Workplace Experience: Office/Corporate Environment 2024

Originating when an area workplace manager spotted the potential of a paper about holistic workplace experience, this collaboration between NatWest and workplace experience analytics platform Audiem – a software-as-a-service (SaaS) start-up venture – has helped the bank understand and improve its colleague workplace experience. It’s a partnership that has evolved to transform the workplace function and achieve bank-wide impacts.

The project started in mid 2022 when area workplace manager Paul Urmston discovered Audiem’s solution, convincing colleagues to arrange and facilitate a workshop at which participants were invited to identify elements of workplace experience that they felt either helped or hindered outstanding colleague experiences.

This content was mapped onto the holistic framework proposed in the paper into themes of business, culture, workspace and technology.

A ‘test and learn’ approach was then applied, using a sample of FM helpdesk and catering feedback, proving that the concept worked and providing the bank with the confidence to adopt a new approach to colleague workplace experience feedback.

As it progressed, the initiative invited greater involvement from different parts of the business and also explored new feedback opportunities, particularly from historically hard-to-reach segments like the retail branch network.

Results delivered

Audiem’s AI powered platform has allowed NatWest workers to share their experiences in their own words. Subsequent advanced data analytics, mutual learning and support has seen data insights translated into actionable strategies. It’s an initiative that has improved workplace experience performance (validated by independent external benchmarks and awards) and gained recognition from senior leadership, uniting professionals from the bank’s property, FM, HR, IT and business teams around a shared concept of workplace and experience data.

Today, feedback has been collected from 23 corporate offices across the UK and India, and more than 500 bank branches. Quantitative and qualitative data has been analysed, including over 43,000 experience free-text viewpoints, comprising over 1,000,000 words from over 10,000 bank colleagues.

The collaboration has revolutionised NatWest’s appreciation of workplace experience, garnered endorsement from the bank’s executive for the evidence-based approach it rests on, and elevated the profile of the property team within the bank.

Lessons in best practice

Good partnerships keep pushing the performance envelope: New data processing opportunities for Audiem continue to be identified, including helpdesk tickets, NatWest’s in-house FM and IT chatbot ‘AskArchie’, and monthly supplier KPI data. Future ambitions include experimenting with location-based QR code data collectors to create an ‘always-on’ colleague feedback ecosystem that doesn’t need to rely on traditional surveys.

Key quotes

“It is very rare in the bank that we manage to bring together people from across property, HR and tech and it was fascinating for everyone to see how they all interlinked – it’s what we hoped would happen, but to see it unfold was brilliant.”

Andy McBain, Head of Future of Work and Office Design.

“Who’d have thought, when we sat down six months ago, that this would become our north star, informing everything we do, and everything we are going to do?”

Fiona Walmsley, Head of Property

“Seizing the initiative…”

It was a bold move to lean away from industry recognised benchmarks to embrace a new approach and analysis tool. But the project has rapidly established a new workplace experience mindset. Moreover, it has unified HR, Property and IT teams – something long advocated in the sector, but often elusive in many organisations.

From the Judges

“An impressive presentation showing exemplary end user and stakeholder engagement, use of FM best practice and use of AI to shape customer insight and guide all future real estate projects. Collaboration at all stages is clear.”