By Phumzile Mbatha, associate director, Gleeds

For much of the past decade, the office market has been locked in an amenity arms race. Features such as roof terraces, gyms, cycle facilities, wellness suites and coffee bars, which were once differentiators, are now expected. However, as these changes shape the office market a fundamental question is emerging: are we focusing too much on what buildings contain and not enough on how people experience them?

This question sat at the heart of a recent BCO NextGen London panel discussion hosted by Gleeds. Chaired by Meryn Baker, associate at Opera, the panel brought together:

• Sara Eggers, workplace strategy lead, Fletcher Priest Architects
• Lewis Barker, director of workplace services, ServiceNow
• Beth Wootton, senior leasing manager, Derwent London
• Richard Golding, associate director, Gleeds

With combined perspectives from workplace strategy, occupier operations and project delivery, the discussion quickly moved beyond amenities to a broader question: what do people truly value from the workplace?

Great workplaces don’t demand the commute, they justify it

Barker repeatedly returned to how dramatically workplace expectations have changed in the wake of hybrid working. The office is no longer the default setting for work; it is one option among many. The office now competes with home, local co-working spaces and, perhaps most importantly, people’s personal time.

An office needs to provide real added value, otherwise it loses its purpose. For Eggers, that ‘something’ is rarely a standalone amenity. The spaces drawing people back into the workplace are those that enable collaboration and connection. The challenge for developers is no longer simply provide facilities; it is to create environments that justify the effort and time versus the commute.

The fundamentals have become the differentiators

What is striking is that many of today’s most valued workplace features are remarkably unglamorous. They have reliable connectivity, excellent air quality, comfortable temperature, strong security and responsive building management. Few feature prominently in leasing brochures, yet they consistently influence occupier satisfaction and decision making.

During the panel discussion, Barker emphasised that when assessing potential workplaces, operational detail often matters more than headline features. The quality of hospitality, the ease of arrival and the integration of technology and community activation all shape how a building is experienced in practice.

Gleeds’ Golding argued that the industry’s focus on headline amenities can sometimes obscure what matters most. More often, occupiers judge workplaces by the experience of using them every day. When technology works, arrivals feel effortless and services are delivered seamlessly these moments build trust in the same way strong brands do. Few organisations would tolerate a poor customer experience from the external-facing brand. However, many still tolerate friction-filled experiences inside the buildings where their people spend most of their working lives.

From amenities to experience

One of the most interesting tensions discussed during the session was disconnect between how developers and occupiers define amenity. Eggers noted that developers often think about amenity in terms of provision, such as how much lettable space has been sacrificed to create communal facilities. Whereas occupiers tend to measure by considering if it improves the experience of their working day. That distinction has significant implications. An end-of-trip facility accessed through multiple heavy doors, a coffee bar positioned on the opposite side of the building from the event space it serves, or visitor seating hidden around a corner from reception may all tick the box on paper, but fail to deliver a positive user experience in practice.

This is where the industry may need to move beyond the language of amenity altogether. What occupiers appreciate is the overall experience of a building. Every touchpoint contributes to perception, and in that sense, the workplace functions much like a brand. The experience is shaped not just by a single feature, but by the cumulative effect of hundreds of interactions. Gleeds’ move into its Fitzrovia headquarters reflected much of this in practice. Going from a more fragmented space across several floors into a workplace with shared breakout, kitchen and arrival has noticeably improved interaction between teams.

Experience as competitive advantage

Wootton argued that amenity has become inseparable from a building’s identity and market positioning. In a competitive leasing environment, particularly where several buildings may offer similar specifications, experience can become a genuine source of competitive advantage.

Progressively, experience influences not only attraction, but retention, helping buildings remain relevant long after the initial leasing decision has been made. This is particularly important as organisations use the workplace as a tool for attracting and retaining talent. Buildings that create a strong sense of place and community can often compete on something more meaningful than location, specification or rental level alone. Increasingly, the quality of the experience matters as much as the physical product itself.

Rethinking value

The discussion also challenged some long-held assumptions about value. The property industry has become highly sophisticated at measuring cost. Capital expenditure, operational expenditure, leasing performance and energy consumption can all be modelled with amassed precision. Still, we remain far less sophisticated at measuring what makes people choose one workplace over another. Culture, belonging, collaboration and pride in place all create qualitative value, but they rarely sit neatly within traditional investment metrics.

Golding challenged the industry’s tendency to focus too heavily on upfront cost. Workplace investments continue to influence operational performance, adaptability, carbon outcomes and asset resilience long after practical completion, but those benefits are often harder to capture in traditional appraisals. Eggers reinforced that there is no universal formula. Every project requires a different balance of priorities, commercial objectives and user needs. The challenge is identifying which decisions preserve the strongest value proposition over the long term, rather than simply reducing cost in the short term.

Adaptability as the ultimate key for success

If there was one theme that united the panel, it was adaptability. Many of the buildings due to complete towards the end of this decade are already being planned, designed or delivered today. Yet workplace expectations continue to evolve faster than traditional development cycles. The next decade may be defined by something more nuanced: creating workplaces that can evolve as quickly as the people who use them. In a market where nobody can predict exactly what occupiers will want in 2030, adaptability may prove to be the most valuable amenity of all.

3 Sheldon Square © Jack Hobhouse

Ben Myers, Associate Director + Studio Lead, BSc (Hons) DipArch ARB RIBA AaPS

A whole generation of office buildings, from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s, is approaching a critical moment. Many are now entering refurbishment cycles where the default response is “deep retrofit”, often resulting in the wholesale replacement of façades that remain technically serviceable.

Their challenge is not obsolescence, but taste.

Architectural value is cyclical, and this helps to explain the response. Buildings move from contemporary, to dated, to rediscovered. Victorian warehouses were once liabilities; postmodernism was dismissed before being revived. Early 2000s high-tech commercial architecture now sits in its most vulnerable phase, technically ageing but not yet culturally revalued.

For buildings of this type, the default response is replacement. Replace the façade and everything else follows. Capital cost increases, additional floors are introduced to recover value, material use expands, and carbon rises.

The partial retrofit paradox

This is the partial retrofit paradox: retaining the frame while eroding carbon savings everywhere else. More material, more cost, more carbon.

The driver is often aesthetic rather than technical. Curtain wall systems from this era were not naive. Double glazing, considered U-values and solar control characteristics were standard. By today’s benchmarks they are imperfect, but often capable of meeting a performance sufficiency threshold with targeted upgrades.

Industry tends to design to optimisation, but sustainable retrofit should ask a different question: can we work with it? The question is whether replacement is necessary. Does a 25-year-old façade need to be replaced to reposition an asset?

British Land’s 3 Sheldon Square is typical of this building type. The brief was familiar: strip the building, replace the services, improve performance, reposition the asset.

The approach was to add rather than replace. External balconies introduce amenity space and solar shading. Planting adds a biophilic layer. Interventions reinterpret the existing façade rather than removing it, establishing a new identity through contrast.

Making the commercial and carbon case

The outcomes are measurable. LETI targets for 2030 sit at 350 kgCO₂/m². Many high-performing new-build schemes remain above 500 kgCO₂/m². Partial retrofit schemes involving façade replacement and extension typically fall between 250 and 400 kgCO₂/m². 3 Sheldon Square was delivered at 125 kgCO₂/m².

There is also a clear commercial case. The scheme avoided wholesale replacement and concentrated investment on high-impact elements. The all-electric, BREEAM Outstanding building was delivered with a minimum 15-year life extension at approximately £160 per sq ft GIA, well below the typical cost of re-skinning and extension.

Concerns about market acceptance did not materialise. During construction, heads of terms were agreed with a blue-chip occupier for 83,000 sq ft at competitive rents.

The default response is often wholesale transformation. It does not need to be. There is a large cohort of assets in a similar position. These conditions can be seen at Canary Wharf, where the first generation of early towers is now entering its refurbishment cycle. The same decisions are being made at scale, and the cumulative impact will be significant.

The decisions taken over the next five to 10 years will determine whether retrofit delivers meaningful carbon reduction, or represents a significant missed opportunity at the point when it matters most. If retrofit is to realise its potential, the threshold for replacement has to be higher. The outcome should not be determined by what we can build, but by what we choose to replace.

What is sometimes described as “radical retention” is, in practice, often just a more rigorous application of judgment. British Land’s 3 Sheldon Square demonstrates that this approach is viable. We are not short of buildings. We are short of restraint.

Ben Myers is an associate director and studio lead at Morris+Company and a BCO member.

Gillian Stewart, director, Michael Laird Architects

Across the UK office market, occupiers are consolidating into fewer buildings, but they are also becoming more selective. They are no longer paying for space alone but investing in environments that help them attract staff back, retain talent, embed culture and simply work better day to day.

In this context, the traditional leasing metrics we rely on (rent, square footage and yield) only tell part of the story. For years, the industry has framed demand as a “flight to quality”. But quality, at least as we have traditionally defined it, is no longer enough. What matters is more than just how a building looks, or how it performs on day one, but how it feels to use and how it supports the people inside it over time.

The new challenge is this: experience is now clearly driving value, but how do we define it properly, evidence it convincingly and price it with confidence?

From aspiration to reality

As an architect and interior designer with more than 40 years’ experience in workplace design, and as a judge for the BCO’s Customer Experience Award, I see this gap play out again and again. Many buildings have an impressive vision for occupier experience at planning stage and on completion. But few deliver that experience consistently once people are actually using the space.

Judging is illuminating precisely because it exposes the difference between promise and reality. Some submissions are extremely compelling on paper, with detailed strategies, polished narratives and strong headline metrics. But once you visit the building, meet the team responsible for running it and speak directly to occupiers, the picture often shifts.

The projects that stand out are those where the design intent genuinely carries all the way through into everyday use. They are operationally dependable, adaptable and managed by people who understand their occupiers and have real relationships with them. The schemes that fall short often do so at the point where responsibility moves from development into operation. That handover moment is where experience is most easily diluted.

Customer experience is far more than a decorative layer added at the end of the process. It is, and should be treated as, a material component of asset performance.

Experience as asset performance

Buildings that deliver a consistently strong occupier experience increasingly achieve higher retention rates and more predictable incomes. In last year’s BCO judging, the most convincing entries were able to evidence how long tenants stayed, how relationships were managed as businesses expanded or contracted, and how flexibility helped maintain loyalty over time.

Retention at this level comes from regular dialogue, responsiveness and a willingness to adapt space and services as occupier needs evolve. Where landlords genuinely understand their customers, they can often retain them within the same building or estate, even as their requirements change.

Yet many of the experience drivers that underpin this loyalty are still underestimated. Intuitive wayfinding, ease of arrival, shared amenity, a sense of welcome and the quality of on‑site management teams rarely feature prominently in investment appraisals. They are, however, precisely what occupiers talk about most, and what they notice immediately when missing.

One common mistake is assuming that great experience looks the same everywhere. A high‑rise tower with expansive views sets very different expectations from a series of lower‑rise buildings arranged around a courtyard. Smaller floorplates can foster a stronger sense of community; larger assets may naturally lend themselves to more formal landlord‑tenant relationships. Location, building typology and local culture all play a significant role in shaping what “good” looks like in practice.

This is why experience cannot be reduced to a checklist of amenities. A gym or café is not, in itself, an indicator of success. What counts is whether provision is relevant, well-managed and genuinely used.

A shared language for experience

Without common points of reference, landlords struggle to justify investment, occupiers find it harder to compare options and designers are often briefed on features rather than outcomes.

The value of benchmarking customer experience lies in the creation of shared  knowledge. The combination of hard data on retention, response times and utilisation with first‑hand testimony and what you can actually observe on site is critical to establishing a recognised way to evaluate experience. Desktop metrics matter, but they are never enough on their own. Experience has to be felt as well as described.

The flight to experience reflects a structural shift in how offices are used, valued and judged. For an industry that excels at measuring the tangible, the next priority is learning how to better understand and capture what people actually feel when they walk through the door.

That means investing with confidence, learning from others, and recognising that some of the most powerful drivers of asset performance are human, relational and operational.

Gillian Stewart is a director at Michael Laird Architects and judge for the BCO Customer Experience Award.