Workplace as an Experience

Podcast Episode 3 –  Daan van Rossum   Podcast Episode 3 –  Daan van Rossum  GPFW_EPISODE3-DAAN – 7

On the third episode of The Global Perspective on the Future of Workplaces Podcast we talked with Daan Van Rossum from Dreamplex about creating a workplace experience.

How do you create a workplace that fosters workplace experience?  There are certainly many answers to this, but the importance of human experience cannot be underestimated. 

One thing that Daan Van Rossum is an expert on is thinking of the experience, how could coming to work be something that people actually enjoy doing rather than endure. Daan Van Rossum is the Chief Experience Officer at Dreamplex and an expert of thinking about the workplace as a service. As a CXO of Dreamplex he  curates and orchestrates employee-centric workplace experiences for over 200 companies in Vietnam. We got Daan as our guest on The Global Perspective on the Future of Workplaces Podcast to share his best tips and learnings.

You need to know your customer

 If you don’t know who your customers or your user is, it’s really hard to create a great product.  One big question to raise is what people really want from life? In order to know your customers, you need to dive deep and create an overall picture of the customer in order to create a meaningful experience for them.

From an office to a holistic experience

How do you create a holistic workplace experience? Daan divides the work environment into four different layers. The first layer, the core, is the physical environment.  What does the office look like? Is it designed with the user in mind? What kind of spaces are there? Does it support people in different tasks and different moods? 

The second layer is the hospitality layer. How do you not only make it a great place and a very functional place but also make a very warm and inviting place? It’s important to make people feel like they belong in the workplace.

The third layer is the engagement layer. What are all the things that can happen within a space, within an office? 

The fourth layer is the technology layer. What can we do in terms of technology to further personalise work experience, and make it really something that you feel like it’s not only a great work experience in general, but it’s a great work experience for the individual.

Workplace as a service

Why should you invest in the workplace experience as a company? Well, you probably want to retain the best talent in the market. Workplaces should be looked at from the employee experience perspective, but also from an HR perspective. And most of all the workplace should be seen as a competitive advantage. 

This is something that Daan and Dreamplex are working on in Vietnam, they are forming a workplace as a service for the companies. 

What should be done in the future?

We asked Daan the million-dollar question; Where should companies start when looking in the future?

“Start with the human, start with the employee, start thinking about what do they want? What do they need? Start to create some hypotheses around, what should the workplace experience be like? And again, that’s not just a physical office. That’s also what happens in the office and also how people collaborate online, how they communicate online.”

You can follow Daan on Linkedin to read more about his thoughts and insights of the workplace as a service.

Listen to the Podcast: