Student and worker satisfaction

The last few years have seen an increasing focus on customer experience in both the higher education and office property sectors, with both groups chasing the holy grail of better engagement with those that use their estates for greater user satisfaction, productivity and wellness. We believe that there are significant cross-overs in best practice between the two fields as employers and universities seek to deliver a better customer experience.

Coincidentally the latest Student Academic Experience Survey of 14,072 students was published in the same week as Savills own What Workers Want survey of 11,000 office workers. Both studies have notable thematic similarities, most notably the importance of getting the basics right.

What is apparent from both studies is that estates teams play a significant part in delivering user satisfaction. The HEPI survey must have warmed the hearts of university estates directors with one particular finding when asked “which areas of university spend are the most reasonable use of tuition fees” ‘teaching facilities’ and ‘campus development’ came first and third in terms of importance (somewhat surprisingly ahead of teaching staff).

Similarly, the What Workers Want survey identified that office workers in the UK consider the comfort of the work environment as the most important factor in an ideal workplace.

Clearly, space and the environment are fundamental parts of users’ perceptions of value for money, happiness and ultimately productivity. However, this should come as no surprise to anyone who is in the business of supplying and operating such spaces.

The surprise perhaps comes from the fact that despite nearly 50 years of asking people what they want from their spaces, the spaces that we are delivering are still scoring relatively weakly on many of the most basic metrics of satisfaction.

For example, in the world’s largest standardised database of workplace experience which has responses from over 500,000 employees, only 53% of respondents agreed that their workplace was somewhere they were proud to bring visitors to, and only 59.6% said it was an enjoyable environment to work in.

While one might credibly argue that people, particularly the young, are more demanding today than they were 50 years ago, the fact that many spaces still score very low on basics such as noise, temperature and comfort is a challenge for those of us who work in the built environment.

_{Read the articles within Spotlight: UK Higher Education below.}