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Designing for employee experience and sustainability does not have to be a choice. Gensler, in partnership with DBS Bank, share how bringing the two together, alongside employee engagement and collaboration, has shaped the evolution of the DBS’ JoySpaces.
Employee experience and sustainability are often treated as separate workplace priorities, but for Gensler and DBS Bank, bringing them together has been central to the bank’s workplace transformation journey. As hybrid work continues to evolve, the partnership found that flexibility alone is no longer enough, with employees increasingly looking for workplaces that support connection, wellbeing and a sense of purpose.
Since 2016, the DBS’ JoySpaces programme has continued to evolve through employee engagement, experimentation, and cross-functional collaboration. Gensler supported the process through workshops, workplace observations, and design expertise, working with DBS’ workplace, sustainability and business leaders, as well as employees, to shape spaces that support changing needs and ways of working.
The latest JoySpace environments make sustainability a more visible part of the workplace experience through circular design strategies, material reuse and behavioural nudges, alongside spaces designed to encourage collaboration and wellbeing. The partnership earned a gold win in the 'Most Innovative and Sustainable Office Design' category at the Employee Experience Awards 2026, Singapore.
In this interview, the Gensler team, in partnership with DBS Bank, shares the lessons from the JoySpaces journey, how employee and leadership input helped shape the workplace, and why organisations will need to rethink the role of the workplace as employee expectations continue to evolve.
Read the full interview below.
Q Tell us about the biggest insight or lesson that influenced your EX approach this past year.
One of the biggest lessons from DBS’ workplace transformation journey is that employee experience and sustainability are most powerful when they are designed together rather than treated as separate priorities.
As hybrid work continues to evolve, organisations are recognising that flexibility alone is no longer enough. Employees increasingly seek workplaces that foster connection, support wellbeing, and reflect the values and purpose of the organisations they work for. At the same time, businesses face growing expectations to embed sustainability into every aspect of their operations in practical and visible ways.
Our partnership with DBS reinforced the belief that the physical workplace can bring these ambitions together. Since embarking on its JoySpaces journey in 2016, DBS has continually evolved its workplaces to support changing employee needs, new ways of working, and the cultural shifts that underpin the bank's transformation.
Through ongoing employee engagement, experimentation, and cross-functional collaboration, ‘JoySpaces’ have become a key enabler of DBS' culture, empowering employees with greater flexibility and choice while fostering innovation, agility, learning, and One Bank collaboration.
Building on this foundation, the latest JoySpace environments showcase how sustainability can be made more visible and tangible within the workplace experience.
This was supported through circular design strategies, material reuse, behavioural nudges, and spaces that encourage collaboration and wellbeing.
Rather than remaining an invisible technical outcome, sustainability is positioned as part of the everyday workplace experience, helping to support culture, business transformation, and bring people together around a shared sense of purpose.
Q How did you bring leaders, managers, and employees together to support the execution and success of the initiative?
A key contributor to the project’s success was DBS’ commitment to creating a workplace shaped by its people.
Led by DBS' Corporate Real Estate & Administration (CRESA) team, the programme brought together workplace, sustainability, and business leaders, as well as employees from across the organisation, to define what the future workplace should enable and how employees wanted to experience it.
Gensler supported the process through workshops, workplace observations, and design expertise.
Those conversations shaped every stage of the design journey, from activity-based work settings to the way sustainability is embedded throughout the workplace. Equally important was the strong leadership commitment from DBS, which consistently reinforced that this was more than a workplace refresh. It was a strategic investment in culture, employee experience, and long-term workplace resilience.
The workplace was designed not just as a physical environment, but as an enabler of the behaviours, connections, and ways of working that support collaboration and performance. By creating spaces that support collaboration, learning, wellbeing, and a sense of belonging, the project helped translate cultural aspirations into everyday experiences. This clear alignment between workplace, culture, and business objectives fostered trust, strengthened employee ownership, and made the transformation more meaningful and enduring for everyone involved.
Q What challenge behind the scenes tested your team the most, and what did it teach you about building stronger employee experience programmes?
One of the biggest challenges was demonstrating that a sustainable workplace can be as inspiring, high-performing, and people-centric as any contemporary workplace.
Too often, circular design is associated with compromise, whether in quality, aesthetics, or user experience. Through the DBS JoySpace transformation, DBS set out to prove that a reuse-first approach could create workplaces that are both environmentally responsible and inspiring, while seeking to preserve quality, functionality, and employee experience.
Achieving this required far more than design expertise. It demanded rigorous material audits, iterative prototyping, and close collaboration with DBS’ behavioural science team and project partners.
From the outset, the project combined leadership sponsorship with structured employee engagement, behavioural science, design thinking methodologies, focus groups, and continuous ideation and prototyping sessions to understand employee needs, test assumptions, and refine solutions throughout the design journey.
Many retained or repurposed elements were informed by employee feedback and iterative testing to ensure they met the expectations of a modern workplace.
More importantly, it reinforced an enduring lesson: successful employee experience programmes are built on trust. When people are engaged early and meaningfully in shaping change, understand the purpose behind it, and experience its benefits firsthand, they become active participants rather than passive recipients.
In doing so, sustainability can move beyond a design objective and become more visible in the employee experience.
Q As you reflect on the journey, what does this recognition at the Employee Experience Awards 2026 mean to you and your team?
This recognition reflects DBS’ ambition to reimagine the workplace as a catalyst for both employee experience and sustainability. More than a workplace transformation, it shows how thoughtful workplace design can help organisations bring their values to life and create meaningful everyday experiences for employees.
Gensler is proud to have supported DBS on this journey, contributing design expertise to a workplace that supports DBS’ culture and ways of working. At DBS, culture is a strategic differentiator, and the workplace plays an important role in enabling the innovation, agility, collaboration, and continuous learning that underpin the bank's success. DBS brought a clear ambition to challenge conventional thinking, while the close collaboration between DBS, Gensler, and project partners created the conditions to explore new possibilities.
Ultimately, the recognition reflects the collective effort of DBS teams, employees, Gensler, and project partners and demonstrates what can be achieved when design is driven by purpose.
Q Finally, as employee expectations continue to evolve, what is one area of EX that organisations will need to rethink in the year ahead?
One area we believe organisations will need to rethink is the role of the workplace in shaping employee experience. The office has evolved into a destination where culture is experienced, relationships are built, and organisational values are brought to life. As employee expectations continue to evolve, workplaces must offer meaningful connection, a sense of belonging, opportunities for collaboration, and shared experiences that complement hybrid work and are difficult to fully replicate virtually.
This creates an opportunity for HR, workplace, and design teams to work more closely than ever before.
The strongest employee experiences will emerge when people, place, and purpose are considered as one integrated strategy rather than separate initiatives.
Importantly, creating these experiences is not a one-time exercise. The DBS' JoySpaces journey underscores the value of treating workplace transformation as an ongoing, iterative process rather than a fixed endpoint. Since the programme began in 2016, DBS has continued to evolve its workplaces by listening to employees, studying emerging workplace trends, experimenting with new ideas, and refining spaces based on changing needs and behaviours.
The latest JoySpace transformation builds on this longstanding commitment to continuous improvement and employee co-creation. It offers an example of how organisations can bring people, place, and purpose together to create workplaces that strengthen culture, enable innovation and One Bank collaboration, encourage more sustainable behaviours, and translate corporate values into everyday employee experiences.
Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets section!
Photos / Provided
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