April 2025
Leesman Research & Insights Team
A significant improvement in employee workplace experience has taken place post-pandemic.
The average Leesman Index workplace experience score (Lmi) was 64.3 across all workplaces measured in 2019. By 2024, the average Lmi was more than five points higher, at 69.5.
Yet despite this, the overall experience of working from home continues to surpass that of working in the office. The average home experience score (H-Lmi) in 2024 was 79.5, exactly 10 points higher than the Lmi.
The priority then for many organisations now is closing – or at least decreasing – that gap. As one respondent to Leesman’s 2025 Corporate Real Estate (CRE) poll said, they want to ensure working at the office can be “as nice as working remotely”.
While differences between home and office remain considerable, both settings offer distinct advantages, for employees and employers. This is why it is essential that organisations are clear about what the purpose of the office is, or the ‘workplace why’.
A clear, well-established ‘workplace why’ resonates with both organisational objectives and employee needs.
It allows organisations to influence expectations of what the office should deliver, as well as establishing explicit reasons for employees to come in; it also ensures visits to the office are intentional, meaningful and never wasted.
But what does the ‘workplace why’ look like for most organisations? To understand this, we asked the CRE leaders about why their organisations maintain office space.
The responses varied. The most common reason, as cited by 70% of respondents, was ‘to foster collaboration and knowledge exchange’. Hybrid working has reshaped the dynamics of meetings and collaborations. Yet despite the post-pandemic transition to more online engagements and get-togethers, meetings and collaborations remain the pivotal reason for many office visits.
However, while people come to the office for specific collaboration tasks, once there they will also often engage in more spontaneous chats and knowledge exchanges beyond formal meetings. Leesman’s post-pandemic workplace experience data shows that 52% of employees see ‘Informal, unplanned meetings’ as an important activity in their role, while 73% confirm that their office environment supports them in sharing ideas and knowledge among colleagues. This shows the importance of physical office spaces in creating an engaging environment that encourages knowledge-sharing and teamwork.
The second most selected purpose for maintaining an office, as chosen by 43% of respondents to the CRE poll, was ‘to promote employee connection to their organisation and a sense of pride’. In hybrid working, maintaining that connection is vital; a lack of regular interaction with a company’s culture and with colleagues can leave employees feeling detached from their organisation’s values and mission. So for CRE leaders, having an office that fosters community and a sense of pride is important for enhancing that connection.
The third most cited reason was ‘to drive innovation and creativity’; selected by 37% of participants. Creativity and innovation not only require focused work, but the formal and informal exchanges of ideas, spontaneous conversations, collaboration and even socialising. The availability of supportive spaces and a dynamic environment that caters to this is crucial.
But while CRE leaders are clear about the purpose of the office, what about their staff? Do the reasons given by senior leaders align with their employees’ needs?
Our post-pandemic workplace experience data shows ‘Individual focused work (desk-based)’ remains the activity that is important to most (89%) employees, followed by ‘Planned meetings’ (74%) and ‘Collaborating on focused work’ (58%).
Indeed, ‘Individual focused work’ has consistently topped our list in terms of importance since Leesman first started assessing workplaces. It also has a strong link to a sense of productivity for most knowledge workers.
Yet only 27% of CRE leaders cited ‘enabling productivity’ as a ‘workplace why’. Instead, offices are seen primarily as hubs for collaboration and meet-ups – implying, directly or otherwise, that ‘Individual focused work’ and productivity might be better done and supported elsewhere.
This is a significant misalignment between how CRE leaders and employees view the office.
In some cases, that may not be an issue, just as long as it is clearly communicated that the office is best suited to engaging with others, and remote working to more focused, individual tasks.
But not all employees have the right setting to work effectively from home. And for those who do, splitting workdays into either collaborative or individual activities is challenging. So even offices that exist primarily to support collaboration should still be facilitating individual work.
So, how to improve employee experience if this is one of your priorities in 2025?
The answer will ultimately depend on your organisation’s ‘workplace why’, the specific needs of your staff and your real estate portfolio. But Leesman research has highlighted the key infrastructure elements that require attention when it comes to boosting the employee experience.
Some are far from new. With the risk of sounding like a broken record, ‘Noise levels’ remains a serious point of contention; regularly scoring very poorly, just 35% of employees are satisfied with this crucial feature.
Other elements with similarly disappointing scores are ‘Leisure facilities onsite or nearby’ (also 35%) and ‘Movement of people past my workstation’ (33%).
Other highlights (or more accurately lowlights) are ‘Quiet rooms for working alone or in pairs’ (just 40% satisfaction), ‘Temperature control’ (41%) and ‘Plants and greenery’ (47%). Even something as apparently straight forward as ‘Tea, coffee and other refreshment facilities’ often fails to hit the mark: despite regularly being ranked as highly important, only 63% of employees are satisfied with the provision in their workplace.
Similarly, ‘Chair’, ‘Desk’ and ‘Monitor’ are the three most important features out of all 56 included in our assessment. But about one in four employees is not satisfied with them. In other words, a quarter of employees are working in offices where their most basic, fundamental needs – where they sit and work – do not meet expectations.
The 2025 CRE poll and Leesman’s large workplace dataset have highlighted a mismatch in how employers and employees view the office; too often, the employer’s and employee’s ‘workplace why’ simply does not align. Only by acknowledging and addressing that misalignment will the gap between the office and home employee experience start to narrow.
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