Measuring the Office: What Documented Cases Show

Four cases, population data from Leesman and CBRE, and the condition that separates projects that work from those that disappoint. The third article in our series on the worksumer.

The two previous articles in this series traced the origin and definition of the term worksumer and how the international market renamed the same idea, building a measurement base around it. That leaves the question both articles left open: when an organization designs space starting from how people choose, what actually happens, and does it show in the numbers?

In Short

• The available cases sit on three very different levels of evidence: designed around the category and never measured, documented qualitatively, and measured before and after with the same tool. The third level is rare, and it is the only one that allows the hypothesis to be tested.
• The most complete measured case available today is Aon in Dublin: its Leesman experience score rose from 65.4 to 88.0 alongside a 38% reduction in occupied space, measured through surveys before and after the move.
• On the ownership side, HB Reavis’s Nivy Tower in Bratislava achieved a score of 84.8 and is the world’s first multi-tenant building to receive Leesman+ status, with measurement carried out among the building’s users rather than its tenants.
• Population data tells a different story from the best cases. In the Leesman database, which as of Q2 2025 holds 1,483,805 respondents across 9,925 workplaces in 122 countries, assigned desks record a higher average experience score than unassigned ones, and people who frequently move between different settings report a worse experience on average.
• The condition that explains the gap between the average and the best cases is the quality and variety of the settings on offer, combined with freedom of choice. Choice granted without settings designed to support it produces worse results than a fixed desk, and this is the main risk of any project built on the worksumer category.

Three levels of evidence

The cases circulating on the subject of workplace experience differ in the kind of evidence they provide, and mixing them leads to fragile conclusions.

At the first level are projects that use the category as a design criterion, told through the intentions of those who built them. At the second level are cases documented qualitatively, often through interviews with the people in charge, which reveal the organizational choices and the reasoning behind them. At the third level are cases measured with the same tool before and after the intervention, where the change can be attributed with reasonable confidence to the change in space.

This hierarchy is why the worksumer category took ten years to reach decision-making documents. As long as the available evidence stayed at the first level, investment in experience was justified by intention alone.

The case designed around the category and never measured

The Clubhouse Brera project in Milan, opened in 2016 and examined in the first article of the series, uses the category as a design criterion: meeting rooms, informal lounges and food service integrated into a layout that treats the short business trip as a continuous experience.

The case remains interesting for a methodological reason. The category was applied as a design hypothesis ten years before the tools to test it existed, and no public measurement documents the outcome. That was the condition of the entire sector in 2016.

The documented case: Eli Lilly Italy

The second level is represented by Eli Lilly Italy, documented by Limitless Workspace in a conversation with Marco Benvenuti, HR Site Services Manager, with contributions from Tiziana Lansione, Corporate Communication and CSR Manager.

Three elements stand out clearly. The real estate strategy distinguishes production sites, typically owned, from spaces supporting commercial functions, which are managed through more flexible models. In Milan, choosing a serviced space is a deliberate decision that responds to the need for agility, speed of set-up and placing the team in a relational environment. Being in a multi-tenant building is seen as an opportunity for cross-pollination with other companies and organizational cultures, running counter to the logic of control and separation still widespread among corporates.

The most relevant element for this series concerns governance. At Eli Lilly, responsibility for the workspace sits within the HR function, which is directly involved in decisions on layout, services and environmental quality. The second article in the series identified the asymmetry between those who bear the cost and those who use the space as the main limitation of the consumer metaphor. Placing the workspace within HR is one of the possible organizational responses to that asymmetry, because it brings the function that decides closer to the function accountable for people’s experience.

The case stops at the second level. The account documents the choices and their logic, but reports no public before-and-after measurements of utilization or experience.

The before-and-after case: Aon, Dublin

The third level is documented in Leesman’s Rhythms Report 2025, which takes an in-depth look at Aon’s move to its new office at Fifteen George’s Quay in Dublin.

Aon surveyed experience before and after the move, using the same tool. Its Leesman score rose from 65.4 to 88.0, a 22.6-point increase that places the office among the best results worldwide. Occupied real estate was reduced by 38%.

Taken together, these two figures are the most important data point in this article. Measured experience improved substantially while space shrank by more than a third, which shifts the explanation from the quantity of space to its design. Todd Budgen, Head of Real Estate, attributes the result to an approach that held efficiency and quality together rather than treating them as alternatives.

The detail within the case is even more instructive. Employees with fully unassigned seating report a score of 89.7, up from 67.7. Those who frequently move between different settings, 20% of respondents, score 89.6. Satisfaction with the variety of available settings rose by 61 percentage points. The process was guided by attendance and utilization data collected by space type, as well as by the experience surveys.

The case from the owner's side: HB Reavis, Nivy Tower

The fourth case shifts the vantage point to ownership. Nivy Tower in Bratislava, developed by HB Reavis, achieved an experience score of 84.8 and is the world’s first multi-tenant building to receive Leesman+ status.

The measurement was carried out among the building’s users, with the stated aim of identifying gaps and opportunities for improvement. 89% of employees say they are proud to bring visitors to the building and 90% describe it as a pleasant work environment. On accessibility, 85% are satisfied with the cycling facilities, against a Leesman benchmark of 61% and a Leesman+ benchmark of 68%.

The case matters for two reasons. The first concerns who is being measured: a developer that surveys the experience of the building’s end users, rather than the satisfaction of the tenants who sign the lease, adopts exactly the perspective described in the first two articles of this series. The second concerns accessibility, treated as a design component of experience from the earliest planning stages.

What population data says, and what the cases don't

The best cases show what is possible. Population data shows what happens on average, and the two pictures diverge.

As of Q2 2025, the Leesman database holds 1,483,805 respondents across 9,925 workplaces in 122 countries. On this basis, three findings deserve attention.

Assigned desks record an average experience score of 74.3, higher than both unassigned desks without booking, at 69.1, and bookable desks, at 69.3. 52% of people with an assigned desk come into the office more than three days a week, compared with 24% and 28% in the two groups without a fixed desk.

Attendance frequency goes hand in hand with a better experience: people who come into the office one day a week or less report an average score of 67.9, while those who come in five days report 75.9.

Commuting acts as a filter on access. Satisfaction with the commute drops from 92% for those who travel less than fifteen minutes to 54% for those who travel between forty-five and sixty minutes, and to 35% beyond two hours. As commute time increases, the reported experience of working from home improves, which raises the quality bar the office has to clear to justify the trip.

The condition that separates successful cases from the rest

Comparing the two pictures reveals a tension worth stating openly, because it is the most useful finding in this article.

Across the database average, assigned desks deliver a better experience than unassigned ones, and Leesman also observes that people who frequently move between settings tend to report the worst experience. In the Aon case, the opposite happens on both fronts: unassigned desks reach 89.7 and frequent movers score 89.6.

The explanation comes from the Leesman report itself, which attributes the negative average to flexibility granted without the support of adequate design and a genuine variety of settings. Freedom of choice, on its own, worsens experience. The same freedom, accompanied by settings designed to support it, produces the highest scores recorded globally.

This is the empirical test of the worksumer hypothesis, and its outcome is conditional. People apply consumer criteria when choosing where to work, and the response to that demand works when the offer is designed; when the offer merely removes the fixed desk without building the alternative, results end up worse than the starting point.

For an executive committee, the consequence is concrete. A space reduction project combined with the elimination of assigned desks, without equivalent investment in the variety and quality of settings, carries a risk profile documented by population data, not merely a perception risk.

Why it matters: implications for landlords, corporates and advisors

For institutional landlords. The Nivy Tower case shows that measuring end-user experience is feasible even in a multi-tenant building and produces data that can be compared with international benchmarks. For an owner, this opens a commercial argument distinct from rent, usable at lease renewal and in marketing the space.

For corporate real estate managers. The Aon case documents that space reduction and improved experience can go together, provided that design is guided by attendance and utilization data by space type. The pre-intervention survey is what makes the result demonstrable afterwards; without it, any later assessment is open to dispute.

For advisors. The condition that emerges from comparing the average with the best cases is a criterion for evaluating projects. A plan that introduces unassigned desks without corresponding investment in variety of settings should be flagged as exposed, with population data to back up the flag.

Practical implications: the minimum measurement protocol

For a case to reach the third level of evidence, only a few elements are needed, defined before the intervention. The table below summarizes the minimum protocol.

Limitless Workspace has translated the diagnostic part of this framework into the Workspace Alignment Index, a self-assessment tool structured around four weighted dimensions: economic efficiency, spatial and operational fit, people and performance, and flexibility and readiness for change. The tool returns a score from 0 to 100 and places the organization in one of four alignment scenarios.

It is worth being clear about what the Workspace Alignment Index measures and what it does not. It is a management self-assessment, so it reflects the perception of those who run the workspace, with the speed and limitations typical of this class of tools. Its natural place is upstream of the process described in the table, as an orientation reading that identifies critical areas before field surveys begin. Measured utilization data is still needed to complete the analysis.

The space and cost row of the table also has a dedicated tool. The Economic Efficiency Score breaks down the total cost of occupancy and assesses the quality of cost governance together with the clarity of the spending structure, also returning a score from 0 to 100. Read alongside measured utilization data, it keeps on the same table the two variables that the Aon case moved in opposite directions.

The operating model that makes this combination practical is space managed as a service, where handling access, booking and utilization data is already part of day-to-day management. This is the model adopted at the Stella33 business centers in Milano Santa Giulia, Milano MIND and Venice Isola Nova, where access, meeting room booking and use of services all run through a single digital system.

Frequently asked questions