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Why your company needs a workplace experience manager in 2022

Many people wonder how the new in-office work will look as we return to the office. And for those adopting hybrid schedules, how will company cultures and workplace experiences change? A lot of things are up in the air. So, it’s more important than ever for companies to keep an eye on their employee and workplace experiences. That’s why having a workplace experience manager is absolutely essential in 2022. Let’s take a look at why your company needs one.

What is a workplace experience manager?

Workplace experience managers are the wizards behind the scenes that keep employees happy in the workplace.

They collect information on employee experiences, office and technology requirements, and work to help HR managers create a close-knit working environment. Workplace experience managers need to evaluate any situation from a universal perspective while keeping in mind both innovation and empathy. They work to create a rich working environment that will help increase and promote employee retention.

Some of the responsibilities of a workplace experience manager include:

Implement employee journey mapping to follow an employee’s progress within the company, and their daily requirements, such as workspaces and resources, for different personas types within the organization.
Improve internal communication to maintain connection and nurture positive trust levels between the company and its employees.
Collect and implement employee feedback.
Evaluate how office culture is reflected in the staff’s daily experiences.
Use office layouts and behavior and utilization analytics to find ways to meet and support employees’ preferred working styles.
Analyze and suggest the best technology.

As you can see, workplace experience managers have wide-ranging responsibilities. And those responsibilities are amplified as companies work to make massive shifts to working schedules, office layouts, company structures, and more. If your employees aren’t impressed with how you manage these changes, they’re more likely than ever to start looking for a new place to work.

3 key reasons why you need a workplace experience manager in 2022

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So now that you know what workplace experience managers do, let’s look at some reasons why you need a workplace experience manager to help you optimize for hybrid working, right now.

Employee retention

As the Great Resignation has made abundantly clear, employees know what they want from their jobs. And if their organizations aren’t living up to their expectations, they’re willing to walk away.

In fact, Deloitte found that 44% of Millennials planned to leave their current company within the next two years.

But why? Although the reasons can vary, employees often cite feeling underappreciated, lacking advancement opportunities, being forced to work in a stuffy working environment, and a lack of updated technology as reasons for leaving.

A workplace experience manager can play a key role in mitigating some of these issues. Whether paying more attention to employee recognition or helping redesign the office space, workplace experience managers can help greatly improve your employee retention.

Crafting company culture

Finding the right talent for your company starts with recruitment. But it doesn’t end there. More and more companies now realize that having a workplace experience manager can help integrate new employees into the organization while also bolstering the existing company culture.

Unlike HR managers, who spend most of their time with employees when they join a company, workplace experience managers follow the employee’s timeline from the very beginning of their professional engagement to their last day. This holistic approach allows you to track employee progress and implement changes based on employee feedback over time. Plus, giving employees the chance to be heard by management will help increase their overall job satisfaction — making them less likely to leave.

Managing change in the transition to hybrid working

As hybrid working becomes the new normal, getting the employee experience right is crucial. New hybrid work schedules, rules, and processes require lots of clear communication and planning to ensure success.

A workplace experience manager can help lead the set up of appropriate activity-based working areas in your office, based on demand, and will have a good understanding of the ways your employees prefer to work. If you want to learn more about creating the best working environment for different types of workers, check out our recent blog on the subject!

And if you’re implementing a hot-desking or desk hoteling system in your hybrid work model, workplace experience managers can help facilitate the successful adoption of desk and workspace booking.

For the times when people work remotely, workplace experience managers can help make sure teams have easy ways to communicate, and smooth the experience so it’s good for those in-person as well as those joining remotely.

Give your workplace experience manager the right tools for the job

Hiring a great workplace experience manager is only half the battle — you also need to arm them with the best tools to help them succeed.

That’s where we can help. Smartway2 offers a fully-featured workplace scheduling, space utilization and space management solution. With your help, your workplace manager can easily set up hot desking systems, meeting rooms, and provide facilities to order lunch or reserve other amenities when needed.

Space utilization and behavior insights can be drawn from the system to drive data driven decisions on delivering what your people want, and giving a clear signal that things you have put in place are working as they should.

Plus, Smartway2 integrates seamlessly with Outlook so your people can seamlessly reserve desk and rooms directly in the Outlook application where they are already working, when they are planning to come to the office for culture and collaboration time.