‘Employees Must Now be Treated Like Customers’ says British Council for Offices

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• ‘Employees Must Now be Treated Like Customers’ says British Council for Offices

29 October 2024

A report from The British Council for Offices urges employers to view workers as customers to be attracted and retained, focusing on creating positive experiences.

This “state of the nation” report sets out the latest thinking on the implications of rise of hybrid working and the profound transformation in the office sector. It outlines that office worker preferences have changed just as much as consumer behaviour, and should be viewed as such.

 

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“Employees must now be treated like customers, with their experience and satisfaction as the top priority if their loyalty to the office is to be earnt,” said Andy McBain, BCO Junior Vice President, Chair of the BCO Occupiers Group and Head of Future of Workspace & Design at NatWest. “Rising generations have different expectations of the workplace and combined with advancements in tech, this has brought about a tectonic shift in ways of working – and consequently how offices should be managed and serviced.”

Gen Z in particular has a specific outlook on the working environment, having been raised with unprecedented access to technology and digital connection. The COVID-19 pandemic has also significantly affected this group’s outlook on work, with hybrid and remote working becoming the norm during their formative years. Competing with the home environment means office must be attractive, comfortable and inspiring.

 

Data-Driven Decisions

 

Measuring employee preferences is a key recommendation by the report, in order to leverage insights into space utilisation and establish exactly what an individual workforce requires. This goes beyond satisfaction and wellbeing surveys, employees should also be encouraged to give feedback on the service performance of facilities management. 

The report notes that property owners are even incorporating staff feedback into stakeholder reports, making customer experience performance an incentive for senior management and the supply chain.

Dr Danielle Sanderson, Associate Professor of Real Estate at UCL and Senior Consultant at RealService, said: “Employers and workspace providers should be trying to ‘sell’ time in the office, gather insights into what their ‘customers’ want, and design customer journeys to deliver an excellent customer experience. Such a Customer Experience strategy offers real commercial benefits, as my research has repeatedly shown.”

 

ESG as a Service

 

Another recommendation is that occupiers should be fully engaged with ESG efforts. Certain generations prioritise ESG as a key workplace value, and the report says that suppliers are increasingly seeing the benefits of working closely with their occupier customers to ensure that buildings deliver the targeted environmental performance. 

Research by RealService, commissioned by the Better Buildings Partnership’sOwner/Occupier Forum shows that whilst 75 per cent of occupiers find the ESG agenda important, only 25 per cent feel adequately engaged by their landlords.

Picture: a photograph of three people, smiling and laughing while looking at a laptop. Image Credit: Pexels

Article written by Ella Tansley | Published 29 October 2024

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