Executive summary In an ever more competitive business environment, companies increasingly recognise that creating positive workplace experiences can help them to meet the challenges of competing for talent and improving employee engagement and productivity. They understand that workplace experience can be designed to support corporate culture, objectives and strategy. For the purpose of this white paper, we define workplace experience as all the individual experiences that employees have that make up the overall experience of being at work. Workplace services play an important role in creating good workplace experience – though the service side is neglected by many companies, who otherwise make considerable investment in the physical infrastructure, furniture and décor of their workplaces. Some companies look beyond the physical, tangible aspects of a typical workplace and try to make it fun to go to work. Workplace reception areas now host farmers’ markets with invited suppliers; large meeting rooms are used to host talks by prominent speakers; there are pop-up markets, nail salons and dry cleaning facilities. Workplace services are becoming responsive and reactive. Hot chocolate is served to employees arriving on a particularly cold day – and iced tea during a heat wave. This white paper considers how workplace services – from essential services, all the way to value-added ones – contribute to providing excellent workplace experiences. Informal discussion in the workplace. Tonny Dose & Martin Kjær Hansen We examine how to deliver excellence in these services so that employees’ workplace experience supports the company’s purpose. Providing services that support company purpose is a critical concern tor facilities management (FM) suppliers. In this white paper we argue that the starting point for delivering excellent workplace experience lies in understanding the company’s purpose and what creates value for the customer. We believe that deliberately designed services that put the individual service user at the heart of the design process are the way to deliver the value that companies are looking for. On the following pages, we look at why workplace experience is so important to companies today and examine the evidence showing that services play a key role in creating positive workplace experience. We then look at service design and its application in the context of workplace experience. Service design is a wellestablished, structured approach to delivering excellence in services. Some refer to the process as ‘intentional and architected’ design of services. Many companies use service design to develop or improve their products and services, but few use it to deliberately design a workplace experience that supports their objectives and creates value. We argue that the use of service design by FM suppliers to create excellent workplace experiences that support their client’s purpose is now an imperative for the industry. Companies are looking for more from their outsourcing and they are being strategic in using contracts to drive business innovation. This implies closer relationships between client and supplier, with the supplier handling a wider range of workplace services in order to be able to deliver the economies of scale, synergies and value that companies are looking for. Proprietary information ISS World Services A/S - Copyright © 2018 3
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