, and both are easier to sell than the truer, more nuanced answer. Saying plainly “this is what the model surfaced, and this is what our team added” builds a kind of trust that neither story alone can. That's the part of this conversation I think we, at 4xi and across our industry, need to say out loud far more often than we do. As AI continues to evolve, the greatest opportunity isn't simply to use it more, it's to combine its capabilities with the expertise, empathy, and judgment that only people can provide, and to be unmistakably clear that we're doing both. The organizations that win this decade won't be the ones with the best predictions, or even the ones with the best people. They'll be the ones that let both do what they do best, together, and aren't shy about saying so. Because in the end, the question was never AI versus understanding, it's whether we're willing to let one earn the other. If you wish to dive deeper into this topic or subject, I encourage you to check out: The Effects of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Consumers in Hospitality and Tourism: A Systematic Review and Future Research Directions, or feel free to email me with more of your thoughts. Constanza Diaz Research Associate 4xi Global Consulting & Solutions is a team of talented leaders from both the client-side and service provider side, impacting the Human Experience (HX) for people at work, in education, rest, and at leisure. We believe in a people-first, experience-led philosophy. Whether client, employee, or guest – their experience is the fundamental foundation of success. WHAT WE DO We work with corporations, service providers, and innovators: Strategic Advisory & Special Projects (SPx) Headquarters Fractional Support On-Demand Evolving Experiences© - Employee (EX) & Customer Experience (CX) Design4Life©: Environmental, Physical, and Experiential Design Global Amenities Strategy, Design & Operations TRUE NORTH©: Strategic Partnership & Growth Sustainability Simplified©: Supply Chain & Innovation Market Research Reports & Benchmarking Project Management Office Food Craft Culinary Consulting CREATE. : Graphic Design and Creative Services DATAxi: Data Ingestion and Visualization Explorers Innovation Directory: Gateway to Innovation 4xi is proud to be Chair of WORKTECH Academy for North America and a member of its Leadership Advisory Board. 4xi is a Global Ambassador for WORKTECH Academy. San Francisco | New York | Philadelphia | Orlando | North Carolina | Seattle | Silicon Valley | Santiago | London | Tokyo

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. 4xi Global Consulting & Solutions is a team of talented leaders from both the client-side and service provider side, impacting the Human Experience (HX) for people at work, in education, rest, and at leisure. We believe in a people-first, experience-led philosophy. Whether client, employee, or guest – their experience is the fundamental foundation of success. WHAT WE DO We work with corporations, service providers, and innovators: Strategic Advisory & Special Projects (SPx) Headquarters Fractional Support On-Demand Evolving Experiences© - Employee (EX) & Customer Experience (CX) Design4Life©: Environmental, Physical, and Experiential Design Global Amenities Strategy, Design & Operations TRUE NORTH©: Strategic Partnership & Growth Sustainability Simplified©: Supply Chain & Innovation Market Research Reports & Benchmarking Project Management Office Food Craft Culinary Consulting CREATE. : Graphic Design and Creative Services DATAxi: Data Ingestion and Visualization Explorers Innovation Directory: Gateway to Innovation 4xi is proud to be Chair of WORKTECH Academy for North America and a member of its Leadership Advisory Board. 4xi is a Global Ambassador for WORKTECH Academy. San Francisco | New York | Philadelphia | Orlando | North Carolina | Seattle | Silicon Valley | Santiago | London | Tokyo

The 4xi team is excited to welcome Constanza Diaz as Research Associate. Constanza holds a degree in Psychology from Chile, where she developed strong skills in communication, analytical thinking, and understanding people and complex situations from different perspectives. Her academic background has shaped her ability to research, analyze information, and approach challenges with curiosity and attention to detail. In her role at 4xi, Constanza will support market research, prospect identification, and business development initiatives. She is excited to contribute to projects that help organizations build meaningful connections while continuing to expand her knowledge of business, technology, and international markets. What attracted Constanza to 4xi is the opportunity to work in a global environment where collaboration, learning, and innovation are part of everyday work. She values continuous improvement and believes that curiosity and adaptability are essential for professional growth. Outside of work, Constanza enjoys learning new languages, exploring business and technology topics, and developing new skills. She is passionate about personal and professional growth and looks forward to this new chapter with the 4xi team. 4xi is excited to welcome Constanza and looks forward to the knowledge, dedication, and curiosity she brings to the organization. To learn more about Constanza or 4xi, visit our website www.4xiconsulting.com or reach out to Constanza directly at Constanza@4xiconsulting.com. 4xi Global is a team of talented leaders from both the client-side and service provider side, impacting the Human Experience (HX) for people at work, in education, rest, and at leisure. We believe in a people-first, experience-led philosophy. Whether client, employee, or guest – their experience is the fundamental foundation of success. WHAT WE DO We work with corporations, service providers, and innovators: Strategic Advisory & Special Projects (SPx) Headquarters Fractional Support On-Demand Evolving Experiences© - Employee (EX) & Customer Experience (CX) Design4Life©: Environmental, Physical, and Experiential Design Global Amenities Strategy, Design & Operations TRUE NORTH©: Strategic Partnership & Growth Sustainability Simplified©: Supply Chain & Innovation Market Research Reports & Benchmarking Project Management Office Food Craft Culinary Consulting CREATE. : Graphic Design and Creative Services DATAxi: Data Ingestion and Visualization Explorers Innovation Directory: Gateway to Innovation 4xi is proud to be Chair of WORKTECH Academy for North America and a member of its Leadership Advisory Board. 4xi is a Global Ambassador for WORKTECH Academy. San Francisco | New York | Philadelphia | Orlando | North Carolina | Seattle | Silicon Valley | Santiago | London | Tokyo

The Consumerization of Work (Part 3) One of the biggest changes in workplace experience over the last several years is how much personalization people now expect in their daily lives. Most consumer experiences already adapt to individual preferences in ways people barely think about anymore. Streaming platforms recommend content based on viewing habits. Maps adjust routes in real time. Retail apps remember preferences and purchase history. Hotels recognize loyalty status and personalize the experience around previous stays. Even our phones quietly adjust around how we work and communicate throughout the day. As those experiences become normal, expectations around work begin changing too. Employees increasingly expect the workplace to feel responsive, relevant, and adaptable to the way they actually work. That doesn’t necessarily mean every experience needs to be customized for every individual. It usually means people expect less friction and less unnecessary effort. If someone spends most of their day in video meetings, they want spaces that support that type of work well. If teams regularly collaborate across locations and time zones, they expect tools and workflows that make that easier. If employees commute into the office for collaboration, they expect the environment to support interaction and connection rather than forcing everyone into identical experiences regardless of how they work. What’s interesting is that organizations often think personalization means adding more technology, when in many cases it starts with paying closer attention to employee patterns and needs. Which spaces do people consistently use? Which services do employees rely on most? Which tools create friction? Which teams need more focus space versus collaboration space? Which moments in the day tend to create unnecessary stress? The workplace becomes more effective when those signals start informing decisions. This is another area where hospitality organizations tend to think differently. Good hospitality experiences adapt around the guest without making the personalization feel overly complicated or performative. The experience simply feels smoother, more intuitive, and more aligned to what people need in the moment. The workplace benefits from the same mindset. Employees don’t necessarily expect perfection or unlimited flexibility. But they do notice when workplace experiences feel disconnected from how work actually happens. In my experience, the organizations creating the strongest workplace experiences are usually paying close attention to behavior patterns, operational friction, and employee needs in real time rather than assuming everyone works the same way. Because increasingly, people expect work to feel less standardized and more responsive to the realities of how they actually work day to day. Nathan Bricklin Senior Consultant, Global Workplace Experience Helping enterprise leaders close the gap between executive intent and lived employee experience at scale. 4xi Global Consulting & Solutions is a team of talented leaders from both the client-side and service provider side, impacting the Human Experience (HX) for people at work, in education, rest, and at leisure. We believe in a people-first, experience-led philosophy. Whether client, employee, or guest – their experience is the fundamental foundation of success. WHAT WE DO We work with corporations, service providers, and innovators: Strategic Advisory & Special Projects (SPx) Headquarters Fractional Support On-Demand Evolving Experiences© - Employee (EX) & Customer Experience (CX) Design4Life©: Environmental, Physical, and Experiential Design Global Amenities Strategy, Design & Operations TRUE NORTH©: Strategic Partnership & Growth Sustainability Simplified©: Supply Chain & Innovation Market Research Reports & Benchmarking Project Management Office Food Craft Culinary Consulting CREATE. : Graphic Design and Creative Services DATAxi: Data Ingestion and Visualization Explorers Innovation Directory: Gateway to Innovation 4xi is proud to be Chair of WORKTECH Academy for North America and a member of its Leadership Advisory Board. 4xi is a Global Ambassador for WORKTECH Academy. San Francisco | New York | Philadelphia | Orlando | North Carolina | Seattle | Silicon Valley | Santiago | London | Tokyo

Only 24% of business leaders say their organisations are very ready to make the workplace changes they believe are necessary for future success. Source: Deloitte Workplace Intelligence Survey, 2023. That statistic struck me because it reflects something I've observed repeatedly over the last decade. The expectations organisations have of workplace have changed significantly. Workplace is now increasingly expected to contribute to culture, collaboration, employee experience, talent attraction and retention, organisational performance and business change. In many ways, this reflects the evolution that many workplace leaders have been advocating for over a long period of time. What I'm less certain about is whether organisations have changed the way they organise, govern and support workplace quickly enough to enable those outcomes to be achieved. Increasingly, I find myself wondering whether many of the challenges organisations experience in workplace are actually workplace problems at all, or whether they are organisational problems that happen to manifest through workplace. The Questions Have Changed Not that long ago, workplace success was relatively straightforward to understand. Buildings needed to operate effectively. Services needed to be delivered reliably. Costs needed to be controlled and risks managed. Today, the questions being asked of workplace are often very different. ● How do we improve collaboration? ● How do we strengthen culture and connection? ● How do we support organisational performance? ● How do we attract and retain talent? ● How do we create a consistent employee experience? These are not really workplace questions. They are business questions. The challenge is that many organisations continue to support workplace through structures that were designed when workplace was primarily viewed as an operational support function. For example, organisations increasingly talk about creating seamless employee experiences. Yet responsibility for delivering that experience often remains fragmented. HR may own employee engagement and culture. IT may own digital experience and collaboration tools. Workplace may own the physical environment. Procurement may own supplier relationships. Finance may control investment decisions. Business leaders may retain operational autonomy. Everyone contributes to the employee experience, but nobody necessarily owns it end-to-end. A similar tension exists around performance. Workplace leaders are increasingly expected to contribute to outcomes such as collaboration, employee experience, talent attraction and organisational effectiveness, while continuing to be measured primarily through operational metrics such as service levels, cost management, utilisation, supplier performance and risk management. In effect, organisations are asking workplace to deliver strategic outcomes while continuing to reward operational performance. At the same time, many organisations now expect workplace to operate strategically while continuing to position it organisationally as an operational capability, with limited authority over many of the factors that influence success. The expectations have changed. In many organisations, the conditions required to deliver those expectations have not. We Often Assume The Problem Is Workplace One of the patterns I've observed, both on the client side and provider side, is that when organisations fail to achieve the outcomes they expected, the response often focuses on intervention. We reduce space. We redesign offices. We introduce workplace technology. We launch employee experience programmes. These interventions can all contribute positively. However, they can also distract us from a more fundamental challenge. A redesigned workplace may support collaboration, but it is unlikely to create collaboration if leadership behaviours, ways of working, incentives and organisational structures remain unchanged. Similarly, organisations often invest heavily in workplace technology and employee experience platforms while continuing to struggle to answer relatively simple questions about performance, effectiveness and value. The challenge may not be the quality of the technology itself, but a lack of agreement about what success actually looks like and how it should be measured. Even employee experience programmes can struggle to achieve sustained impact if the underlying organisational conditions supporting the employee experience remain fragmented. These challenges often present as workplace problems. I'm not convinced they always are. The Challenge Isn't Only Organisational I also think workplace leaders themselves are navigating a transition that isn't always fully acknowledged. Historically, many workplace leaders have been rewarded for being operationally excellent, responsive and pragmatic. Increasingly, however, organisations are asking them to operate as business leaders. That requires something different. It requires workplace leaders not only to deliver services and solve problems, but also to challenge assumptions, question expectations and help organisations understand what conditions need to exist for workplace to achieve the outcomes they say they want. That is not always comfortable. It is often easier to focus on solving the problem we have been given than questioning whether the organisation has created the conditions necessary for success in the first place. Yet if workplace is increasingly expected to operate as a strategic capability, then perhaps workplace leaders need to become more comfortable challenging not only how workplace is delivered, but what organisations are actually expecting workplace to achieve. Perhaps We're Asking The Wrong Question Many organisations ask: How do we improve workplace? I'm increasingly convinced that a more useful question might be: Have we created the organisational conditions required for workplace to deliver the outcomes we're expecting from it? That question becomes particularly relevant when organisations find themselves in situations such as these. Q: We're spending a significant amount on real estate and workplace, but we're struggling to demonstrate the value we're creating. Many organisations have reduced portfolios, redesigned offices, introduced hybrid working and invested heavily in workplace experience. Yet there is often limited agreement on what value workplace is actually expected to create, how that value should be measured, or who ultimately owns those outcomes. Q: We've changed where and how people work, but we're not seeing the improvements in collaboration, connection or organisational performance we expected. The workplace itself may not be the constraint. Leadership behaviours, ways of working, incentives and organisational norms often have a greater influence on outcomes than the physical environment alone. Q: Employee experience remains inconsistent depending on where people work, who supports them and which part of the organisation they belong to. When responsibility for experience is distributed across multiple functions, consistency becomes difficult to achieve regardless of how much investment is made. Q: Different parts of the organisation continue to operate differently despite years of workplace transformation. Workplace strategies, standards and programmes can only achieve so much if governance, accountability and decision-making remain fragmented. Q: Workplace, HR, technology, finance and business leaders all believe they understand the challenge, yet progress remains slower and more difficult than expected. In many organisations, everyone owns part of the solution, but nobody owns the whole problem. If these situations feel familiar, the question may not be: What should we do next in workplace? It may be: Have we created the organisational conditions required for workplace to succeed? Howard Murray Senior Consultant, Global Workplace Operations Drives strategy, operations, and transformation excellence, aligning people, processes, and governance to deliver sustainable business performance. 4xi Global Consulting & Solutions is a team of talented leaders from both the client-side and service provider side, impacting the Human Experience (HX) for people at work, in education, rest, and at leisure. We believe in a people-first, experience-led philosophy. Whether client, employee, or guest – their experience is the fundamental foundation of success. WHAT WE DO We work with corporations, service providers, and innovators: Strategic Advisory & Special Projects (SPx) Headquarters Fractional Support On-Demand Evolving Experiences© - Employee (EX) & Customer Experience (CX) Design4Life©: Environmental, Physical, and Experiential Design Global Amenities Strategy, Design & Operations TRUE NORTH©: Strategic Partnership & Growth Sustainability Simplified©: Supply Chain & Innovation Market Research Reports & Benchmarking Project Management Office Food Craft Culinary Consulting CREATE. : Graphic Design and Creative Services DATAxi: Data Ingestion and Visualization Explorers Innovation Directory: Gateway to Innovation 4xi is proud to be Chair of WORKTECH Academy for North America and a member of its Leadership Advisory Board. 4xi is a Global Ambassador for WORKTECH Academy. San Francisco | New York | Philadelphia | Orlando | North Carolina | Seattle | Silicon Valley | Santiago | London | Tokyo

The Consumerization of Work (Part 2) One thing consumer brands understand extremely well is that people are naturally drawn to experiences that feel easy to use. Nobody wants to read instructions before making coffee, ordering a product, booking a flight, or using a new app. The best consumer experiences feel intuitive almost immediately. People can usually figure them out without much explanation. The workplace often works very differently. Employees still spend a surprising amount of time trying to figure out how processes work, where information lives, which approval path applies, or who owns a particular decision. Even simple tasks sometimes require navigating systems and workflows that have grown more complicated over time. What’s interesting is that complexity tends to build gradually. A new approval gets added here. Another system gets layered in. A process changes, but the old process never fully disappears. Teams create workarounds that eventually become permanent operating procedures. Over time, the workplace becomes harder to navigate, even though each individual change originally seemed reasonable. Eventually, employees stop expecting things to feel simple. That’s when friction becomes normalized. People start saying things like: “That’s just how the process works.” “That system has always been difficult.” “You’ll figure it out after a while.” But complexity has a cost. It slows decision-making. It increases training time. It creates inconsistent experiences across teams. It forces employees to spend mental energy navigating the workplace itself instead of focusing on the actual work. I think this is one reason consumer experiences have become such an important comparison point. Companies like Apple, Amazon, Airbnb, and even IKEA built loyalty partly because they reduced effort. The experience felt understandable. People knew what to do next. The design removed confusion instead of adding to it. The workplace benefits from the same mindset. Employees shouldn’t need tribal knowledge to navigate basic workplace processes. They shouldn’t need separate instructions for every conference room setup or multiple conversations just to understand how to complete routine tasks. Some of the most effective workplace improvements are surprisingly simple. Reducing unnecessary approvals. Standardizing technology setups. Making information easier to find. Clarifying ownership. Simplifying onboarding. Removing outdated processes that no longer add value. None of these things are especially flashy. In many cases, employees may barely notice them happening. What they do notice is when work starts feeling easier. And increasingly, that feeling of simplicity and ease is becoming part of what employees expect from the workplace overall. People should be successful because of the workplace, not in spite of it. Nathan Bricklin Senior Consultant, Global Workplace Experience Helping enterprise leaders close the gap between executive intent and lived employee experience at scale. 4xi Global Consulting & Solutions is a team of talented leaders from both the client-side and service provider side, impacting the Human Experience (HX) for people at work, in education, rest, and at leisure. We believe in a people-first, experience-led philosophy. Whether client, employee, or guest – their experience is the fundamental foundation of success. WHAT WE DO We work with corporations, service providers, and innovators: Strategic Advisory & Special Projects (SPx) Headquarters Fractional Support On-Demand Evolving Experiences© - Employee (EX) & Customer Experience (CX) Design4Life©: Environmental, Physical, and Experiential Design Global Amenities Strategy, Design & Operations TRUE NORTH©: Strategic Partnership & Growth Sustainability Simplified©: Supply Chain & Innovation Market Research Reports & Benchmarking Project Management Office Food Craft Culinary Consulting CREATE. : Graphic Design and Creative Services DATAxi: Data Ingestion and Visualization Explorers Innovation Directory: Gateway to Innovation 4xi is proud to be Chair of WORKTECH Academy for North America and a member of its Leadership Advisory Board. 4xi is a Global Ambassador for WORKTECH Academy. San Francisco | New York | Philadelphia | Orlando | North Carolina | Seattle | Silicon Valley | Santiago | London | Tokyo

Higher Education is in flux, especially in the auxiliary services that serve as the more student (guest) facing aspects of campus. This could be the dining services, parking, bookstores, retail shops, or merchandise outlets. The area that often has the most student interaction is the dining program – and with that comes a chance to bring people together and foster relationships that last a lifetime. I spent many years working in higher education and during those years summer became less and less about catching your breath and more about preparing for the upcoming fall semester. In many ways, summer can be more stressful than the academic year, because intentional planning now has exponential impact when the students return. I have been seeing so many of the same issues across so many campuses this past year that I wanted to share out for everyone to learn from. It is important to note that this does not represent the findings on one campus – it is what I have seen as I’ve visited 36 campuses this past year. Yes, there are some generalities, and not every campus has every bugaboo, but this is a fairly representative sample. Some colleges are crushing it and others have a lot of work to do. You are likely going to read this and think, well, this is so basic. These are just fundamental blocking and tackling items. That is absolutely correct – and I challenge you to go look at your operations with this lens because you probably have 75% of these happening in your business. The other challenge I make is to DMs, RVPs, Directors of Auxiliary Services, Campus Dining Directors, and VPs of Student Affairs – get into your operations and look at this stuff for yourself. Many of you have become too hands off and aren’t spending enough time staring at the fundamentals. Strategy never served a guest – go dig into your tactics. STUDENT VALUE PROPOSITION REPORT Your students are talking. Do you know what they're really saying? Understand your student experience so you can recruit, enroll and retain the best students. Why Dining Matters The dining locations on campus represent places where people come together, find their tribe, and build community. So much of the higher ed experience is about meeting new people and experiencing new things – and this is a place where that can happen through social interactions and new cuisine. This remains a place where people gather and there is a big responsibility for dining programs to find inspiring ways to create that sense of belonging. 87% of students see on-campus dining as the primary way to connect and build community - University Business (2026) The Current State Now as a Gen Xer, my lens is a bit different, as I went to college as the internet was being born – and now through social media and unlimited AI + online resources, information has been democratized for many. That means that students are coming to universities with more of a world view than students did back before the turn of the century. Now if that doesn’t make my cohort buddies feel old, I don’t know what will. But that said, there is still a need for campus programs such as dining to be the glue that holds the student experience together. In the coming years there will be a downturn in the number of students attending college – due to population shifts and the increasing pull of community colleges and trade schools. College age students are questioning the costs of post-secondary education and considering the ROI and time investment as a part of their decision calculus. That means that there will be a war for the best students and a push to fill beds and dining rooms on campuses across the world. The demographic cliff, driven by a 17% birth rate decline, will eliminate 576,000 students from 2025 to 2029, with a second contraction extending through 2039. – RC Strategies The only way to win this war is through experience – and that will require a more retail mindset from higher education in the competition for share of student. That battle will be won through student experience and that starts with a hospitality mindset. What better place to start than inside of food, retail, and coffee. But what we discuss within this article has applicability to the entire student experience. What I'm Seeing Out There in the Universe I spend a lot of time on higher education campuses helping them understand how they are executing in the moment, how they can improve, and delivering hospitality skills training and leadership development sessions. This comes after a decade of working directly in the college and university space. What I am seeing is not unique to any one model. What I share here, i see at self-operated schools, schools that have a food service partner, and those that have a hybrid approach. This is not indicative of one model – most contractors and self-operated dining programs have many of these same issues. There are pockets of amazing execution out there and obviously there are always exceptions to every generalization – but having spent time on so many campuses this past year, these are the themes that can’t be ignored. Food safety is an afterthought on many campuses. I only visited 3 campuses this year where food safety was on lock down. All the others had significant issues with food logs, temperatures, labeling, hand washing, and properly stored towels. Lack of fundamental hospitality – there is a floundering culture of service on campuses starting with the basics of greeting, body language, and attentive service. Food quality is at an all-time low (in general). There is a lack of attention to the basics of cookery, including the simple pieces such as following recipes and tasting food. Food presentation and personalization are complete afterthoughts. Often food is cooked too far ahead, served in too-large pans, ungarnished, or not available with any type of customization or personalization. There is little product differentiation as the push for cost controls brings most programs to the same purveyors and the same products. Innovation is floundering. Most programs look very much like all the others as the programs become more vanilla and homogenized. PM + weekend service periods are being ignored. And is shows in poor execution. On many campuses the dinner periods and weekends are staffed by the least experienced team members and do not receive the same level of attention as 9-5, Monday - Friday. Kitchens are dirty and lines of site on serving lines are cluttered. There is a general lack of attention to detail when it comes to cleanliness and back counters in almost every operation are catch-alls for items guests shouldn’t be seeing. IN PERSON TRAINING + COACHING Ready to up your hospitality or leadership game with our engaging, interactive sessions? Schedule your training session, workshop, or on-campus assessment today. What you can do right now during the summer The summer months seem to get shorter each year but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t enough time to implement substantial change. In fact, transformative change is best tackled in the summer – and to some extent during the winter break. Your key focus needs to be hospitality, personalization, and food safety. So, what can you do now to drive change for the fall? Adopt a true restaurant mindset. The more you consider yourself an institutional food service the more you’ll behave that way. Taste everything. One of the biggest failings I see in dining today is that no one is tasting anything. That is cooking 101 – cooks, chefs, leaders, and clients should all have their faces in the food all day long. Taste more, coach more, win more. Look at your guest journey – and this should be done as a holistic university journey. How easy or hard is it to sign up for meal plans? Are the plans right for your student personae? Do you have the right mix of retail, national brands, coffee, vending, convenience stores, and traditional dining rooms. And, within your dining spaces have you balanced made to order, finished to order, ready to serve, and grab and go? Spend time with your team and train them in the art of hospitality. Don’t just lecture them at welcome back, create development events complete with interactive role play, social learning, and fun to make it sticky. Schedule ongoing micro training throughout the year. Coach the fundamentals of service – ensure uniform standards, greetings, body language, and friendly welcomes. Look at your menus and plot out where the action + personalization happens. Where can you give your guests an option to customize, build their own, or at least see something carved or finished to order. Stop letting your team put so much food in hot boxes so early. This is a problem that every program has been fighting since 1980. Consider reducing how many hot holding boxes you have in your operations as a starting point. Pick your food safety hot list. Hand washing, temperature control, sanitizer buckets, and cooler organization are great places to start. Look for ways to create individual portions. This inspires the “just for me” feeling from guests and will drive their loyalty. The way they do things at the Wicked Spoon + Bacchanal in Las Vegas and on Virgin + Royal Caribbean cruises have applicability here. These are good places to look for ideas you can adapt to your campus. Get your leaders out of the office and on the floor – train them to tour with intentionality and also to conduct meaningful table touches with guests. How they interact with the team and the customers will drive success. Find your flexibility. It is so easy to lean into the way you have always done things or your larger company vision. One size fits no one. Remember no one cares about your company policy, vendor contracts, specified purchasing, or your internal politics. If it isn’t good for the guest, then change it. Bring the WOW! Once you have your fundamentals in place, then it’s time to swing for the fences. Interactive dining, community engagement, surprise and delight moments, and pop ups can really bring home the special differences your program offers – but only if you are getting lunch out on time and your food tastes really good. Learn what variety, wellness, and flexibility mean to your students. These are constant complaints from campus students and guests. That said, it means something different to everyone. As I spoke to students across the country, wellness meant everything from lean protein to allergens to vegetarian offerings. Variety to some was a huge menu of choices, for others intentionally curated selections, and still others pop ups and made to order options. Start by understanding what your guests want and then work to deliver it. Create opportunities for students: This one may seem like a wildcard but AI has eliminated a portion of internships and entry level positions in the workforce. Dining and hospitality are great places for students to gain leadership experience, service skills, and work history. Find ways to help your students gain experience that will lead to post-graduation opportunities. I share all of this because I have a soft spot in my heart for University Dining Service. I spent a lot of years in that space – and even after I left operations, it has remained one of my favorite industries to work with. I remember the excitement (and stress) of every new academic year. The pressure to make a good first impression with the incoming students. I remember how everyone mobs the salad bar for the first few weeks and the power of soft serve ice cream and pizza when a test doesn’t go quite right. I remember, most of all, the impact that we had on students every day. The power of building community and bringing people together – it looks a little different now but the mission hasn’t changed. The bottom line is that the war for students will be won and lost on experience – competition is up and your pool of guests is declining. There are more choices than ever, students know what is happening not just on college campuses but within food and beverage in general, and they are looking for campuses that will create that sense of belonging they seek. You still have time to act on everything we discussed here – the real question is: will you do anything about it? The schools that win the next decade won’t be the ones with the flashiest campuses, they will be the ones that create community and connect people to opportunities for the future. Start by understanding your students, dialing in the basics, then finding ways to wrap memorable experiences around great food. That will help you keep your campus community at the center of everything you do. Tony (Crafted by a human, not AI.) Meet Tony Johnson Tony is the Co-Managing Partner, Co-Owner, and Chief Experience Officer (CXO) for 4xi Global Consulting. He is an internationally recognized thought leader and influencer in Customer and Employee Experience. Tony hosts the wildly successful Customer Service Academy podcast and is the author of two books on leadership and CX. Tony has worked with some of the top organizations across the globe, including Delta, 3M, Baylor Scott and White Health, University of Virginia, Siemens, SHRM, and more. Tony is available to help your organization with: Employee training and development Executive and leadership coaching CX and EX strategy creation Inspirational keynote talks Fractional Chief Experience Officer Evolving Experiences, a 4xi brand, focuses on Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX) as growth engines. By creating fierce loyalty with both employees and customers, organizations can differentiate themselves in an ever-changing and competitive marketplace. 4xi Global Consulting & Solutions is a team of talented leaders from both the client-side and service provider side, impacting the Human Experience (HX) for people at work, in education, rest, and leisure. We believe in a people-first, experience-led philosophy. Whether client, employee, or guest – their experience is the fundamental foundation of success. We work with corporations, service providers, and innovators: Strategic Advisory & Special Projects (SPx) Headquarters Fractional Support On-Demand Evolving Experiences© - Employee (EX) & Customer Experience (CX) Design4Life©: Environmental, Physical, and Experiential Design Global Amenities Strategy, Design & Operations TRUE NORTH©: Strategic Partnership & Growth Explorers Innovation Directory: Gateway to Innovation Sustainability Simplified©: Supply Chain & Innovation Market Research Reports & Benchmarking (C) 2026. May not be used to train A.I.

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: 4xi Global Consulting & Solutions is a team of talented leaders from both the client-side and service provider side, impacting the Human Experience (HX) for people at work, in education, rest, and at leisure. We believe in a people-first, experience-led philosophy. Whether client, employee, or guest – their experience is the fundamental foundation of success. WHAT WE DO We work with corporations, service providers, and innovators: Strategic Advisory & Special Projects (SPx) Headquarters Fractional Support On-Demand Evolving Experiences© - Employee (EX) & Customer Experience (CX) Design4Life©: Environmental, Physical, and Experiential Design Global Amenities Strategy, Design & Operations TRUE NORTH©: Strategic Partnership & Growth Sustainability Simplified©: Supply Chain & Innovation Market Research Reports & Benchmarking Project Management Office Food Craft Culinary Consulting CREATE. : Graphic Design and Creative Services DATAxi: Data Ingestion and Visualization Explorers Innovation Directory: Gateway to Innovation 4xi is proud to be Chair of WORKTECH Academy for North America and a member of its Leadership Advisory Board. 4xi is a Global Ambassador for WORKTECH Academy. San Francisco | New York | Philadelphia | Orlando | North Carolina | Seattle | Silicon Valley | Santiago | London | Tokyo