From Workplace Experience to Workplace Performance

For years, workplace strategy has centered on facilities, amenities, utilization, and return-to-office policies. Today, the mandate is broader: workplace investments are expected to improve both employee and organizational performance.

That shift is redefining the role of workplace experience within the organization. 

The Workplace Has a New Performance Mandate

Workplace experience has traditionally operated as a support function. Today, it plays a more direct role in how people collaborate, make decisions, serve customers and execute.

That raises the expectations for workplace leaders. Investments in space, services, technology and experience need to connect more clearly to business outcomes.

At SPS, this is central to the Connected Workplace: an integrated model that connects people, technology, data, workplace service operations, culture, and employee experience to improve performance.

Start by Removing Friction

One of the clearest opportunities is reducing the friction employees encounter during the workday.

Employees move through dozens of workplace interactions, from entering the office and finding a workspace to accessing technology, requesting services and collaborating with colleagues. Every disconnected system, service issue or operational bottleneck consumes time and attention that could be directed toward customers, collaboration, innovation and business priorities.

Viewed at scale, workplace friction becomes lost organizational capacity. Improving performance requires an end-to-end view of the employee journey: where friction occurs, what causes it and which services, processes, technologies or interactions can remove it.

Connected workplace operations make that view possible. When services and workflows are integrated, leaders can see the employee experience more clearly and improve it with greater precision.

What This Looks Like in Practice

For Ed Sellazzo, Principal, US Workplace Solutions at Apollo Global Management, workplace performance requires a multidimensional view.

Sellazzo describes Apollo’s approach as a combination of employee feedback, talent metrics, and business results. Apollo gathers employee data, identifies pain points and examines how experience influences results across functions.

Interview with Ed Sellazzo on how Apollo Global Management connects employee feedback, talent metrics and business results to improve workplace performance.

Turn Workplace Data Into Workplace Intelligence

Organizations have access to more workplace data than ever: utilization, service interactions, occupancy, employee feedback and operational performance. The value comes from connecting those signals.

Data can explain what happened. Workplace intelligence helps leaders understand why it happened, what it means and what should happen next.

By integrating operational data with employee feedback and experience signals, leaders can identify recurring friction, understand behavior, anticipate needs and make better workplace investment decisions.

That progression allows workplace leaders to ask better questions:

• Where is friction occurring?
• What is causing it?
• What should we change?
• Did the change improve performance?

Experience Drives Behavior. Behavior Drives Results.

Technology and data matter because organizational performance ultimately depends on people.

At the 2026 SPS Connected Workplace Experience, keynote speaker Jessica Kriegel challenged leaders to examine the beliefs behind employee actions. Everyday experiences shape those beliefs. Beliefs influence engagement, ownership, collaboration and accountability. Those behaviors influence results.

The leadership implication is practical: design workplace experiences that make the behaviors your organization needs easier to achieve.

Dr. Jessica Kriegel's keynote address on how workplace experiences shape employee behavior—and how those behaviors influence business results.

From Workplace Experience to Workplace Performance

As AI, automation, and workplace technologies evolve, workplace leaders should keep the objective clear: help people and organizations perform better. Three priorities can guide that work:

1. Connect the experience. View the employee journey end to end and remove friction that limits performance
2. Connect the intelligence. Bring operational, utilization, service and employee experience data together to understand what is happening, why it is happening and where action is needed.
3. Connect to business outcomes. Measure how workplace improvements contribute to productivity, retention, service quality, collaboration and operational effectiveness.

The question for workplace leaders is changing from “Are employees using the workplace?” to:

Is the workplace helping our people and our business perform better?

Organizations that can answer that question with confidence can make better workplace investments and demonstrate measurable business value.