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

At 4xi Global Consulting, we believe the most valuable insights often come from people who have spent their careers working on both sides of organizational change - helping shape strategy whilst also dealing with the realities of implementation. We are pleased to welcome Howard Murray to the team as Senior Consultant, Global Workplace Operations. Howard joins 4xi following more than 25 years working in strategy, operations, workplace, real estate and transformation leadership roles, most recently as Senior Director, Strategy & Operations within Electronic Arts' global Real Estate & Workplace Solutions organization. Looking back across his career, Howard sees an interesting pattern. The projects were different. The organizations were different. The objectives were different. Yet the same challenge appeared repeatedly. Sometimes it was a workplace transformation program. Sometimes it was a major procurement exercise. Sometimes it was a new operating model, a capital investment decision or a service delivery challenge. In almost every case, the organization knew what it wanted to achieve. The harder question was how to make it happen. Over the years, Howard has built new organizational capabilities, established PMO functions, developed governance structures, led major outsourcing initiatives and helped leadership teams navigate complex change across global organizations. What interests him most is the space between the decision and the outcome. "The biggest challenges are rarely technical," says Howard. "Most organizations are full of capable people. The challenge is often helping different teams, leaders and partners work together in a way that turns intent into action." That perspective is one of the reasons Howard was attracted to 4xi. The firm's focus on human experience, strategic partnerships and practical transformation aligns closely with his belief that sustainable change depends on understanding both people and operations. At 4xi, Howard will support clients navigating workplace operations, organizational transformation, strategic partnerships, operating model evolution and complex change initiatives. Alongside his consulting work, Howard is currently completing formal coaching qualifications and exploring how leadership development, organizational performance and operational delivery can work together to create better outcomes for both organizations and the people within them. Please join us in welcoming Howard to the 4xi team. To learn more about how Howard helps organizations navigate workplace operations, organizational transformation, strategic partnership, operating model evolution, and complex change initiative through practical leadership experience and people-centered transformation, visit our website www.4xiconsulting.com or reach out to David directly at david@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 First 15 Minutes (Part 3) One thing I pay close attention to in workplaces is the workarounds employees create. The workarounds themselves usually point to something underneath the surface that isn’t working as smoothly as it should. Over time, employees become remarkably good at adapting to friction. They learn which conference rooms actually connect reliably. They avoid certain neighborhoods because they know the noise level makes focus difficult. They reserve the same desks repeatedly because those spaces consistently support the kind of work they need to do. Some employees leave personal items behind on shared desks in the hopes that others will assume the space is occupied. Eventually, these behaviors just become part of how people navigate the workplace. What’s interesting is that organizations sometimes interpret these workarounds as preference or habit, when more often, they’re signals about reliability and trust in the environment. People naturally gravitate toward spaces, tools, and routines that reduce uncertainty. If one area consistently works better than another, employees will keep returning to it. If certain meeting rooms always have technical issues, people will avoid booking them. If support requests take too long to resolve, teams start solving problems on their own however they can. When you pay attention, all of these behaviors provide valuable feedback. Employees are showing the organization where friction exists and where the workplace is or isn’t supporting their work effectively. The challenge is that many of these patterns develop quietly over time. Because employees adapt, the underlying issues can become normalized and much less visible to leadership. That’s one reason observation matters so much in workplace experience work. Surveys and feedback sessions are useful but simply watching how people move through the environment often reveals things employees no longer think to mention. Which spaces stay empty? Which spaces are constantly occupied? Which tools do people bypass? Which processes do they avoid? The workarounds tell the story. 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

We are excited to officially introduce DiagnostiX for Restaurants - an AI-powered restaurant intelligence and performance benchmarking platform developed by 4xi and now live on 4xi360 DiagnostiX. Independent restaurants have historically lacked access to the type of enterprise-level intelligence available to large hospitality groups. DiagnostiX was built to change that by providing advanced insights, benchmarking, and strategic guidance both affordable and accessible. DiagnostiX is not just another survey tool. It is a dynamic diagnostic platform that blends owner and operator self-reflection with AI-powered intelligence. The platform brings together customer sentiment analysis, competitive benchmarking, digital presence evaluation, employee sentiment indicators, and strategic growth recommendations into one cohesive system. The result: a highly visual, data-rich HealthCheck report that clearly identifies strengths, risk indicators, perception gaps, competitive positioning, operational opportunities, and revenue and growth potential. What DiagnostiX Does DiagnostiX analyzes restaurants across multiple dimensions and transforms fragmented information into clear, actionable business intelligence. The platform evaluates performance across six core pillars: customer sentiment, pricing and accessibility, employee sentiment, social media impact, competitive positioning, and brand experience and growth. Each restaurant receives an overall HealthCheck score along with detailed pillar scoring, an online presence audit, competitor comparisons, customer review verbatims, risk analysis, and a prioritized action roadmap. Restaurants also gain access to ongoing benchmarking opportunities that allow them to track improvement over time. Sample reports demonstrate the depth of insight and strategic clarity DiagnostiX delivers. By combining public data with operator-provided input, the platform creates a clear operational narrative and improvement roadmap that restaurant owners can act on immediately. How DiagnostiX Works DiagnostiX is designed to deliver meaningful insight quickly, without adding complexity for operators. The process begins with a short, guided self-reflection survey covering key areas such as business performance, staffing, customer behavior, menu strength, pricing perception, and overall outlook. From there, DiagnostiX conducts an automated external intelligence review, analyzing your digital presence, customer reviews, social activity, competitive landscape, and other publicly available signals. This combined dataset is then processed by AI to generate a comprehensive HealthCheck report. The report highlights strengths, blind spots, risks, and growth opportunities, along with a clear, prioritized action roadmap. Restaurants can also opt into recurring HealthChecks to benchmark performance over time and track measurable progress. Why DiagnostiX Matters DiagnostiX is far more than a one-time report. It represents a new way for independent restaurants to access enterprise-grade thinking and strategic clarity. Most independent operators work without a clear understanding of how they are truly performing compared to competitors or market expectations. DiagnostiX provides clarity, objectivity, and strategic direction while uncovering hidden risks and missed opportunities. It brings benchmarking, accountability, and actionable recommendations into a single, easy-to-understand format. For restaurants looking to grow, improve operations, or simply gain visibility into their business performance, DiagnostiX delivers insight that leads to action. What's in it for Restaurants? Restaurants using DiagnostiX benefit from affordable enterprise-level diagnostics, fast and intelligent business reviews, competitive benchmarking, clear strategic guidance, action-oriented recommendations, and ongoing progress tracking. DiagnostiX empowers independent restaurants with the tools, intelligence, and confidence they need to make better decisions and build stronger, more resilient businesses. Get Your DiagnostiX HealthCheck If you’re ready to better understand how your restaurant is truly performing, DiagnostiX is designed to give you clear, actionable insight in a matter of days. Start with a HealthCheck to uncover strengths, identify risks, and see how your business compares within your market. Visit 4xi360 DiagnostiX to get started or learn more about how DiagnostiX can support your growth. 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

The First 15 Minutes (Part 2) Once organizations start paying attention to the first 15 minutes of the workday, the next question becomes pretty obvious: What actually improves the experience? The biggest improvements come from reducing uncertainty and making the workplace easier to navigate from the moment someone arrives. One of the simplest examples is seat finding. If employees have to wander the floor every morning trying to figure out where to sit, the day starts with unnecessary friction. Even basic visibility into which neighborhoods have available space can make a big difference. People settle in faster when they know where they’re going before they arrive. The same thing applies to technology. Employees are surprisingly forgiving of occasional technology issues. What becomes frustrating is inconsistency. When docking stations work in one area but not another, or conference room setups vary from space to space, people stop trusting the environment. Consistency matters more than having the newest technology. Wayfinding is another area that gets underestimated. I’ve seen beautifully designed workplaces where visitors and even employees struggle to find meeting rooms, amenities, or support spaces. Clear signage and intuitive navigation reduce more stress than most organizations realize, especially in larger offices or unassigned seating environments. Service responsiveness also matters quite a bit. When something breaks, employees generally understand that issues happen. What shapes the experience is whether it gets resolved quickly and whether people know how to get help. Most employees also don’t care which team owns the issue. They don’t want to figure out whether they should contact workplace services for one problem, technology support for another, and building operations for something else. They just know something isn’t working and that it’s creating friction in their day. Long response times, or unclear ownership, create the feeling that the workplace isn’t being actively managed. 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 First 15 Minutes (Part 1) Over the years, it’s become clear that within the first 15 minutes of arriving at work, people generally know how the rest of their day is going to feel. Because the workday starts before anyone opens their laptop. It starts when someone pulls into the parking garage already thinking about their first meeting. It starts when they’re trying to badge into the building while answering a Teams message on their phone. It starts when they walk the floor looking for a place to sit that actually works for the kind of work they need to do that day, and it starts when they head to the pantry to find a decent cup of coffee. If those first few moments feel smooth, people settle in pretty quickly. If they don’t, frustration starts building almost immediately. The monitor doesn’t connect. The Wi-Fi drops. The only available seats are in noisy areas. There’s no milk or creamer. Someone spends the first ten minutes of the morning walking around trying to find a place to focus before a meeting starts in five minutes. None of these things sound dramatic on their own, but they stack up fast. I often see organizations focus on larger workplace initiatives, but not so much on these smaller operational moments that end up shaping the experience employees have every single day. Employees experience the workplace as one continuous experience. They don’t care which team owns the issue or whether the problem sits with technology, operations, facilities, or workplace strategy. They just know whether getting started feels easy or unnecessarily difficult. That’s why I keep coming back to the first 15 minutes. It’s one of the clearest signals of whether the workplace is functioning the way people need it to. When the arrival experience feels intuitive, people settle in faster and focus more quickly. The workplace supports the work instead of competing with it. Over time, employees adapt to whatever friction exists. They learn which floors to avoid. They reserve the same spaces repeatedly - even if they’re not sure they’ll be in the office - because they know those spaces work reliably. They leave personal items on shared desks in the hopes that others will think the desk is permanently assigned. Eventually, those workarounds just become part of the routine. This is where workplace and hospitality overlap. Good hospitality operations pay close attention to transitions, arrival moments, and first impressions because those experiences shape how people feel moving through an environment. The workplace works the same way. People don’t expect perfection. They do expect an environment that feels functional, consistent, and reasonably easy to navigate. At the beginning of the work day they want to look forward to the activities of the day because of the workplace, not in spite of it. And in my experience, the first 15 minutes usually tell you whether that’s happening or not. Nathan Bricklin Senior Consultant, Global Workplace Experience Helping enterprise leaders close the gap between executive intent and lived employee experience at scale. EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION ASSESSMENT Ready to find out where you really stand? DiagnostiX EVP is for the HR and talent leaders, founders, and people teams who suspect their employer brand says one thing while the employee experience says another. DiagnostiX reads your EVP across six pillars, benchmarks you against your real talent competitors, and shows you exactly where the gaps are. Because in a market where your best people are always one recruiter call away, guessing about your value proposition is a risk you can't afford. Know your number. Run your DiagnostiX EVP Assessment HERE → Diagnostix | Value Proposition 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