One in five workers think they are poorly served by offices

A major new study of workplace experience has found that offices are failing to meet the needs of employees with disabilities and health conditions, younger workers enjoy a better experience than older colleagues, almost a quarter of workplace investments make things worse, and noise remains a persistent problem, while AI threatens to reshape how employees work and learn from one another. The findings come from Leesman’s new Big Questions report, which draws on a database of more than 1.6 million employee responses across 10,775 workplaces in 124 countries to examine whether offices are meeting the needs of the people who use them.

Rather than concentrating on office attendance and return-to-office policies, the research considers how effectively workplaces support productivity, inclusion, collaboration and wellbeing, and whether substantial investment in office space is delivering meaningful improvements in employee experience.

The findings raise questions about the effectiveness of contemporary workplace design, particularly for employees with disabilities or health conditions, and suggest that many organisations are investing in the appearance and amenities of their offices without adequately addressing fundamental problems such as noise, privacy and concentration.

Offices failing one in five employees

Perhaps the most concerning finding relates to workplace inclusion. Analysis of almost 65,000 responses to Leesman’s Inclusive Workplace Module found that approximately one in five employees identified as having a disability, long-term health condition, mental health difficulty or neurodivergent profile. These employees reported lower satisfaction with every one of the 56 workplace features measured by Leesman, as well as poorer support for all 21 work activities assessed.

Only half of respondents in this group agreed that their workplace enabled them to work productively, compared with 67 percent of employees without these conditions. Similarly, just 42 percent believed their workplace had a positive impact on their wellbeing, against 56 percent of their colleagues.

The disparities were particularly pronounced in aspects of the physical environment that are fundamental to everyday work. Only 19 percent of employees with these conditions were satisfied with office noise levels, compared with 32 percent of other respondents. Satisfaction with office lighting stood at 43 percent against 59 percent, while quiet rooms, air quality and temperature control also showed substantial gaps.

The research suggests that workplace inclusion cannot be achieved through accessibility policies and compliance measures alone, but requires greater attention to the environmental conditions that determine whether people can work comfortably and effectively. The report argues that organisations need to measure these differences directly rather than relying on average employee satisfaction scores, which can conceal the experiences of substantial groups within the workforce.

Younger workers enjoy better offices, but need to work alongside experienced colleagues

The report also challenges assumptions about generational differences in office attendance and workplace preferences. Employees under 25 recorded the highest average workplace experience score, at 76.6 on Leesman’s 100-point index, compared with 68.7 for employees aged 55 and over. Younger employees were also the most frequent office attenders, with 47 percent of under-25s attending more than three days a week, compared with 30 percent of employees in the two oldest age groups.

However, the findings point to a potential contradiction in workplace strategies that place considerable emphasis on attracting younger workers into offices to encourage collaboration, learning and organisational culture. While younger employees appear to be the best served by existing workplace environments, older and more experienced colleagues, who are often central to the transfer of professional knowledge, report considerably less positive experiences.

Leesman suggests that this difference is less about generational attitudes than career stage and the complexity of work. Younger employees typically have fewer competing demands on their working day, while older colleagues are more likely to require environments that support a wider range of activities, including focused work, video calls and confidential conversations.

The research also raises questions about how artificial intelligence could affect informal learning in the workplace. The proportion of employees identifying learning from others as important to their work has increased from 39 percent before the pandemic to 48 percent today. Yet Leesman suggests that AI tools could increasingly replace the informal exchanges through which employees traditionally acquire knowledge from colleagues.

As workers turn to AI for quick answers rather than asking someone sitting nearby, organisations could lose some of the incidental learning and transfer of tacit knowledge that have long been used to justify bringing employees together in offices. The report acknowledges that there is not yet sufficient evidence to establish how AI will affect workplace experience, and presents these potential consequences as questions for employers rather than established outcomes.

Nearly a quarter of office investments make things worse

The findings also cast doubt on the assumption that investing in new or refurbished office space automatically improves the employee experience. Leesman examined 105 workplace transformation projects for which employee surveys had been conducted both before and after the changes. Of these, 25 recorded a deterioration in their workplace experience scores following the investment, equivalent to almost 24 percent of projects.

Across the sample, workplace changes produced an average improvement of 5.8 points on the Leesman Index, but results varied considerably. The best-performing project achieved an increase of 32.7 points, while the worst recorded a decline of 18.9 points.

Relocations proved substantially more effective than refurbishments, delivering an average improvement of 10.9 points compared with just 3.5 points for projects involving existing buildings. The researchers suggest that moving to a new building provides greater opportunities to rethink the workplace, while refurbishment projects remain constrained by the physical characteristics and limitations of existing premises.

However, the analysis also claims that improvements following workplace investment tend to be concentrated in appearance, amenities and employees’ perceptions of their surroundings, rather than the practical conditions needed to work productively.

Across all projects, the largest gains in satisfaction related to the variety of workspaces, communal areas, décor, informal work settings and plants and greenery. By contrast, improvements in employees’ perceptions of their individual and collective productivity were relatively modest. Satisfaction with noise levels increased by just four percentage points on average, despite the scale of investment involved.

The findings suggest that organisations may be achieving more visible and immediately appreciable changes to their workplaces without necessarily resolving the underlying problems that affect employees’ daily performance.

Only four percent of offices have tackled noise effectively

Noise remains one of the most persistent shortcomings of contemporary office design, according to the research. Analysis of more than 692,000 employee responses collected between 2022 and early 2026 found that 70 percent considered noise levels important to their work, but only 34 percent were satisfied with the acoustic conditions in their workplace.

Among 2,200 workplaces analysed, just four percent achieved high levels of satisfaction with noise, defined as at least 70 percent of employees expressing satisfaction. The difference in overall workplace experience between offices with high and low noise satisfaction was substantial. Workplaces performing well acoustically achieved an average Leesman Index score of 84.3, compared with 60.5 for those where noise satisfaction was particularly poor.

The report also challenges the assumption that private offices or noise-cancelling headsets provide the most effective solution. Only six percent of employees in workplaces with high noise satisfaction occupied dedicated private offices, while there was no difference between high- and low-performing workplaces in the proportion using predominantly assigned or unassigned desks.

Instead, the strongest distinctions were associated with the availability of quiet rooms, phone booths, adequate spacing between workstations and a variety of workspace settings. Satisfaction with quiet rooms was 50 percentage points higher in acoustically successful workplaces than in poorly performing ones, while phone booths showed a 48-point difference. Audio headsets, by comparison, showed the smallest satisfaction gap of all 56 workplace features assessed, at just 12 percentage points.

The findings indicate that effective acoustic design depends less on individual equipment or traditional office layouts than on providing sufficient opportunities for employees to withdraw from noise and concentrate.

A different measure of office success

The report suggests that the debate about the future of the office needs to move beyond attendance figures, occupancy rates and the visual appeal of workplace design. Although employers continue to invest in office environments intended to encourage employees to spend more time together, Leesman’s research indicates that substantial shortcomings remain in how those spaces support different people and different types of work.

The report also highlights the limitations of treating employees as a homogeneous group. Workplace requirements vary considerably according to health, disability, career stage, responsibilities and the activities people need to undertake.

For corporate real estate leaders, the findings point to the importance of assessing workplace performance before committing to major projects, identifying where existing environments fall short and measuring whether subsequent investment delivers improvements.

They also suggest that the most valuable changes may not always be the most visible. Better acoustics, suitable lighting, comfortable working conditions and access to quiet space could have a greater effect on employees’ daily experience than more conspicuous investments in décor and amenities. The central challenge, according to Leesman, is not simply persuading employees to return to offices, but ensuring that those offices work effectively for everyone once they arrive.