Change doesn’t come easily. Indeed, research often cited by McKinsey & Company – and countless other groups – suggests that organisations’ change programmes fail to meet their objectives 70% of the time. It’s a significant number, but does it hold up to scrutiny when looking specifically at workplace change projects? This question was the basis for Leesman’s latest report – ‘The Workplace Experience Revolution Part 2: Do new workplaces work’.

Part one of the series, published in 2018, revealed the factors that are the strongest drivers of outstanding workplace experience. This latest study takes that investigation further by exploring the challenges organisations face when it comes to delivering employee experience in new workplaces.

Leesman, the world’s leading assessor of employee workplace experience, has collected 600,000+ responses from more than 4,000 workplaces worldwide. By diving into our expansive data bank, the Leesman Index, we were able to analyse 346 spaces that were measured in the post‐occupancy phase after a workplace relocation or refurbishment.

There is good and bad news for the workplace design community. The good news is that the 70% failure figure does not carry over. Our research found that 41% of new workplaces deliver an exceptional employee experience, scoring a Leesman Index average (Lmi) of 70 or above (out of
100).

The bad news is that this isn’t exactly something to write home about. Our data suggests that a further 40% are not maximising their full potential, achieving an Lmi of 60‐60.9, and 19% are outright failing, recording below 60.