Integrating workplace hospitality into your business strategy

In two previous blog posts we’ve looked at the three drivers of a workplace hospitality people strategy, and how building workplace hospitality into your brand strategy can help drive positive results for your company, its employer brand and its DEI efforts. In this last post of our three-part series, we take a look at how building workplace hospitality into your business strategy can help you achieve results that drive both bottom line success and employee engagement.

Two hot topics related to business strategy today are how to effectively manage significant real estate investments and, with the proliferation of widespread technology options, how to effectively use data to support your business strategy. Here we take a look at both, and how workplace hospitality can contribute to positive outcomes.

Companies with significant real estate investments

Since the pandemic when many organizations sent employees home to work, a significant number have found it a monumental challenge to call them back into the office full time. This has resulted in organizations having large amounts of overhead tied up in unused office space or find themselves stuck in long-term space contracts. On the other end of the spectrum are companies that are growing and finding their need for physical workspace on the rise. They’re in acquisition mode.

Investments in physical workspaces can consume a lot of capital and take a big bite out of business budgets. The effective use of workplace hospitality programs can help organizations realize tangible value from those investments. How? By ensuring that the use of physical spaces help to contribute to employee engagement and a positive workplace experience.

For instance, physical workspaces can be used to provide amenities that serve the needs of employees on-site and lure off-site and hybrid employees back into the office. Converting some of the space into event space can further provide experiences that engage and delight employees — and can also generate revenue through leasing the space for other functional uses.

The big idea is workplace hospitality can help companies leverage the value of their often significant real estate investments to engage employees in meaningful ways designed to boost both loyalty and satisfaction. Maximizing the value of your physical workspace creates an environment that is inviting and comfortable — exactly what employees need to be productive and happy.

Companies that are data driven

Today’s organizations operate in a data-rich environment, but not all are sufficiently data driven, nor use their data most effectively to drive employee engagement and improve the workplace experience. Many often either lack real metrics to help determine the ROI of benefits programs or collect data but aren’t quite sure how to use it.

Data, when gathered and analyzed strategically and effectively, can be used to benefit both employees and the organization.

Tracking employee engagement and other key metrics can provide valuable insights into how business strategies, including workplace hospitality efforts, are impacting the workplace experience and employee satisfaction. Data can be collected to be used for personalization, and to improve service delivery and operations. Here are a few examples of the kinds of data you could collect:

• tracking special occasion dates
• keeping tabs on employee food preferences
• recording event attendance
• analyzing which communication efforts generated the most interactions
• verifying which partners and vendors employees frequent most

At the company level, continual data monitoring combined with the use of surveys for ongoing feedback can be used to better understand how employees are responding to and supporting the company culture, and to offer insights into opportunities for improvement to elevate culture, engagement and tenure.

Data gathering through Circles’ workplace hospitality services offers companies insights based on non-PII data, ensuring privacy and security for employees while helping companies make data driven decisions to boost the employee experience. These insights are integrated with your organization’s building app so all touchpoints are reported on to aid in visitor management, facility requests, and other impacts on real estate investments.

As we touched on in parts one and two of this blog series, the same principles that hotels use to create and maintain loyal guests and brand ambassadors can be applied to help organizations boost employee engagement and to encourage more employees and visitors to return to physical workspaces. For instance:

• Maintaining impeccable lobbies and other common areas to ensure that they are well-organized and welcoming for employees and visitors.
• Managing vendor interactions, deliveries and services — like catering services, maintenance crews, and technology support teams — to enhance their overall workplace experience.
• Handling facilities and maintenance requests to ensure prompt attention to maintenance issues, demonstrating a commitment to employee comfort and well-being.
• Conference room booking and management for both internal and external users including features like easy reservation processes, automated setup and post-meeting feedback collection.

There’s no reason for your organization to fail to realize significant benefits from its investments in real estate and data management. Leveraging workplace hospitality opportunities will help ensure that both employee and visitor needs are addressed and that expectations are not only met, but exceeded. Our free eBook, The Complete Guide to Workplace Hospitality offers additional ideas and how-tos for leveraging the power of workplace hospitality.