-- INTRO --
Ian Ellison
Hello and welcome to another special episode of the Workplace Geeks Podcast. My name is Ian Ellison , and I'm back with the third in a special series that we've put together with the organizers of the workplace event to chat with some of this year's crop of workplace leaders, top 50 winners.
We recorded some of them at this year's workplace event at the Birmingham NEC in April and some afterwards remotely.
A huge thank you once again to Matt Fogg and Mako Commercial Interiors for providing the recording booth at the show. So. Quick recap, the awards, six categories. Unsung hero, young, pioneer, inspiring leader, innovator, driver of cultural change and thought leader, demonstrate both the breadth of leadership recognition and also the scope of leadership potential out there in the workplace community.
And again, we've got four cracking short chats for you, exploring their career, how they've ended up in the workplace sector, how it's changed, what it could do. Better and any advice they'd offer people either entering the sector or aspiring to develop their careers within it, including human stories, personal anecdotes, passions and perspectives.
And above all, great conversations with the very best the workplace community has to offer. This time we're taking more of a corporate lens to look at workplace through corporate real estate, facilities management and HR perspectives.
What's interesting though is that they all ultimately end up thinking about both the experience of customers and employees wherever they sit in the diverse ecosystem of the workplace sector. So our first winner for this episode is Emma Swinnerton from Cushman and Wakefield.
Emma, over to you.
-- INTERVIEW --
Emma Swinnerton
I'm Emma Swinnerton and I head up the Flexible Workspace and rethinking, , teams at Cushman and Wakefield.
Ian Ellison
Rethinking teams.
Emma Swinnerton
Yes, rethinking is, , what we're doing around, , supporting clients with repositioning and repurposing of assets that are no longer fit for purpose, which is primarily offices being the current burning platform, but potentially applies across sector.
Ian Ellison
Is that something which has come to prominence, post pandemic, or was that something that you were already doing before?
Emma Swinnerton
No, we started this about two years ago, so definitely post pandemic. And it was really as a result of probably a coming together of three things, being obviously changing, workplace practices, most relevant for this a difficult economic environment and more stringent environmental legislation. Which were essentially driving this two tier office market where you have the. Best offices or the best assets. Strong demand increasing rents, delivering everything that occupies want. But some of the rest, particularly those in non-core locations really starting to struggle. And therefore a lot of owners of those assets need to think more about what's the long term.
Strategy for those and whether that should be, invest to upgrade them into a better office, or is there a higher value by converting to another use, most likely being hotel, residential, student accommodation, labs, data centers, all of these different things.
Ian Ellison
So this is essentially something which started with the office as a sort of maybe outdated, maybe need reinventing kind of idea, and already the conversation is spinning to all these different places. Sounds quite diverse. Is it binary in that there's the high grade and then there's the what do we do with the rest?
Or is it not that simple?
Emma Swinnerton
It is never that simple. Obviously you've got to look at every asset in isolation. Basically and this is a kind of pan-European initiative for Cushman and Wakefield. So actually if you look at it in different countries or different cities, the challenges are slightly different. At the moment, for example, this is more of a Western European problem than an Eastern European problem.
Partly because, a lot of the office buildings tend to be newer In Eastern Europe, the environmental legislation set by the EU hasn't necessarily been enshrined. So robustly locally as yet. And then there's different challenges because of the type of architecture out there. In some ways it's more cost effective to demolish and rebuild an asset than it would be to come to convert it.
But obviously over here in the UK there's been some quite high profile cases where owners are not allowed to demolish and we have to preserve the. Existing structure and convert that. And that gets very expensive and therefore, viability is a massive issue.
Ian Ellison
That is really interesting. So this is definitely a pocket of the workplace world, the corporate real estate world that I dunno a great deal about. Tell me how we got to here. Did you plan this? Has this always been a grand aspiration or has it been happy accident?
Emma Swinnerton
Absolutely not. So I am probably quite atypical for a Cushman and Wakefield person and a workplace person, I would say, and that firstly, I'm not a surveyor. I don't have a property background, so I studied. Natural sciences at university. I spent the first half of my career working in travel and aviation.
I started life on the British Airways Graduate Training Program and did a few things post that in the kind of travel related space, and then landed in property by total accident. I was hired for a role at Regis or IWG, the flexible workspace platform. Originally the sort of tenuous link to travel was, I was looking at their Regis Express offer, which is their small format centers based in airports, train
Ian Ellison
So there's the bridge.
Emma Swinnerton
Ecetera.
And then from there was heavily involved in rolling out their spaces proposition, which was their essentially response to WeWork's dramatic growth back in kind of 20 14, 15. And then developed a kind of specialism within the flexible workspace arena, which is how I landed at Cushman originally to essentially focus on providing advice and border service offerings to.
Primarily landlords and investors around flexible workspace. So should they do it? How much space should they do it in? How do they do it? Do they do it themselves? Do they partner, et cetera. And then the rethinking was just a, an accident. On top of that, I literally sat next to one of our senior leaders in the office and he needed a bit of a help with the project.
And I was in the right or the wrong place at the right
Ian Ellison
I was gonna say, is that a happy accident? Is that fortunate or is that unfortunate because all of a sudden you've got an extra remit. So I dunno what the advice there is. Stay away from those leaders in the open plans or get close to them.
Emma Swinnerton
I'm a glutton for punishment though. I'm always the person that's gonna put their hand up and say, I'll have a crack something else to do.
Ian Ellison
Very good. Okay, so if I think about what you've just said there, it feels like the Regis appointment was the introduction to the industry. How long ago was that roughly?
Emma Swinnerton
I think it was in 2014.
Ian Ellison
So you've been in and around this
Emma Swinnerton
13, 14. Yeah.
Ian Ellison
by chance, and it's actually very typical to stumble in from, I would say a facilities and workplace perspective.
Maybe not so much from a real estate perspective, but that I think is linked towards the qualifications that you have to have from a sort of RICS perspective so in that 10 plus years, how have you seen things change from your vantage point on the sector?
Emma Swinnerton
It's interesting because I guess my main focus has been around flexible workspace, and by that, there's. All sorts of terminology in the space. So coworking, managed space, serviced offices, all of this kind of stuff. And the reason why I enjoyed working in that area is because it's a constantly evolving part of the marketplace.
Regis has been around since the eighties, so it's a long time. But in the last 10 years, and I always say this, 10 years ago, WeWork was just coming into the UK market. They went from 5 billion to 47 billion and back to probably 500 million or less in that period.
Ian Ellison
So the whole Adam Newman story, of which there are Netflix documentaries. Netflix dramas. . It was the absolute startup dream, wasn't it? That came crashing and burning.
Emma Swinnerton
Absolutely. But you have to say that, being part of the sector with WeWork is absolutely fascinating. . At one point they were the second biggest tenant of, or occupier of space in London with the first being the government.
Ian Ellison
Wow.
Emma Swinnerton
And the take up of space, if you look in 17, 18 and 19, there was something like two, two and a half million square foot of space being taken up by flexible workspace operators, and then the pandemic hit and then.
Since then, the take ups been more like quarter of a million to half a million square foot of space. But because of that massive growth in the operators, you constantly have this pull push that's created demand from occupiers for flexible workspace forming a core part of their portfolio.
Pre WeWork, and actually at the start of WeWork's evolution, everybody thought that this was just an offer for. Startups and entrepreneurs and small businesses, . But one of the things WeWork did was made it, cool or made it important for large corporates to also take space in flexible workspaces.
Ian Ellison
I felt that was really interesting that moment because it wasn't just, there's that classic thing of we want a WeWork. I think Chris has recently written an article entitled that, and he's using it as a vehicle to talk about the importance of experience when it comes into a place.
Because on the one hand, a flexible option within your portfolio essentially gives you swing space that you can enter and exit quickly. But what that whole thing behind, we want a WeWork. It was cultural. We want the feeling, we want the buzz. And one of my best friends, he's a senior manager in bp, I remember BP starting to take WeWork spaces to give them a different vibe within which to think differently.
Emma Swinnerton
Absolutely. Deloitte put their entire innovation team into a WeWork for that exact reason, to expose them to more of an entrepreneurial mindset and a more of an entrepreneurial atmosphere outside of the big kind of corporate hq.
Ian Ellison
So when I say what's changed, you are painting a picture of , essentially market forces growing and changing. And also, socio environmental, forces. If we talk about the pandemic growing and changing . The area of the sector within which you work, okay. What do you think it could do better what frustrates you and grinds your gears, Lily.
Emma Swinnerton
I think one thing, one mantra for me is always about keep it simple. Because London is probably the most mature or the most competitive market in the world for flexible workspace. There are hundreds of operators, new operators popping up all the time, and we definitely went through a phase where everybody was.
Trying to create their own niche to stand out from the crowd. You've got themed spaces. We had women only spaces for a while we had spaces for specific kind of groups of people, tech only people. All of these types of things.
But actually when you break it down, what customers want is. , Their initial buying decision or their initial touring decision is based on location and price, right? What's gonna get them in the door is where is it and how much is it gonna
Ian Ellison
Really right.
Emma Swinnerton
Once they're in the door, it's then about what does space look like?
How does it feel? What's my interaction with the team like? And it's all about that experience, which is what's actually going to make them stay. So you don't need gimmicks, you don't need. Sleep pods in reception or whatever it is. What you do need is a great team, a warm reception, people who know their customers, because the utopian vision really is that, everybody talks about community and being able to create community in the workplace, and at the beginning, that has to be very much facilitated by the team on site, but.
At the end, what you want is that community to almost be self facilitating. So when we did, something or one of the first kind of spaces, locations. Back when I was at IWG, we started to see that we had a kind of gaming company on site, and when it was either the World Cup or the Euros or something, they basically wanted to organize their own event where it was.
Gaming they bought in a bunch of beers and open that up to all of the tenants of the building. And that's great because you've got the community the kind of users of that space have recognized the value of being with the other tenants of the building and are driving those interactions themselves rather than being forced by that community team
Ian Ellison
You have to set the thing up for success, but it only tips itself. A long time ago, I had a conversation with a chap called Neil Usher. He's an author in the sector and he actually borrowed this idea from one of his circle of inspirers, and that's a terrible way of describing it, but he was talking about the notion of, it's a Yiddish term called tumbling. So Tummler get the party started.
They're responsible for getting people dancing. They're responsible at the wedding when it's all a bit energy, less triggering the thing. They don't stay on the dance floor. But they're responsible for triggering it, so there's some real insights there about what's at the heart of experience, and it's not fads, it's not fashion, it's not gimmicks.
It's good, honest human stuff.
Emma Swinnerton
Absolutely. And I think that's also a shift is that kind of post pandemic is like pre pandemic as a landlord or an owner of space, you were really worried about interacting with who's the per the CFO or whoever's making the decision, whoever's paying the rent, whoever's doing the finances, right?
But now people want to have that relationship with all of the people that are using. They're buildings because they're really important and they're also influencing that decision as to whether those, how long those people are gonna stay and what they're gonna do in the building, et cetera, and how they're gonna use the building.
Ian Ellison
Is it just shows the different vantage points, the different stakeholder vantage points in this sector. It's like an ecosystem. , I'm a facilities manager of old, you are talking about the end users.
They're my customers, right? So I might have. Key clients, like senior leaders, like key stakeholders, but fundamentally they're my customers. But to a landlord, they're end users because a landlord's clients are something quite different. It's really interesting. This is a perspective that I don't think we've had much of, so this is super valuable.
One last question, Emma. New aspiring workplace leaders, if they've been inspired by what you've talked about, if they've been inspired about your journey, your by chance, haphazard right place, right time, sat next to that leader and get an extra part of your job kind of thing what advice would you give?
What advice for folks wanting to enter the sector and do better within the sector.
Emma Swinnerton
And I think from a career perspective absolutely. You never know where you're gonna find the right opportunities as a thing I've just illustrated. I do this myself when I'm interviewing somebody, but it's the worst question ever. But I always say, tell me where you'd like to be in five years time.
I don't expect somebody to be able to articulate what is their dream job, but they need to be able to know . What makes them happy and excited and want to come to work and, jump outta bed on a Monday morning what are the ingredients of that job? And then I think, be really open because , you might find those in an unexpected place, so you never know what.
Opportunities are gonna come across your path. And if you have a very rigid plan, you might miss some of those opportunities along the way. Really. So I would say be open grab every opportunity that comes towards you and throw everything at it and make the most of it,
Ian Ellison
So from the coworking inspired experience, supercharged by WeWork to the challenges of post pandemic experience with a winner from another big name in the corporate real estate world. Next up is Muddy Hayes from JLL. Now. Quick note, the sound quality on this one might not be perfect.
I'm really sorry, Maddy, and sorry also to David, our engineer who had to try and sort this out for us completely. My bad. Something was wonky with the levels of the recording. I didn't spot it. Stick with it though, because Maddy's story is a fascinating one with some bold career choices along the way.
Maddie Hayes
My name is Maddie Hayes. I am a workplace experience mobilization lead. A bit of a mouthful for JLL and I look after the EMEA region doing that.
Ian Ellison
So big remit.
Maddie Hayes
Big remit. Yeah. ,
Ian Ellison
So let's do what the thing is first, and then let's work out how we got to it. So this workplace experience business for you, for JLL, take me back to basics. Tell me what it's all about.
What is experience why is it important to you? Why are you doing this role? Why is it so important?
Maddie Hayes
I love this role because it's very people orientated. And that's what I really enjoy. And I enjoy being able to really put programs and things in place that can make a huge impact. We spend five days a week at work, right? We wanna enjoy it. And the fact that I can play possibly a small part in making someone's workplace experience and workplace as a whole enjoyable to go to that's what really drives me.
And I get a lot out of that. terms of what is experience, that's the killer question, isn't it? And it's different to everyone. Really for me, just experience is the perception of the workplace, right? And everyone's perception is different based on their backgrounds. Where they've grown up their experiences outside of work as well, and it's really how people go into their places of work.
And it's our job or my job to make that perception as best as it can be for that particular person.
Ian Ellison
Is this something which has unfolded recently at JLL or have you seen it grow and when did you see it start growing importance?
What's your view of it?
Maddie Hayes
I think it's always been there. My previous experiences were mainly on our client accounts but we've always supported, JLL has always been very much experienced, focused or people focused, I imagine. But I think probably, I'm gonna say the same as exactly as everyone else is. It really did accelerate post COVID because that was when suddenly the world of work was just thrown into an array and people had to work from. Could work from anywhere home the office sometimes shared spaces. And I think what that really highlighted was that actually the office was underperforming for experience. So people would rather work at home. And there's a lot of data out there that actually showed, particularly at that time that the home was outperforming the office in terms of experience.
And then we started to see a massive shift in the industry that actually. Experience wasn't just soft services as well. I think that was always a little bit of a tangle between them both. My background, I actually was in soft services and in transition to workplace experience, which was quite natural.
But I think there is now, and there, especially now, even growing, still an expectation that experiences embedded into every single role. It's not just certain roles that deliver it. And I think that's a huge change and that is a difference that we have seen and that we're having to respond to at the moment. And I think that really, again, as we know, experience is that differentiator that makes you want to go to a company, right? The companies that invest in a better experience are able to attract and retain that top talent. And ultimately, you or your company is your people, right? So you want the best people that you can possibly have there.
And I think, again, there's always been talk of how do we attract and retain best talent? But I think now people are realizing that just focus on keeping a building running anymore. have to provide those experiences that are focused on individuals and personalized to really set them apart from everyone else in the kind of industry.
Ian Ellison
Which is fun, right? Because in an industry that kind of needs to move with economies of scale, , might have a thousand person headquarters and. You organize things by doing things on mass, but experience
it's an incredibly personal thing. So it's how you take that, thousand person building, manage it, but still every single person has to feel special within that.
Maddie Hayes
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that, experience in the past as well has been, there's been a lot of focus and amazing work done on, the surface part of experience, which is, your ambassadors, your reception, really the people on the ground that bring experience to life. And that's fantastic.
But what we're really interested in is also how we can roll out experience programs to help those on the ground provide a better experience, a little bit more scalable solutions as well to not just say, experience relies on one person. We want a program that can be rolled out across multiple roles.
So everyone knows what they're delivering and how they should deliver it. And that's all backed by data as well, right? You have to understand what employees want from their experience to be able to deliver that as well. So I'm very much pro data as much as possible to really get under the hood of what's going on.
Ian Ellison
So what sort of data do you rely on then? Is it like voice of the customer type stuff?
Maddie Hayes
Employee sentiment is very powerful. , We have a lot of tools that are able to capture employee sentiment. I think we're seeing a lot of a closer working relationship with occupancy as well. So obviously tracking trends and starting to really see how people are using the office.
So if a sentiment says this and. If they're not happy with meeting rooms, but actually how are they being used? Are they being used in the correct way or is it just maybe a lack of communication? So really as much data as possible. We try to also track again the success of programs. So experience before a program is implemented based on it, after that's done with a lot of voice of the customer, things like that.
Ian Ellison
And how does , what you are responsible for interface with the operational. You said at the beginning of this discussion that you used to be operationally pivoted more centrally. How does experience interface with the day to day?
Is it that different? Is it that you are trying to get everybody to wake up to the importance of it and embed it in everything that they do?
Maddie Hayes
Absolutely. We don't want to hear it's not my job, that's the experience team's job, but who is that experience team? The experience team is everyone. And that's goes back to my previous point. It's not just ambassadors or reception anymore. It's not those soft services. It is your engineering lead.
It is obviously your facility manager's, your head of workplace. It is, it's everyone's got the op the responsibility really to be able to deliver that experience because. You're just relying on certain individual, certain roles to do that. Then ultimately it's just not scalable and it's not gonna really impact the way we want it to do.
So we look at a lot around hospitality mindsets and how we can instill that, but also make it tangible, right? Because if you have got someone that is not used to experience, how can we really break it down and make it a bit easier to digest for them? And we do that for a lot of our experience programs.
So that is, things like training and upskilling. That's, journey mapping, workshop, persona mapping workshops, really just getting, trying to get people to step into the shoes of their customer and work them out and how they interact, the building, what are their frustrations, what are their pain points, and ultimately make them be able to interact better with people on the ground.
And then that's it. And we provide, , we have experienced leads across all, a lot of our client accounts that really do . The strategic part, the division defining the strategic goals on the workplace and a much bigger corporate real estate strategy. But again, it's really making sure that they translate to those on the ground because ultimately the one, that our teams on the ground are the ones that are interacting day to day with the businesses.
Ian Ellison
Okay. Thank you. So how long have you been in this industry, in this sector?
Maddie Hayes
Oh, I think , about nine years now. Nearly 10
Ian Ellison
How and how did you find yourself here?
Maddie Hayes
So I started on a graduate program at Macro.
I just fresh out of uni, so I actually did an English and drama degree . Those who know me probably won't be surprised by that, , and again. I wasn't actually sure how I wanted to apply those skills, but , it goes back to my previous point of I just really enjoyed working with different types of people in drama and you have to work with different types of people to put on these shows.
So I really just felt quite confident in my kind of communication skills and I was like, how can I translate that to something that I'm actually passionate and I can see as a career? And my mom was in the construction industry, so at that time, macro was part of mace. Yeah.
Ian Ellison
Yep.
Maddie Hayes
She said, what about this kind of field?
And I just happened to look at the openings and a facilities manager job came up and actually I didn't know anything about engineering or hard services or soft services, but what I really. Found from the job description was actually, it is all around people. It is around how you run a building and how you interact with different supply chains your clients, multiple different stakeholders.
And I just thought I would give that a go. And managed to get a place. So I was on the graduate scheme for two years and part of that time I was seconded to a client account, which was a global bank. I was meant to be there for two weeks. I ended up being there for two six years and throughout that time I started as an assistant facilities manager.
Then I worked for one building facilities manager for one building, and then I got the opportunity to move to the Middle East Dubai when I was 22.
Ian Ellison
Really?
Maddie Hayes
That was a huge step up from running one building. I then went to run 46 countries as their soft services lead. Huge jump. And the only reason I had that jump was because Ross Abate he's a little bit of a mentor of mine back in the day and he just really believed that I could do it and he pushed me to do it and I decided to take the opportunity and I went and I did it. And during that time was when actually COVID started to hit and naturally. The client I was working on, they started to transition over to the concept of workplace experience to replace soft services. So naturally my role, soft services lead transitioned to workplace experience lead and that's where I ran two regions for that account to my first client.
I was there for a long time, moved back to the uk and then transitioned over to a different client in a different industry in the manufacturing industry. Then got the opportunity to work in the platform for a little bit, which I thought I would take.
Ian Ellison
So over and above the changes that you've talked about, the way that the pandemic kind of drove narratives around experience and return to office and stuff like that. What else have you seen change in your career in around the sector?
Maddie Hayes
It's a great question. I think the concept of the office has changed. I know we've touched on that I think now, at the moment there's a huge shift over to the use of technology and ai and I think that's come up quite a lot when I started. Obviously technology's always been around, but really it's now how we use AI and technology to. Enhance experience . And I think a wonderful thing that we're seeing is, I think there's a lot of uncertainty around ai, across, in emea especially the clients that we're working with, there's been no talk just yet of, AI is not there to replace anyone. But again, it's really there to be used to be able to take manual, repetitive tasks off our works on the ground, to then free them up to focus on the human interactions and. The empathy and again, reacting with all the different stakeholders. So I think we've seen a large change in the reliance on technology and AI to drive operations and experience as well. especially around data. When I started, again, we always had data, but they were very segregated. The points, it didn't come together, but now we're seeing workplace very much joined up as a.
Organization that looks experienced, occupancy, change management, all of that under one umbrella. We're seeing a lot of clients adopt that model, which I think is the way to go and it's great. There's a lot going on,
Ian Ellison
And what would you like to see done better? It could be the sector, it could be you wish your clients in particular or clients generally would just come alive with this particular idea. What do you think needs to improve?
Maddie Hayes
Always say that I fell into this role as quite a young person, and I think there is an opportunity to change that a little bit. I'd like to see the set together a little bit more creative with how we attract the younger generation to facilities management or workplace in general.
I didn't know that I would be here when I first joined. And I didn't really understand the full kind of breadth of what was needed with skills and what you can learn and what you can give back. So I think ensuring that we attract the Gen Zs in and making the sector itself an attractive sector for more people to come and join into.
For sure.
Ian Ellison
Interesting and yes, absolutely that chimes with something that another winner this year. She's an academic. From the Netherlands and she was saying the way we define FM over there is we make people's work happier, healthier, and better. And by better she means like more productive.
And it's like when you go into a school and you talk about making work happier, healthier, and better. People get behind that. , It's a better brand than people process place, isn't it?
Maddie Hayes
Absolutely. But how great is that that's how you know they're defining fm. Whereas before it would be we keep the building running. That's what we do. That's when I came in. Anyway, that was the main thing that I had to do is
Ian Ellison
Keep the building running.
Maddie Hayes
Make sure everyone was safe.
Ian Ellison
So last question. Advice for aspiring Gen Zs entering the sector or future leaders, people wanting to climb, people wanting to match your trajectory of career development. 'cause that is a really impressive trajectory .
Maddie Hayes
Yeah, it was a lot. My advice would be to say yes to every opportunity. I try to say yes to everything within reason. But, and that has really helped me. I have recently also at JLL, co-chair in the Women's Business Network. And I wasn't sure whether I actually had the confidence in myself to do that this year, but I said yes to it to give it try.
And I absolutely love it. I really enjoy it. And again, now that has opened me up to different parts of the business to learn even more and meet new people. Saying yes to moving to the Middle East on my own, that was a yes. So I think even if you don't feel confident in yourself. Even if you still think you haven't got all things figured out, just give it a go. And just see what happens.
Ian Ellison
Right. I mentioned different angles in the workplace ecosystem. So let's switch things up from both provider side to client side and from CRE to HR and specifically DEI.
How's that for acronym? Bingo. Our next winner is Sophie Robson from Sky.
Sophie Robson
I am Sophie Robson. I head up group Diversity, inclusion and Wellbeing Solutions for Sky
Ian Ellison
Oh, solutions. So you like solve those things.
Sophie Robson
Yeah, someone asked me that the other day about what the solutions part means, and it's more about looking around to see what we think the problems are, the challenges, and then solving for them.
So whatever that looks like, whatever shape that takes, its problem solving effectively.
Ian Ellison
Interesting. How long have you been in this role?
Sophie Robson
I've been in this role for four years at Sky. I've been in DNI for 10 years.
Ian Ellison
I tell you what. Let's do that bit first then, because I'm fascinated with this role. I'm fascinated about how things change over time from A DNI and a wellbeing perspective and that sort of thing. But how did you get to this role, or how did your career unfold in this direction?
Sophie Robson
I started my career. I've always been in HR so far. I'm just about to change next week, but up until now I've always been hr. , And I started in business management and I was working very closely with the investment bank. , And a lot of the projects that they started to do were around programmatic, traditional DNI things.
So that might be like sponsorship programs, for example, or looking at the promotion process and thinking about how that needs to improve. And then a very junior role came up in DNI. . And I remember my mentor at the time saying, you need to be really careful not to get pigeonholed in DNI.
And I challenged them and said, I don't think that will apply to me because my business management means that I will look across the board. I don't want to just do d and i very traditionally.
And then when I went on my first maternity leave, the role came up to head up DNI for Europe, middle Eastern and Africa . So I got that role and I did that for a couple of years. And that started to change already because it started to become more regulatory and investment sector.
That meant it was just more important, so it was taken more seriously at the exec level and the remit started to grow. , And then it came up in Sky and I thought it'd be really interesting to try a totally different sector, sky wants to be the best. They want to do things first.
So I had the opportunity to move over to Sky, where we believe in better, so we want to be better all the time.
Ian Ellison
The claxon for the, , for the brand statement has just gone off . Right. Okay. So I heard a couple of things there. From Investment bank to sky over the sort of the arc of your career so far and from a kind of low level, use the word programmatic. Kind of approach to DNI, which was back in the day, to something different now.
And you used the word regulatory from a bank perspective, but what's, what does the programmatic bit mean and what would you describe it as now in contrast to that?
Sophie Robson
So when we first started in DNI, people. Wanted to do things that made people feel valued or feel important. And there were definitely populations where we needed to focus more on them because they had been underrepresented. And diversity was a really big focus. So it was a case of looking at where we have underrepresentation, where the numbers.
Aren't quite right and the sole for that was, well, let's look at sponsorship programs, or let's look at mentoring programs or unconscious bias training. And we can create that, we can manufacture that, and that's what I mean by programmatic. , But what we are shifting to now, , well, there is a lot more political context. , We've been in the press looking at. , Why we are not having impact like we want to. And the reason for a lot of that is because some of the programmatic work is just done in small pockets and you can only reach a few people at any one time.
And also what you're doing by showing that some people are really valued is giving the impression that loads of others aren't valued or they're not important and then you create this real sense of resistance.
Um, so what we're shifting to now, what I can see the sector shifting too much more is looking at the system overall.
Ian Ellison
You were talking there, the penny dropped. It's almost like programmatic is like the organization equivalent of a paracetamol for a headache. And what you're doing now is you're saying upstream, why are we getting the headache? Because there are things that can be fixed there in the system. .
Which means that we don't have to do the programs potentially because we've corrected in a much more meaningful whole scale way.
Sophie Robson
Yeah, exactly.
Everyone can benefit , and instead of creating this divide where you're saying we are only giving it to you, and then you get the resistance elsewhere. So it's not about stopping the programs, it's about the way that you do
Ian Ellison
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotcha. . Okay. So you said also during that explanation that I think you said next week it's gonna be different. So what's happening next week?
Sophie Robson
Hmm, I'm changing roles entirely. I'm moving into service operations. , So yeah, instead of preaching, changing the system, telling leaders what they should be doing, , I will be the leader on the other side of the business. , Making sure that I can. the fairness for employees, , it's also process efficiencies, so I've almost fallen into DNI when I've looked at business management and then, you know, seen unfairness and systems and corrected for that and built those process. I. Improvements, but now it's looking at that on a much bigger scale of the service operation of Sky.
So that. We can have, , happy, productive employees, um, but equally a much more efficient and effective service model.
Ian Ellison
Good for you. Nice work. , So the next question is around. How the sector has changed over time. Now, on the Workplace Geeks podcast, workplace is the broadest church. It is kind of the system to use some of your language, which underpins getting organizational outcomes done. It sounds, from the way you are talking, that unlike many of the past workplace leaders, top 50 winners who've come from sort of the spacey kind of organizational property, . Corporate real estate side of workplace. You are very firmly from the people and HR side of things, so a bit of a fresh perspective for us. So how, from your time in this area have you seen things change? And you mentioned programmatic to sort of more whole scale, but what else has changed over the years?
Sophie Robson
I'd say a really big thing that's changed is around generations. So the generational shift, you know, if we look at what candidates, what employees were looking for from their employer, a good few years ago they were looking for things like stability. , They wanted to be able to progress, absolutely.
But our employees were very loyal, so stayed with their company for a lot longer. They wanted.
Ian Ellison
You sort of witnessed that directly?
Sophie Robson
Yeah, we did notice it. , I witnessed it directly, , more from a graduate perspective. When, from our early careers team, we started to notice that graduates that were coming in would only stay for a smaller period of time.
And it's just that people are wanting different things from their workplace than they did historically.
People move around a lot more. They want that variety. , They also are much more willing to challenge what they think they're worth. I think, , I had a really interesting theory at some point where somebody said. That people just don't want to be confrontational. They don't want to ask. So actually we are much more now of a generation where we will just avoid a situation.
So if we think we would want a promotion or we would want a pay rise, it's easier just to leave for that than to have that difficult conversation with our boss.
Ian Ellison
That is fascinating. When you first started talking about sort of changing trends in your younger. Particularly your graduates took me back to some of my MBA studies around about, it'll have been 2005 and I remember distinctly remember a particular paper then, which looked at what they called psychological contracts.
So what people expect from their employers and what their employers expect from them over and above the contract. Just like the stuff that lives in your mind about, well, if I put this effort in, you'll give me that back, and it's not written down. But it's kind of expected and anticipated. And we are moving from a loyalty driven one, a job for life driven one into a much more transactional.
I'll give you three years, you'll invest in my skills, we'll call it quits, and we'll move on. So what you were saying made perfect sense to me. And it's not just peoples changing, it's the fact that employment has changed. You know, jobs aren't secure, there aren't. Arguably as many around in the same way that there used to be.
It's a very changing socioeconomic landscape. But then you going on to say there's also this, element of you suspect from your sort of experience. Just avoiding confrontation. I find that fascinating. Like it's easier to move on than have the thorny conversation, which actually values you.
Sophie Robson
Mm.
Ian Ellison
I dunno whether that supports a sort of psychological contract idea or it sort of rubs against it in some way. I don't know , that's a really interesting observation. Yeah.
Sophie Robson
Yeah. , I mean it feeds into all kinds of growth conversations, but also if we're having. You know, if you think about the relationships that are so important at work, and if you think about the history of the workplace that are formed on relationships, , nepotism was a big thing and that's why now my role is so important to think about fairness and remove that nepotism from the process.
So you earn your positions, you earn your progress, but being such a relationship business in the past. You need to have some of those difficult conversations. You need to negotiate. , And now if we're avoiding some of that, then it changes the entire way that we build those relationships over a longer period of time.
Are we really getting that real feedback from people as people giving us the difficult feedback that we need to grow? Or are they just telling us what's easy? Um. Are we asking for difficult feedback or are we just avoiding it and then moving on if we're not getting what we want? I don't know.
It changes a lot of, how we manage people.
Yeah. Between manager and employee. Potentially.
Ian Ellison
So we've talked about how the sector has changed your lens on workplace, the sort of people who HR side of things. What do you think it still needs to do better?
Sophie Robson
I think, um, I think there's a balance. I think. As I say, historically, there was very clearly representation one way. So our black representation, for example, our women just simply weren't there in the upper echelons of senior leadership. , And that shifted. , But as I say, some of that means you get resistance as a result. And it's almost as though we need to find the middle ground. We need to reach a point that works for everybody. , That allows for people to feel that, yes, . I'm in this position because I've earned it. , I've got fairness.
I dunno if that's society that needs to shift that way. But we also need to recognize that employees want different things from their employer and we need to respond to that. So I think that generational side is really important for us to be aware of what those differences are.
So we need to be prepared for that. I think we need to be much more focused on the generational partnerships. In a company. So we've got senior leaders who'll be one generation , and young employees, , of a totally different generation, but they need to work together.
I think the ideal situation, and this is what we're focusing on at the moment, is around creating, um, an inclusive environment like that is the goal where people feel able to just disagree. Well. So the more diversity that we bring in, whether that's generational, gendered, ethnic background, introvert, extrovert, anything, we know that we are not going to agree, but that's good.
And I think that's the most important skill that we need to develop in.
Ian Ellison
As Rory and Alistair would say on the rest is politics disagreeing, agreeably.
Sophie Robson
Yes.
Ian Ellison
Right. Okay. Last question. Speaking of these younger folks then, so people. Entering the industry or people wanting to grow within the industry, what's your best advice for, you know, tips for the future? How to conduct yourself beyond disagreeing, agreeably?
How should people, what do they need to think about to be able to progress? Well.
Sophie Robson
I think in my particular industry, it's thinking about the system. I think systems really important. , And just making sure that. You can see fairness wherever you guys, whenever there are opportunities, is it fair?
Who could be disadvantaged as a result of this and bringing them into the room? Nothing about us. Without us. I think it's the expression that we use. If you are somebody who wants to progress yourself, then I think we've just, , teed that one up really nicely. And it's that, be curious, explore if someone doesn't have the same opinion as you.
A natural default position is to be defensive, to argue, you know, you must believe what I'm saying. I've got real credibility. But actually you'll negotiate. You'll convince them much more effectively if you understand the case that they're making. So explore that, ask those questions. You know, that's really interesting.
I've noticed you've said that. Why? You'll build up their trust 'cause you'll show them that you are valuing their opinion., But you'll also find yourself in a much stronger position to problem solve 'cause you really understand the crux of the problem.
Ian Ellison
Okay, three in the bag. One more to go. Another switch from HR back onto home Turf FM service provision and some infectious positivity to boot. Our final winner is Kristy Smith from IEM.
Christy Smith
My name's Christie and I am head of Business Excellence at Integrated Estate Management.
Limited,
Ian Ellison
So Alistair was one of the workplace leader winners last
Christy Smith
He was, yeah. So Alistair's our founding director. So he created IE almost five years ago now. And yeah, I've been with him, ever since then.
Ian Ellison
Oh, nice one.
So you've seen it grow and develop
Christy Smith
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah,
I kind of always think it's my baby, even though it's not, it's Alistair's baby. But , yeah, we've, I've been there from the start and when we did start, there was literally only kind of three or four of us and now there's like 40, so.
Ian Ellison
Wow. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah, it's amazing. So I keep seeing on LinkedIn, I keep seeing pictures of fancy racing cars with IEM Insignia. Yeah. And sort of charitable events featuring fast car racing and stuff like that.
Is that right?
Christy Smith
Yeah. So that, that's Alistair's thing. Is it? He loves race cars racing. Um, but there's a lot of events where we do it for charity, like, , mission Motor Sport, I think it is.
Ian Ellison
And in a nutshell then your job entails, what do you do?
Christy Smith
Yeah, so my job entails a lot of weird and , wonderful things. It's a more creative role, I would say, so I get to do all the awards kind of prep , and going through all the awards accreditations. So I do all the ISO audits and, , things like that. Safe contractor and then the social media. We work with like an external team where we go through that, , and internal projects.
So at the moment, we are introducing a new CM system, which is, going really well. Um, but it's a lot of work that is taking up a lot of my time right now.
Ian Ellison
Okay. , Just to do the acronym, computer Aided Facilities Management System that, yeah. Alright. So it sounds like Christie, that you, if you've got IEM and their core operations, it sounds like you handle a bunch of really critical stuff around the outside. Some of it's sort of marketing and social oriented.
Yeah. And some of it is also about project delivery and implementing new stuff.
Christy Smith
Yeah, so continuous improvement. Anything within the business that's gonna get us market leading.
We want to be market leading. We want to be that kind of company that. Is showing the way and yeah, driving innovation.
Ian Ellison
Very good.
There you go. Alistair. Bit promo of you there. That's perfect. Perfect. Right. So if this is what you're doing now, Christie, how did we get here? How long have you been in this game? How long have you been in the business? How did we get to the role that you're in now?
Christy Smith
Okay. Yeah. So I started as a receptionist about 12 years ago now with a. Family run FM company, , in culture, Stu, just a little tiny company, a few people. And from there, I, yeah, I then applied for a job, at this point, I didn't even know what FM was at all.
I just knew I was a receptionist for a company.
Ian Ellison
Right, right. Um,
Christy Smith
Really didn't have a clue. And then I went for a role for a larger FM company. FM was in the title and. When the recruitment company spoke to me, I genuinely thought I was going to talk to a radio station.
So, yeah, , that wasn't it.
Ian Ellison
But it didn't put you off though,
Christy Smith
Oh, no, no. Do you know what? It's bizarre to say that you love an industry. That's when you talk about, it sounds so boring, like fm, when people ask what you do, I work in fm. It's like it's not a sexy industry is it?
Ian Ellison
Shall I tell you a thing? 'cause it'd be nice to get your reflection on this. So I interviewed another winner yesterday called p Pune from the Netherlands. , She's a, a facilities teacher at one of the universities over there. And I said, so what is facilities from your perspective?
She said, well, from my perspective, from our perspective over there, facilities management is about making workplaces. Healthier, happier, and better. And it's really interesting 'cause you sort of said it's not sexy and it's like something behind the scenes.
Yeah. And we talk about it around people and process and place and stuff like that, but. better, healthier, and happier. Right. What a lovely way of putting what we do. Yeah. And you can love that, right? Because it's important.
Christy Smith
Yeah. That does make it sound much, much nicer, doesn't it? Than um, going and unblocking loose or something.
Ian Ellison
Yeah. Bogs and boilers. So you found yourself in this world of fm Yeah. Without quite realizing what you got yourself into, but grew to love it. So what happened?
Christy Smith
Yeah. . So I started on a help desk, so literally an FM help desk. And , I just loved it, like instantly loved it, and I just wanted to. Push, push for more.
So within the same company, I then went to supervisor, managed some, , client accounts, and then, , managing the help desk. And then, yeah, from there I've ended up at, IM after that, so did lots of different courses, lots of FM courses,
Ian Ellison
Yeah. RW very good. So lovely developmental trajectory over what, 11, 12 years? Something like that? Yeah. 12 years. Yeah. Okay. And I noticed you didn't mention that previous organization, so Alistair, if you're listening, that's another tick.
Just promoting IEM and not anybody else. Nice work, right? This industry then facilities management, the bit that you are aware of, what should it do better? What does it need to do better for the future?
Christy Smith
For me, what's really important is actually having more women in the industry. , I mean, up until now it's just mainly a male dominated industry and we get, it is getting better. It's definitely getting better, but we are still not there. I would like to see more women in fm, but also in the leadership roles, the C-suite board level roles.
Ian Ellison
Okay, so why is that important?
Christy Smith
Well, one, for the women, it's important to be able to have those, that progression and be able to get to that, uh, to that stage. But also just for the diversity piece to have women there, , they bring different things that maybe men can't, different perceptions.
So yeah, it's important not only for us, us women that want to get to those roles, but also , for everyone within the workplace because. Having , those different kind of ideas and things just yeah. Make, make it so much better.
Ian Ellison
And have you, from your vantage point within the industry, have you seen a sort of a groundswell of EDI kind of awareness over recent years? Have you seen a change in the time that you've been involved?
Christy Smith
Yeah, I think so. Like. even the last couple of years. I dunno if it's just more, I'm more aware of it now from where I've, where I was a couple of years ago, but it, I definitely think so. Yeah.
Ian Ellison
Okay. But it's still got a way to go.
Christy Smith
Yeah, absolutely.
It does. It definitely does.
Ian Ellison
Okay, so final question then, and this might link, it might not, dunno. So if you could give advice to aspiring leaders of the future, people who want to grow within the profession, who want to rise within the profession or even get into the profession, what advice would you give?
Christy Smith
Definitely get yourself out there, get to networking events and also coaching. So I currently have an external coach , who's absolutely brilliant. Louisa, her name is from one further coach in, she's brilliant and actually. It would've been much harder for me to get to where I am without her.
So yeah, definitely , if you have the opportunity to have a coach, definitely go for it.
Ian Ellison
So do you call it coach or mentor or is it,
Christy Smith
She's my coach. She's a coach. Yeah, she's a coach. And then , so I've also been on plan B mentoring as, , like a mentoring thing as well. So I've got a new mentor, her name's , Laura actually.
And yeah, so there's lots of different mentoring things that you can also do where. Like Plan B as an example, has worked really well. You literally go on, if you click with someone, you can just decide to meet up, when and where you want to, whether it's teams, whether it's monthly or fortnightly, and you've just got someone there to kind of support you when you need it.
So it's really nice.
Ian Ellison
This may sound like a really obvious question to you because you do it, but for somebody that's never tried coaching or mentoring, what do you get with that external perspective that you can't get, for example, from like your line manager or something at work?
Christy Smith
I think when it comes to, let's say there's a challenge or, or something that, well, there's definitely been stuff that I've taken to heart, , which I probably shouldn't have at work.
And then I've sat down with my coach Louisa, and talked it through, and actually , you just see it from a different perception and it makes more sense. I think just having someone that. Isn't necessarily in the day to day can give you an outside perspective. And it just, yeah, it just, it does really help.
-- OUTRO --
Ian Ellison
So that's it for our third set of Exclusive Workplace Leaders, top 50 interviews.
The final show is coming soon and was recorded live with Chris at the Winner's award ceremony that happened. Earlier this summer in London. Make sure you don't miss it. Hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. And if you feel like heading to the Apple Podcasts or Spotify app to rate, review and recommend the show, the Growing Workplace Geeks community will love you forever.
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