The modern workplace has evolved far beyond traditional metrics of system uptime and technical performance. Organizations today recognize that true workplace effectiveness stems from understanding and optimizing the complete employee experience—from the moment someone joins a company to their daily interactions with technology, colleagues, and processes.
This shift requires a fundamental rethinking of how we measure success, break down barriers to collaboration, and create personalized yet standardized experiences that work across diverse roles and environments. The challenge extends beyond simply deploying new tools; it demands a holistic approach that balances technological capabilities with human-centered design and continuous feedback loops.
For our latest UC Round Table topic, Optimizing Workplace Experience Management, we spoke with experts and executives from Zoom, Cisco, SMART Technologies, Vonage, and Neat about the evolving landscape of employee experience, the metrics that matter most, and the strategies organizations need to implement to remain competitive in an increasingly hybrid work environment.
- Workplace Experience Management Unpacked: The Ultimate Guide to Workplace Management
- Hybrid Work Security and Productivity: A Balanced Strategy for Employee Experience and Enterprise Trust
What key metrics and data points should organizations prioritize when measuring workplace experience effectiveness, and how do these differ from traditional IT performance metrics?
The measurement of workplace experience effectiveness represents a fundamental departure from traditional IT metrics, shifting focus from system-centered performance indicators to employee-centered outcomes that capture the human dimension of technology adoption and satisfaction.
Modern organizations must look beyond whether systems are functioning to understand whether employees feel empowered, engaged, and productive in their daily work experiences.
Helen Hawthorn, Head of Solutions Engineering, EMEA, Zoom
Hawthorn emphasizes how engagement metrics provide deeper insights into workplace
effectiveness than traditional performance indicators, highlighting the importance of sentiment analysis throughout the employee journey.
“Engagement is becoming an enormously important metric in measuring workplace experience effectiveness, and differs markedly from traditional delivery and finance-focused IT metrics. When measuring the efficacy of workplace experience, leaders should analyse sentiment in everything from onboarding to employee feedback from AI chatbots, delivering engagement metrics throughout the workplace journey. Natural language processes can be used to measure engagement throughout the journey, including learning and development. Surveys also have an important role to play here.”
Snorre Kjesbu, SVP/GM of Employee Experience Technology, Cisco
Kjesbu illustrates how organizations must complement traditional IT data with experience metrics that reveal whether technology is truly serving people, rather than creating barriers to productivity.
“The workplace is evolving, so must our measurements. The real question isn’t just, ‘Are the systems running?’ but rather, ‘How are people experiencing their work?’ At Cisco, we look for signals that show our tools are unlocking real value for employees and teams. That means paying attention to how engaged people are in meetings, how frequently they’re using the collaboration tools available to them, and how easily they’re able to move from idea to action. We also look closely at how fast new features are adopted and whether automation is actually freeing up time for higher value work. Experience metrics like these are a complement for traditional IT data, and together they give a much fuller picture. When you can see, for example, that meeting fatigue is dropping while engagement is rising, or that room utilization is improving as people return to the office, that’s when you know your technology is working for people, not the other way around.”
Lou Blatt, Head of Product, Applications, Vonage
Blatt reinforces the shift toward employee-centered measurement approaches, emphasizing how direct feedback provides insights that traditional system metrics cannot capture.
“Traditional IT metrics like uptime, latency, and system reliability remain important, but they don’t capture the full scope of today’s workplace experience. To accurately measure workplace experience effectiveness, organizations should focus on employee-centered outcomes like engagement, tech adoption rates, and collaboration quality. These factors indicate whether workers are properly supported across different work environments, roles, and devices. By analyzing direct employee feedback, organizations can better understand how various tools and workflows are experienced. This shifts measurement beyond system health toward understanding how technology supports people, ensuring that workplace strategies directly align with productivity, trust, and satisfaction. Workplace experience effectiveness is then measured not just by whether technology and systems are working, but by whether employees feel supported, connected, and able to thrive.”
What are the most common barriers organizations face when trying to create a unified workplace experience across diverse communication and collaboration tools?
Creating a unified workplace experience across diverse tools represents one of the most persistent challenges facing modern organizations, with complexity and fragmentation often undermining the very collaboration they seek to enable.
The proliferation of specialized solutions, while addressing specific needs, has created environments where employees spend more time navigating between systems than engaging in meaningful work.
Helen Hawthorn, Head of Solutions Engineering, EMEA, Zoom
Hawthorn identifies trust as a critical barrier, particularly as organizations navigate the cultural implications of AI adoption alongside technical transformation requirements.
“Building trust is a common barrier that organisations face when implementing the widespread IT transformation required to deliver a unified workplace experience. With many employees concerned over the impact of AI on their jobs, it’s crucial to build unified workplace experiences around a culture of trust. Leaders should ensure that AI is a natural add-on that is there to augment employee skills, and be clear about how they want it to help. Unified workplace experiences streamline organisations to save time for employees, whether that is cutting the administrative load for managers by automatically recording and generating action items, or enabling large workforces to collaborate across multiple time zones. Adopting AI is a cultural project as well as a technical one, and organisations need to support employees on this journey.”
Snorre Kjesbu, SVP/GM of Employee Experience Technology, Cisco
Kjesbu highlights how the accumulation of disconnected tools creates friction that impacts both productivity and engagement, emphasizing the importance of seamless integration and user adoption strategies.
“Most organizations have built up a patchwork of tools over time, each solving a specific problem but rarely connecting in ways that feel seamless for employees. The result? People are constantly switching between apps, juggling logins and notifications, and sometimes struggling to find the right information or colleague at the moment they need it. That fragmentation and disconnection make work slow down, and engagement dips. Add to that the challenge of supporting both in-office and remote teams, each with their own preferences and needs, and it’s easy to see why so many organizations struggle to create a truly unified experience. Security and compliance can also complicate things, especially as more sensitive work shifts to the cloud. But perhaps the most overlooked is the adoption challenge. Even the smartest solution won’t have an impact if people aren’t trained, supported, and convinced of its value. That’s why at Cisco, we’re focused on building open, interoperable platforms and making adoption as smooth as possible. When technology quietly fits into the background, people are free to focus on what matters most.”
Nicholas Svensson, CEO, SMART Technologies
Svensson addresses organizational silos as a fundamental barrier, describing how structural changes can align teams around customer outcomes rather than internal processes.
“One of the most significant barriers in large organizations is silos. When departments, teams or individuals operate in isolation, it hinders collaboration and slows down innovation. We recognized this challenge around the COVID timeframe and took a bold step to address it by restructuring our organization into what we call the Unified Commercial Engine (UCE). Unlike traditional silos mapped to internal processes, the UCE is built around the customer’s buying journey, aligning all commercial functions—sales, marketing, customer success, and service—into a cohesive unit focused on delivering value at every stage of the customer experience. This approach has streamlined communication, strengthened collaboration, and made our organization more agile and responsive. By aligning teams around shared goals and customer outcomes, we’ve broken down barriers and created a truly unified workplace experience and witnessed measurable impact across the business.”
Lou Blatt, Head of Product, Applications, Vonage
Blatt emphasizes how platform fragmentation creates inefficiencies that undermine both productivity and employee satisfaction, highlighting the need for integrated solutions.
“One of the biggest challenges organizations continue to face is relying on separate platforms for voice, video, and messaging, forcing employees to navigate across multiple platforms rather than the work itself. This not only creates inefficiencies it also weakens the employee experience by making it harder to collaborate effectively, ultimately draining productivity and morale. Cloud-based unified communications tools have emerged to address this, combining voice, video, and messaging into a single platform. Success with these platforms requires careful technology integration alongside a clear unified workplace experience strategy.”
Tormod Ree, Chief Product & Engineering Officer, Neat
Ree focuses on complexity as the primary barrier, explaining how accumulated tool layers create fragmentation that distances employees from meaningful connection and collaboration.
“The biggest barrier is complexity. Over time, many organisations have built up a patchwork of tools, each introduced to solve a specific problem. While well-intentioned, this layering often creates fragmentation, leaving employees spending more time navigating systems than actually connecting with colleagues. What works seamlessly in a dedicated meeting room may feel clumsy when someone joins from their kitchen table. As these inconsistencies multiply across an organisation, they become a significant obstacle to collaboration. What helps is stripping away that complexity. When the basic meeting needs like seeing, hearing, and participating actually work, people stop noticing the technology and start focusing on each other. Features like intelligent framing, distraction removal, and natural audio pickup are often underestimated, yet they make the experience feel unified, regardless of where or how people join. And when organisations want to bring multiple collaboration tools into one seamless experience, platforms like Neat AppHub provide that unifying layer—integrating apps directly into the meeting environment so everything feels connected. Ultimately, it’s not about adding more tools. It’s about creating an environment where the technology disappears into the background, and people feel equally included whether they’re across the table or across the globe. That’s when collaboration flows.”
How can IT teams balance the need for standardized workplace experience management with the demand for personalized user experiences across different roles and departments?
Balancing standardization with personalization represents a critical challenge for IT teams, requiring them to create flexible frameworks that maintain security and consistency while accommodating diverse work styles and departmental needs.
The most successful approaches treat this not as a trade-off but as a design challenge that leverages technology to deliver both consistency and customization at scale.
Helen Hawthorn, Head of Solutions Engineering, EMEA, Zoom
Hawthorn explains how AI enables the delivery of highly personalized experiences within standardized frameworks, creating assistants that adapt to individual work patterns while maintaining organizational consistency.
“AI can help IT teams to deliver highly personalised experiences across different roles and departments, while also delivering a standardised workplace experience. AI assistants can learn how employees work and then carry out tasks on their behalf, pulling data from meetings, emails, calendars and documents. These assistants become a ‘second set of hands’ for employees delivering a highly personalised experience, while still working within a unified framework. AI can also provide personalised learning modules to employees, curating the learning journey to their needs and balancing between the professional and personal to foster a growth mindset.”
Snorre Kjesbu, SVP/GM of Employee Experience Technology, Cisco
Kjesbu describes the “platform plus flexibility” approach, emphasizing how strong foundational systems can support personalization without compromising security or performance standards.
“Finding that balance is an ongoing journey. Standardization gives you the consistency, security, and manageability you need to operate at scale. But if that’s where you stop, you risk missing the nuances that make work personal, creative, and rewarding. Think of it as building a strong foundation and then designing flexible spaces on top. The most effective IT teams I’ve worked with approach this as a ‘platform plus flexibility’ challenge. They start with a strong, unified foundation with core tools and experiences everyone can rely on, then layer in options for personalization.
“That might mean giving sales teams integrations with their CRM, letting engineering customize workflow automations, or empowering marketing with their preferred creative tools. AI is changing the game, making personalization possible at scale. We’re seeing intelligent assistants that learn and adapt to individual work styles, surfacing just the right information or automating the most repetitive tasks, all without sacrificing security or performance. Ultimately, the goal is to make sure every employee feels both supported and empowered, with technology that adapts to them instead of the other way around.”
Lou Blatt, Head of Product, Applications, Vonage
Blatt emphasizes the importance of establishing secure foundations before enabling departmental customization, highlighting how feedback mechanisms help IT teams understand where personalization adds value.
“Ensuring workplace standardization alongside personalization requires a delicate balance from IT teams. Regardless of employee preference, IT teams must start by ensuring a strong foundation of reliability and security across the enterprise. However, the ability to personalize by department, as customer support teams may have different needs than finance teams, remains essential. Otherwise, organizations risk the technology becoming another barrier rather than a supporter of workplace experience.
“Unified and adaptive platforms allow IT leaders to deliver a consistent baseline while flexing for the needs of different departments and work styles. Embedding feedback platforms into these systems helps IT to better understand where employees feel empowered and where workflows cause friction. When employees feel that technology reflects both enterprise-wide standards and their individual needs, adoption improves, engagement rises, and the workplace experience remains positive.”
What role should employee feedback and sentiment analysis play in shaping workplace experience optimization strategies, and what are the best methods for collecting and acting on this input?
Employee feedback and sentiment analysis serve as the foundation for effective workplace experience optimization, providing the insights necessary to understand what truly drives engagement and productivity across diverse work environments.
The most successful organizations treat feedback not as a periodic exercise but as a continuous dialogue that informs real-time improvements and builds trust through visible action on employee concerns.
Helen Hawthorn, Head of Solutions Engineering, EMEA, Zoom
Hawthorn highlights how AI-powered sentiment analysis provides immediate insights into workplace effectiveness, enabling leaders to identify coaching opportunities and drive long-term improvement.
“Employee feedback and sentiment analysis are vital parts of shaping workplace experience optimisation strategies. The latest sentiment analysis technology uses AI to analyse transcripts of meetings. This allows leaders to see whether sentiment is positive, neutral or negative, offering insights into what is working in terms of workplace experience optimisation strategies at a glance. Collecting such data is crucial when it comes to shaping coaching opportunities that will drive longer term improvement.”
Snorre Kjesbu, SVP/GM of Employee Experience Technology, Cisco
Kjesbu emphasizes the importance of continuous listening and closing the feedback loop, demonstrating how real-time insights combined with visible action builds trust and drives adoption.
“Feedback is the heartbeat of any great workplace experience. Organizations need to understand how people actually feel to find out what’s working, what’s frustrating, and what sparks creativity. The best organizations put continuous listening at the center of their strategy. That means asking for feedback in real time, right where work is happening, whether it’s a quick pulse survey after a meeting, a live Q&A during a town hall, or even anonymous sentiment tracking baked into your collaboration platform.
“But collecting feedback is only the first step. What builds trust and drives real change is acting on that feedback, closing that loop, and showing employees that their voices matter. When employees see that their suggestions lead to real improvements, engagement rises, and adoption follows. AI is making this process even smarter, surfacing hidden trends or flagging areas of concern that might otherwise go unnoticed or simply missed. At Cisco, we use this insight to move faster and deliver improvements that matter. Ultimately, a feedback-driven culture ensures that technology and experience evolve together, always aligned with people’s needs.”
Nicholas Svensson, CEO, SMART Technologies
Svensson describes how proactive feedback collection combined with direct employee involvement in solution development creates meaningful change that strengthens both culture and performance.
“It’s simple really, you need to ask them. Employee feedback and sentiment analysis are crucial for understanding the needs and concerns of our teams, and at SMART, we don’t wait for feedback to come to us—we proactively seek it out. Tools like Mercer’s engagement survey help us identify areas for improvement, but collecting feedback is only the first step. Real impact comes from acting on it. Through our Organizational Health Committees, employees are directly involved in planning, prioritizing, and rolling out improvements, ensuring changes truly meet their expectations and that their voices are heard. This collaborative approach has led to initiatives that make a tangible difference in how teams work, communicate, and thrive. This turns insight into action in a way that strengthens both our culture and our performance.”
Lou Blatt, Head of Product, Applications, Vonage
Blatt explains how embedding feedback collection into daily workflows creates natural touchpoints for gathering insights while automated analysis helps surface trends that inform policy and tool decisions.
“As the corporate world primarily remains in full ‘work from anywhere’ mode in twenty twenty-five, the same principles that businesses apply to better understanding their customers can be applied to their distributed workforce. Of course, optimizing workplace experience will look different depending on the size of the organization, industry, and technology resources available, but every company has opportunities to uncover what’s driving engagement among its employees and where potential pain points exist. By capturing sentiment through surveys, chat interactions, or collaboration tools, IT leaders can adjust policies, tools, and communication practices so teams feel supported no matter where they are working. One of the most effective ways to collect this feedback is to weave opportunities directly into the communication and collaboration apps that employees are already using every day, then use automated sentiment analysis to surface trends and themes like workload or collaboration challenges. This way, the feedback inputs feel natural to employees while simultaneously improving their experience and strengthening their trust and productivity, especially in modern workplaces that are now defined by flexibility and connectivity.”
Tormod Ree, Chief Product & Engineering Officer, Neat
Ree emphasizes the importance of treating workplace experience as a dynamic system that evolves with employee needs, using both direct feedback and behavioral analytics to create spaces people genuinely want to use.
“Employee feedback and sentiment analysis should sit at the heart of workplace experience optimisation. Too often, companies design workplace strategies in a boardroom, not in conversation with the people who actually use the tools day to day. Feedback is the closest signal we have to whether technology is helping people connect or quietly putting up barriers. Usage analytics can give a broader view of sentiment, but the real impact comes when organisations close the loop. If employees share that noise levels or camera angles make remote participation difficult, and then see those exact issues addressed, confidence in the tools grows. The best organisations don’t just collect data—they act on it transparently. Using tools that allows IT teams to track meeting room usage and patterns behind the scenes, businesses can gain insights that help them shape spaces that people genuinely want to use. It’s about treating workplace experience as a living system—one that can evolve with people’s needs. When we pay attention to both feedback and behaviours, the workplace begins to move in harmony with its people. That’s when you unlock the true ‘dancing office’: a more fluid, intuitive, and productive working landscape where the technology fades away and people can simply focus on each other.”
As hybrid and remote work models continue to evolve, what emerging workplace experience management trends should organizations be investing in now to remain competitive and maintain employee satisfaction?
The evolution of hybrid and remote work models demands investment in technologies and approaches that create seamless, inclusive experiences while preparing organizations for the next wave of workplace innovation.
The most forward-thinking organizations recognize that competitive advantage will come from embracing AI-powered automation, adaptive environments, and unified platforms that eliminate friction and enable natural collaboration regardless of location.
Helen Hawthorn, Head of Solutions Engineering, EMEA, Zoom
Hawthorn envisions a future where AI drives unprecedented personalization and efficiency across the employee journey, with agentic AI assistants working collaboratively to create comprehensive support systems for every employee.
“We’re going to see AI driving more and more personalisation and efficiency across the employee journey, with AI tools such as virtual assistants embedded into everything from interviews to workplace learning. Generation Z in particular is embracing gamification during onboarding, and these tools will continue to take hold. We’ll also see the introduction of AI tools that help to remove bias, and the continued evolution of agentic AI. AI assistants will deploy agentic skills, automatically detecting action items within meetings, chats or emails, and scheduling follow-ups, generating documents and tracking tasks, pioneering new, more efficient ways of working to elevate the employee experience. Over the longer term, whole teams of agentic AI assistants will work for employees, monitoring information around the clock and researching autonomously to return with recommendations, with the human in control. It will feel like every employee has an entire team working behind them, identifying opportunities and contexts to help employees execute. The key will be to orchestrate multiple agents effectively to complete complex tasks.”
Snorre Kjesbu, SVP/GM of Employee Experience Technology, Cisco
Kjesbu identifies AI-powered automation and adaptive office environments as key investment areas, emphasizing how bold organizations will differentiate themselves through comprehensive workplace transformation.
“We’re at a fascinating crossroads. The workplace is no longer a single place, and that means organizations have to rethink everything from how they support collaboration to how they create a sense of belonging and purpose. I see AI-powered automation and intelligence playing a much bigger role, helping employees navigate their day, find the information they need, and focus on what they do best. For example, automation and AI are starting to ease the burden of daily tasks, helping people find information quickly and focus on more valuable work. Offices are changing, too, with adaptive spaces and environmental sensors making it easier to support a range of activities and preferences. Finally, IT teams are looking for ways to manage devices, applications, and networks from a central point, making it possible to deliver consistent experiences regardless of location. The companies that boldly invest and lean into these trends will share the future, they are the ones who’ll attract and retain the best talent, foster innovation, and build workplaces that people are truly proud to be part of.”
Nicholas Svensson, CEO, SMART Technologies
Svensson emphasizes the importance of organizations using their own technology solutions while investing in inclusive environments that accommodate diverse needs and work styles.
“The future of work is flexible, and success depends on removing barriers to collaboration, no matter where teams are located. At SMART, we embrace our own technology every day. We use SMART Boards to ideate and plan together, Team Works to collaborate seamlessly with remote colleagues, and Lumio to share, present, and engage teams in real time. We don’t just sell these tools—we rely on them ourselves because we believe in their impact and know they work. Equally important is designing a workplace that accommodates diverse needs and work styles. We recently partnered with the University of Melbourne on a research study exploring technologies that support diverse students—and what became clear is that neurodivergence doesn’t stop at graduation. Professionals need flexible, inclusive environments to thrive well into their careers. That means providing accommodations, fostering a culture of trust, and continuously iterating on our tools and processes based on employee feedback. By investing in both technology and inclusivity, we create a workplace where every employee can contribute fully, feel empowered, and do their best work—no matter where or how they operate.”
Lou Blatt, Head of Product, Applications, Vonage
Blatt highlights the convergence toward unified, cloud-based ecosystems that adapt to diverse work styles while providing the simplicity and flexibility that modern employees expect.
“Employees are looking for tools that grow with them, are flexible, and seamless across a variety of different platforms and channels. Over time, we’ve seen the convergence of communications and collaboration tools, particularly in the years following the pandemic, with the growth of unified, cloud-based ecosystems. These platforms have since developed into digital hubs that unify voice, video, SMS messaging, and conferencing in ways that feel natural to how people already work. It’s less about replacing legacy systems across employee networks and more about providing fluid, cross-channel communication that adapts to the current moment, whether that’s a quick chat or sharing customer data mid-call. That said, a trend we’ll see unfold is businesses leaning into more adaptive, personalized communication environments. Cloud platforms are increasingly designed to flex with different work styles, team needs, and emerging technologies. Employees are seeking the convergence of their work tools, but they also expect simplicity, with one unified platform that removes friction, reduces the headaches of burnout, and delivers consistent, flexible, future-ready experiences. Businesses that invest in this kind of agility will be the ones to maintain a sharp edge in attracting future talent.”
Tormod Ree, Chief Product & Engineering Officer, Neat
Ree emphasizes real-time automation and central management platforms as essential investments, highlighting how organizations must create office spaces that justify the time employees spend there.
“As hybrid working continues to remain a preferred method of working for employees, businesses must look at creating a truly seamless work experience. Employees no longer see ‘functional’ as enough. Instead, they expect to see hybrid interactions as natural, inclusive and, most importantly, simple! This makes real-time automation one of the most important areas for investment. The ability for systems to adapt instantly by framing the active speaker, filtering out background distractions, or equalising voices has moved from being a nice-to-have to a baseline expectation. At the same time, central management platforms that allow employees to flip effortlessly between tools like Monday, Miro and more ensure that workflows stay connected without disruption. And because people are spending less time in the office, the time they do spend there has to be worth it. That means shaping spaces that are not only efficient but enjoyable—where technology, acoustics and layout work in harmony to make the office a place people genuinely want to be. In a period of rapid change, the organisations that thrive will be those that remove friction, simplify collaboration, and allow people to focus on each other rather than the tools. That’s what keeps employees engaged, satisfied, and connected over the long term.”
