Bringing purpose back to the office: Applying product, learning and branding mindsets to enhance workplace experience

Leigh Stringer, Liz Burow and Peter Bacevice
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Leigh Stringer: Firmwide Director of Advisory Services and Principal, Perkins&Will, USA
Liz Burow: Principal and Practice Leader, Perkins&Will, USA
Peter Bacevice: Research Affiliate, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, USA

Corporate Real Estate Journal, 2025, vol. 15, issue 1, 60-72

Abstract: This paper addresses the evolving purpose of office spaces in the post-pandemic workplace landscape. As organisations grapple with questions about the role of physical workplaces in an era of proven remote productivity, a new framework is proposed to help redefine office purpose. The framework examines offices through dual perspectives: who they serve (individuals, teams and enterprises) and how they serve them (through functional and symbolic purposes). For individuals, offices must provide essential tools for productivity while connecting personal work to organisational mission. For teams, spaces should facilitate cohesion while symbolically reinforcing desired behaviours. At the enterprise level, offices create experiences that embody organisational values and purpose. Three specialised mindsets are introduced to implement this framework: a product mindset for individual needs, treating offices as continuously improving consumer products; a learning mindset for team needs, embracing experimentation and feedback; and a branding mindset for enterprise needs, creating emotional connections through physical environments. The paper traces how coworking spaces have ‘consumerised’ workplace expectations by integrating both ‘hardware’ (physical spaces) and ‘software’ (experiences, services). Post-pandemic workplace strategies have often overemphasised collaboration spaces at the expense of individual work areas, suggesting a need for more balanced approaches. Traditional workplace planning methods are identified as insufficient for today’s rapidly evolving needs. The analysis concludes that a successful workplace strategy requires cross-functional expertise spanning multiple disciplines, tools that integrate all three mindsets and a holistic perspective balancing individual productivity with team cohesion and organisational identity. As expectations for workplace experiences continue to rise, offices must evolve beyond being mere places to work into strategic assets that support productivity, collaboration and organisational culture. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.

Keywords: workplace strategy; hybrid work; office purpose; organisational culture; employee experience; workplace design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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