Methodology

Since 2010, the Leesman Office Survey and Leesman Home Working Survey and Module (launched March 2020) have enabled us to gather employee experience data of unprecedented scale.

More than 800,000 employees have told us about their office experience and 145,000+ employees about their home working experience. Between these two large datasets, there is an overlap of 54,000+ that have answered on both their Home and Office at the same time, providing a unique opportunity to compare each experience for the same employees. To ensure the sample was not skewed towards any particular organisation, industry or region, the analysis presented here focuses on a subset sample of 22,000+ respondents who responded to both the home and office experience questions.

Lmi and H-Lmi

The Leesman Lmi and H-Lmi are 0-100 employee experience scores, calculated based on each survey completed. Each individual has an Lmi score for their office experience and an H-Lmi score for their home working experience. Each working environment has an Lmi score based on how well it supports employees.

The Lmi takes into account which work activities are important and how well the workplace supports them, and how the workplace generally impacts organisational priorities. The H-Lmi score measures the same information, but for the home work setting.

Impact of home work settings

We’ve consistently found that employees’ home settings – whether a dedicated work room or area – are the strongest indicator of their experience of working remotely. Without an understanding of this fundamental information, you’ll find it impossible to instruct your future workplace strategy.

Leesman data shows that employees who used dedicated offices reported the best home working experience, while those working in areas not intended for work report the worst.Not only should you know how supported your employees are when working from home, it is essential that you also understand how this compares to that same employee’s experience in the office.

Our research also found that for those who work from a dedicated room at home, the home provides a better experience than the office, while those who worked in non-work specific areas at home, such as a sofa, had a better experience in the office overall. Without this knowledge, it will become exceedingly difficult to accurately inform your office and home working strategy.

How complex are your employees’ roles?

From individual, desk-based work to creative thinking and unplanned meetings, the more variety in types of work activities, the more challenging it is for their work environment to support those different needs. This ‘activity complexity’ for an employee’s role has a significant impact on their workplace experience, whether at home or in the office. We have found that employees in low complexity roles had the best home working experience, while those working in high complexity roles were the least positive.

But do you know if your office supports those with more complex roles? If you aren’t sure what types of work activities your workforce undertakes, you will not be able to create an outstanding – or even adequate – work environment to support your employees.

By building a work activity profile for your employees, you can design a workplace to cater to the activities your workforce deem most important.

Individual/collaborative ratio

Remote working has drastically changed how different types of work activities can be supported. By comparing the amount of individual work activities with collaborative activities, each employee can be clustered into one of five activity profile groupings. By comparing employees’ experience in the office and at home, our research ascertained which of the two was more likely to provide a better experience for each grouping.

But it’s not as simple as being able to classify some roles as collaborative and some roles as individual – some of the more individual roles were better supported in the office. Yet these activity profiles act as a high-level indicator of which location may be more appropriate – and will dictate where your focus needs to be on tailoring your future work environment experience.

Returning to office

Stage 1 emphasises the importance of looking at home work settings and the effects on home working experience. But in a future where home and office are likely to be blended, knowing how this compares to office experience is crucial; an outstanding office experience may attract employees to return more regularly.

In a comparison of three different workplaces within the same organisation, we found that employees working in an outstanding office environment were less likely to want to work from home in the future; in a low-scoring environment, the trend was reversed.

Office vs home

Without an understanding of how employees’ home and office experiences compare to each other, you could be designing a future workplace strategy which doesn’t reflect your employees’ needs. Within our dataset, only 38% of employees have an outstanding experience at home and in the office (the top right quadrant).

Once you understand who is best supported and where, you can then begin to decipher which activities need more support for those with suboptimal working experiences – both at home and in the workplace.