Eve Wilkinson-Bell on Leesman+ Excellence, and Why Focus Spaces Beat Flashy Perks

When Eve Wilkinson-Bell describes her office, she does not start with headcount or floor plans. She starts with coffee. With the hum around the machines in Amsterdam. With the quiet of Eindhoven on a Friday, when occupancy hovers around 25–30% and people deliberately choose the office for focus.

Eve is the Workplace Regional Manager for Western Europe and the Nordics at HERE Technologies, responsible for a portfolio that just secured Leesman+ certification in four locations, including an Amsterdam office that ranks in the top three out of more than 10,000 workplaces surveyed worldwide. She trained as an architect at the University of Liverpool, managed high-end residential basements in Notting Hill, led fire safety projects at London’s Natural History Museum, and then shifted into corporate real estate.

In this episode of Fika Friday at the Office, recorded in HERE’s Eindhoven office on a quiet Friday, we talk about coffee culture, focus spaces, Leesman data, and why the future of workplace design depends on both sensors and human judgment.

The Coffee Culture That Anchors the Office

In Amsterdam, HERE employees are, by her own admission, “spoiled.” For roughly 100 people, there are three Jura machines using specialty beans from local roaster Coffee & Coconuts, plus a Nespresso machine that only exists because of a small internal uprising.

In the previous office, an old Jura machine broke. While it was being repaired, the team installed a small Nespresso machine as a temporary fix. When the Jura came back and Nespresso disappeared, the reaction was immediate and intense. The office split into factions. People wanted choice, not a single approved option. The team brought Nespresso back, upgraded the Jura via Coffee & Coconuts, and complaints stopped.

The message was clear: coffee is not a perk. It is infrastructure.

In the new Amsterdam office, the main coffee point sits at the heart of the floorplate. It is also the lunch area and event space. The team calls it the Nexus— the place where people naturally congregate, cross paths, and exchange information that never makes it into a meeting invite.

“I always position myself at the desk closest to the coffee machine. That is where the magic in the office happens.”

From Basements and Fire Doors to Hybrid Strategy

Eve’s path into workplace leadership is anything but linear.

While studying architecture at Liverpool, she spent five years working at Boots stores, picking up frontline retail experience. After graduating, she realized that pure design was not the right fit. She loved buildings, but not in the way traditional architecture demanded.

A London construction firm gave her a different route in. The company specialized in digging basements and renovating ultra‑high‑end homes in Notting Hill, some listed on the market at more than £60 million. The team was small. There was no strict job description. Eve did whatever needed to be done: coordination, organization, problem-solving. She discovered she was less interested in drawings, more interested in making complex projects work.

That organizational streak followed her to the Natural History Museum in London, where she joined during Covid as a project manager. On paper, it is a dream posting. In practice, much of the work is invisible but critical: fire doors, fire dampers, and infrastructure in a highly constrained, aging estate. Her proudest achievement was leading the upgrade of lifts to full fire evacuation standard, including a glass‑enclosed refuge lobby on the gallery floor so wheelchair users and others could wait safely during an emergency and evacuate via lift, not chair.

Even then, the museum role did not feel like an endpoint. She and her partner wanted to live abroad. When he relocated to Eindhoven with Philips, she followed and continued managing UK projects remotely, an arrangement complicated by Brexit, time zones, and distance.

Around that time, she spotted a corporate real estate role at HERE Technologies in Eindhoven. She applied, went through the process, and did not get the job.

Six months later, talent acquisition called back. Her first title at HERE was portfolio analyst, focused on leases, transactions, and the mechanics of the footprint. A restructuring soon after shifted responsibility by region. Eve took over the portfolio, transactions, and projects across Western Europe. Four years later (and now based in Amsterdam), she leads workplace operations across Western Europe and the Nordics.

How HERE’s Amsterdam Office Landed in Leesman’s Top Three

HERE’s Leesman journey started in 2022, before the company had a formal hybrid policy. People could work from home or come into the office largely as they pleased. The team saw an opportunity: benchmark the current experience, make changes, and then measure again.

They ran Leesman surveys across eight offices. The results were “pretty okay” — solid, but with clear room for improvement. A few locations even scored high enough for certification, but without the 90‑percent‑plus participation rates Leesman requires for statistically rich data, those certifications would not stand.

Instead of chasing badges, the workplace team treated the data like a blueprint. They analyzed gaps, extrapolated patterns to the rest of the portfolio, and used the insights wherever they could secure funding.

Amsterdam became the flagship test case.

By March 2025, HERE had relocated its Amsterdam office to a new space: roughly 1,100 square meters on a single floor, hosting around 100 people. Eve led the project end‑to‑end, folding the 2022 Leesman findings into every design decision and validating them with ongoing employee feedback.

When they resurveyed in 2025, four locations, Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Chicago, and Mumbai, achieved Leesman+ certification, with Amsterdam ranking in the top three globally out of more than 10,000 workplaces in the index.

The office is not lavish. There is no free lunch, no over‑engineered amenities. What the data shows, and what Eve sees daily, is that what matters is not flash but fit.

Three Things That Make the Amsterdam Office Work

When pressed to name the top three elements that define Amsterdam’s success, Eve does not hesitate.

1. Focus Spaces First

For years, the industry conversation revolved around collaboration: open hubs, project tables, social spaces, and buzz. The Leesman results told a more nuanced story. The single most important activity for most employees is still focused work ****— often with calls layered on top.

In Amsterdam, HERE has about 55 desks, plus an additional 20 percent in enclosed phone booths. Crucially, these are not freestanding pods dropped in as an afterthought. They are built‑in rooms with ergonomic chairs and proper desks, sound insulation, and door seals that allow people to take calls, join hybrid meetings, or do deep work without distraction.

That ratio, desks plus a meaningful share of real focus rooms, turned out to be a sweet spot. People can find a place to concentrate. They no longer wander the floor with laptops, hunting for somewhere to talk.

2. A Single, Intentional Nexus

The second ingredient is connection.

In the old Amsterdam office, the company lacked a true communal space for lunch. The CEO used to say HERE was a coffee culture, not a lunch culture, which, as Eve jokes, was technically true only because there was nowhere for people to eat together.

In the new office, the workplace team intentionally designed one central space for meeting, eating, events, and informal gatherings. The Nexus is flanked by coffee machines, anchored by shared tables, and wired for all‑hands and community moments.

In the first two weeks, Eve spent much of her time taking photos: people who had been scattered across different spaces now sitting together at long tables, eating lunch as a group. It was simple and “wholesome,” she says, but powerful. When there is a clear, comfortable place for people to collide, they will.

3. Flexibility Without Waste

The third ingredient is a different approach to leadership space.

In the previous office, VP‑level leaders in Amsterdam had individual offices. When they needed to meet others, they left their offices and booked separate meeting rooms. Those executive rooms sat under‑utilized for much of the week.

In the new model, only C‑level leaders have fixed offices, and even those spaces are flexible. If a C‑level executive is out for weeks, others are free to use the room as a small meeting space.

For VPs and other senior leaders, the team introduced a new typology: **“**offices for a day.” The name is still a working title, Eve admits, but the logic is clear. These rooms are set up much like former private offices—desk, screens, acoustics—but they are bookable, not owned. VP‑level employees can reserve them for a full day when they expect back‑to‑back calls that require confidentiality. If nobody books a room, anyone can walk in and use it as a four‑person meeting room.

Culturally, it took time to adjust. People still refer to their preferred rooms as “Hans’s room” or similar. Eve gently corrects them: the room has a neutral name (like Waypoint) and belongs to the organization, not an individual.

The gain is twofold: leaders get the privacy they need when they truly need it, and the organization avoids excess space that sits idle.

Sensors, Screens, and the Next Wave of Workplace Tech

HERE’s offices are not just coffee and furniture. They are quietly instrumented.

In Amsterdam, sensors are everywhere. Initially, they were installed on desks and in meeting rooms to capture utilization patterns. It did not take long for the team to realize that one category was missing: phone booths.

Without reliable data on booth usage, employees often walked the floor searching for a free one. Adding sensors to the booths and linking them to a touchscreen kiosk at reception changed that. Now, when employees arrive, they can immediately see which booths are free and where to go.

Desk booking is still part of the system, but Eve’s team is experimenting with ways to make it more intuitive and less conflict‑prone. One idea under exploration is a docking station solution with small name screens: when someone books a desk and docks in, their name appears, reducing ambiguity and awkwardness when people arrive and find “their” spot already occupied.

In offices with high demand and constrained space, booking behavior is solid. People understand that reservations protect their ability to work effectively. In offices with too many desks, the incentive to book disappears — another signal that supply without structure rarely delivers a great experience.

Where AI Fits (and Where It Still Does Not)

At CoreNet Global’s summit in Anaheim, where Eve picked up the Young Leader of the Year award, AI was everywhere in the conversation. Still, she remains pragmatic about the gap between hype and implementation.

Inside HERE, she sees two clear pathways for AI in the near term.

The first is employee‑facing automation. Imagine a simple chat interface where someone can say, “The height adjustment on my desk is broken,” and the AI agent:

• Cancels the existing desk booking
• Books a nearby alternative with the right equipment
• Logs a ticket for facilities with the right metadata

All from a single message, in real time. The capabilities exist. The challenge is integration and trust.

The second is data interpretation. With sensors, booking systems, and access logs streaming information, workplace teams already sit on a rich dataset. Today, they parse it manually or via static dashboards to answer questions about occupancy, peak days, and under‑used spaces. AI could help spot patterns faster, generate scenarios, or flag outliers that warrant a human decision.

Eve points to a session in Anaheim where OpenAI’s real estate team shared how they use ChatGPT today: upload full leases, then interrogate them for clauses, risks, and options. It is exactly the kind of work she once did manually as a portfolio analyst. Now, much of that extraction and analysis can be automated, freeing humans to focus on strategy.

Her caution is simple: AI needs to reduce friction The goal is fewer clicks, fewer tickets, and more time spent on work that matters.

Why Coffee, Focus, and Flexibility Matter More Than Ever

Listening to Eve, a few themes repeat.

• Focus is non‑negotiable. Collaboration matters, but most people still spend a majority of their time in focused work or calls. Offices that ignore this reality will struggle, no matter how photogenic their social spaces are.
• Communal hubs need intention. The Nexus in Amsterdam works because it was designed as a true center of gravity, not an afterthought. One good space beats several half‑used corners.
• Leadership space must earn its keep. Private offices that sit empty are not just a cost problem; they undermine fairness and flexibility. Models like “offices for a day” retain privacy without locking in unused square meters.
• Tech should be felt as ease, not surveillance. Sensors, booking systems, and AI only create value when employees can see and use the outputs in ways that make their day smoother.

Underneath it all is a belief Eve has carried from basements in Notting Hill to fire lobbies in South Kensington to hybrid hubs in Amsterdam: spaces work best when they are built around how people actually live and work, not how we wish they would.

In HERE’s offices, that truth looks like a well‑placed coffee machine, a quiet phone booth when you need to focus, and a workplace team that is willing to change the plan when the data, and the people, say it is time.