Why Experience Begins Before Design: How Progressive Organisations Are Unlocking Workplace Performance
“Design is not the starting point of workplace transformation. It is the expression of experience strategy. Get the order wrong and everything else becomes expensive rework.”
In today’s hybrid-first, performance-driven business environment, the workplace must do more than reflect your brand, it must enable outcomes. Productivity. Retention. Culture. Client engagement.
Yet most projects still begin too far downstream. The lease is finalised. The layout is underway. Capital is committed. But the one thing that hasn’t been clearly defined?
What experience is this workplace actually meant to deliver?
At First Contact, we start with a different question.
What if your workplace could behave like a system, designed to drive specific outcomes?
Start With Experience Mapping
The first step in our methodology is a structured Experience Mapping Session, a diagnostic designed for CEOs, COOs, and workplace leads to surface the actual experience your environment needs to create.
We work with you to define:
- The ideal journey across the workday, from arrival to departure.
- How different personas (leaders, teams, clients) interact with the space.
- Where friction, confusion, or inefficiency exist today.
- The service, tech, and operational layers required to activate change.
This becomes the foundation of our Experience Service Model (ESM); the framework that turns strategy into space, and space into measurable performance.
Linking Space to Outcomes: What Most Miss
Many workplace projects treat design, operations, and experience as separate streams. But the best-performing workplaces are not just well-built, they are well-aligned. They link physical space with strategic experience intent.
This linkage is where ESM excels.
Our Experience Service Model is the connective tissue between what a business wants its people and clients to feel, and what it needs the space to actually do.
Without this connection, the workplace becomes a static asset. With it, it becomes a performance engine.
Experience ROI: The Next Workplace Metric
We call this Experience ROI, the measurable value produced when your workplace enables outcomes such as:
- Higher team productivity and focus.
- Reduced churn and improved engagement.
- Better space utilisation without over-investment.
- Stronger brand alignment and client perception.
The ESM enables leaders to plan for experience, design with purpose, and measure what matters, all before a dollar is spent on construction.
Case in Point: WorkHub at 488 Bourke Street in Melbourne
Before WorkHub became a thriving coworking and concierge space, we started with experience.
We mapped how legal, finance, and consulting professionals moved through their day: how they arrived, worked, connected, and hosted. From that journey, we designed the space and service model.
Outcomes:
- 25% increase in tenancy within six months.
- 30% uplift in Net Promoter Score.
- Seamless operational handover and concierge deployment.
Experience was not an afterthought. It was the blueprint.
The Experience Service Model (ESM) in Practice
Our ESM is more than a methodology—it’s a full delivery system.
Stage | What It Does | Why It Matters |
Experience Mapping | Captures desired outcomes, moments, and personas | Aligns vision with workplace realities |
Workforce Mapping | Matches space to function and flow | Prevents misallocation and supports hybrid models |
Experience Blueprint | Designs the journey, not just the layout | Integrates FM, concierge, and service touchpoints |
Operational Modelling | Defines service roles, tech, and workflow triggers | Reduces transition risk and drives execution |
Continuous Optimisation | Tunes experience based on live feedback and data | Ensures relevance, agility, and sustained ROI |
This approach gives you clarity before capital, and outcomes before occupancy.
Why Leading Organisations Are Moving First
While many large corporates are slowed by legacy systems and decision complexity, progressive businesses; law firms, consultancies, financial groups, national operators, are seizing the advantage.
They are:
- Replacing guesswork with data-led planning.
- Using experience to attract and retain top talent.
- Moving fast to reposition workplace as a strategic enabler.
- Investing in what people feel, not just what they see.
Why Clients Choose First Contact
"We chose First Contact not because they had the largest brand, but because they had the most thought-out approach."
– National Head of Workplace Experience, Legal Sector Client
Across legal, consulting, government, and commercial property, First Contact’s advisory-led model is delivering one consistent result:
Activation, not just occupation.
Let’s Rethink Workplace Transformation
If your organisation is:
- Planning a lease renewal, refurbishment, or office move?
- Adjusting to hybrid and digital ways of working?
- Looking to get more from your workplace investment?
Then your next step isn’t design; it’s definition.
Request an Experience Mapping Session
Let us help you link space, service, and strategy—before capital is committed. Contact Lucas Ortner via our CONTACT US section below.
Additional Resources
- Download: The ESM Playbook – How to Turn Strategy Into Experience for hybrid workplace managers,
- Case Study: WorkHub – A Fully Activated Hybrid Workplace.
- Diagnostic Tool: Is Your Workplace Strategy Ready?
Final Insight
The most valuable workplaces in 2025 won’t be the most beautiful.
They’ll be the most aligned.
Aligned to how your people want to work.
Aligned to the journey your clients expect.
Aligned to your operational goals, cultural values, and growth ambitions.
Design without alignment leads to rework.
Occupation without experience leads to disengagement.
But when space, service, and strategy are defined together, your workplace becomes more than a location.
It becomes a lever for performance, attraction, and return on investment.
This is the future of workplace transformation, and it starts not with a floorplan, but with a conversation.
Request an Experience Mapping Session - Click on link below
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