Transcript: Workplace Revolution: Service Management, IoT and The Future of Work

And if you put on a service uniform, you become invisible. And it's really weird. People just don't notice you. And we wish that they would notice us as service providers or whoever provides that service because it's human nature, you know, everybody want to be recognized, everybody wants to be seen and understand, you know, feel part of the environment of the office, what's happening and stuff like that. You need to make services personal because once you make it personal, the whole experience changes.

What can we as businesses, as organization do to make work more efficient, to have an ability to use the workplace, to attract and retain talent, to make it more fun, engaging, inspiring to come to work because we don't need to anymore. I mean, the technology allows us to work from anywhere we want, because I would actually argue that the workplace is probably one of the biggest culture enablers that you can work with in an organization. There's a lot of organizations talking about, we need to break down the silos between the various departments.

Want to start with doing that, then start by breaking down the physical silos, the department silos. If you hide people away, constructed silos in the workplace, and it's going to be very difficult to break that those organizational silos. So moving into open plan spaces and moving into people where they can accidentally bump into each other, have water cooler talks and coffee machine talks and open plan meeting spaces, whether you could just have that ad hoc meeting that you want to have, that's only 10 minutes, just catching up on a few items.

That's how you want to work on some of the design elements in your office. Hello, and welcome to the Constructor Podcast, the best way to build it. Episode number 54. I'm your host, Brittany Campbell-Turner, and this podcast is dedicated to helping property owners have certainty in their decisions about their construction projects. We talk about fostering trusting relationships, help you to understand how lower risk be under budget and on schedule, and most importantly, exceed your end user's desires.

Last week, you heard my interview with Kate Vytacek. She spoke with us about buying services with a long-term, incentivized relationship building in mind. She lays out the three parts secret sauce to the vested approach. Kate shares with us about how companies and governments similar to P&G, McDonald's and Microsoft are redefining winning through expanding the pie and sharing the pie in outsourced relationships. So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, check it out at constructor.com slash EP53.

In today's interview, we speak with Peter Anchor-Sternie, chief marketing officer at ISS. He will actually be talking about how ISS has adopted the vested approach. He also speaks with us about the change that is happening in facilities management and how it is affecting the focus on recruiting and retention and the use of technology like internet of things. And last but not least, we talk about the importance of service management. You will get a sense that Peter genuinely loves what he does.

He's passionate and invested in providing quality experience for all of the 500,000 employees at ISS and the clients they serve. Here is my interview with Peter Anchor-Sternie. ISS is one of the largest facilities management companies in the world with over 500,000 employees. ISS, along with the Copenhagen Institute of Future Studies, who we've interviewed in past, is doing a bit of research on how to prepare for the future of global facilities management through a 2020 vision. And many are trained on the vested approach, which we spoke about last week with Kate Vytasek.

So before we get into all of that, our guest is Peter Anchor-Sternie, who is the CMO at ISS and a board member at IFMA. So Peter, welcome to the Constructor Podcast. Thanks, Brittany. It's a pleasure to be here. Great.

Let's talk a little bit about ISS being trained in the vested approach. We just spoke with Kate Vytasek and we understand you are currently contracted with Accenture right now under a vested partnership. So could you tell us a little bit about that and how that enables ISS to provide better services? We started the journey on vested. I think it was three years ago.

Met Kate a couple of times via the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals, IAOP, and also through IFMA. I really like the work that she does. And the whole vested approach seems very sort of logical for a next level partner, supplier, customer supplier type partnership. So we got into that. We began to train a lot of our people invested, also some of our customers in the concept and in the process.

And then this year we signed our first vested contract with Accenture in the Netherlands. That was a big breakthrough for us. Signing the first contract was very important for us. So what vested does for us is it allows us to get closer to our customers. It allows us to move from a very typical input specification type of contract outsourcing relationship into a more outcome focused type of relationship that frees up resources and that frees up innovation power and allows us to move even closer to our customers to really understand what are some of the problems, one of some of the challenges and pain points within the areas that we are working with.

And I do believe that provide a much better and a much more integrated service into the customer's organization. I think it is really about that notion that Kate is talking about what's in it for we instead of what's in it for me. A typical, you know, supplier, a customer relationship is a very sort of power based type of relationship and through vested, you sort of turn it around and you begin to sit at the same side of the table and trying to understand and develop solutions on some problems where you can set up common set of KPIs.

You can base it on more transparency. You have more trust in the relationship. In our experience in ISS, that's only positive things will actually come out of that and it does allow you to be much more close to your customer and actually deliver services that actually fulfill a need, both stated, but certainly also some needs that are unstated in the contract that does provide for a better long-term strategic relationship. That's really helpful. I always go back to the question just kind of in my head, right?

So if you're, if you're working in a vested approach, sometimes a client, happy if you don't want to talk about Accenture particularly, but I'm just kind of thinking through a lot of times clients, they want to drive costs down. Long-term they're looking to do that. Does that somehow affect how you guys are thinking about working with different clients, because they're looking to do that. With different clients because they're potentially hoping to drive costs down and maximize the efficiencies or do you really find that from a service provider standpoint that is now sitting at the table and being looked at as more partner and advisor, do you feel like that is really inconsequential now because of the long-term relationship?

How does that perspective play out? Yeah, I think it's a very good question. I think there will always be a cost component and I think that's absolutely fair. I don't think companies necessarily would outsource to the same level if there wasn't a big sort of win or efficiency drive or reduced cost within that relationship. And I think that's absolutely fair.

I think driving out efficiencies in the relationship is a very admirable and good focus. Of course we should always try to be more efficient and effective in terms of what we're doing. So we have no problems. Part of the target is to drive down cost, but that's just a KPI that we can agree on. So if a customer comes to us and say, listen, I like to work close with you.

We believe in what you do. We would like to set up a vested partnership. And one of the KPIs that we need to look at is to drive down 20, 25, 30% cost savings. And the way vested work, I think it's a very good, clean cut, straightforward KPI that you can work with. And then the whole notion is to say, okay, fine.

You got that target. Let's work together on realizing that target because the old sort of ways of dealing with suppliers and customers, a relationship is to say, you know, I want to drive down cost. I want to hit you and you're going to give me some of those savings. And if you make less money in that process, then I, as a customer, I'm very happy because then, you know, it needs to hurt your bottom line. So I need to make sure that I get the right savings.

So that's a different way of thinking about it. Why should it hurt our bottom line? And why would we then do it? What would be our incentive to do that? I think customers and suppliers alike need to look into these types of relationships in a different way to say, okay, what can we do together to drive down some of these efficiencies that we are looking for?

How can we bring our expertise to the table? How can the customer open up and create some transparency to look for savings? Maybe it's in the direct relationship with the supplier, or maybe it's in the way that we're working together that we can actually realize some of these efficiencies. The vested approach is a very good way of doing that because sometimes it is just not what's on the table directly in front of you while you'll find the savings. It's in the sort of periphery of what it is you're doing, transferring some people, getting savings in terms of using different suppliers and bulking services in a different way that you've thought of before.

And I really think that's where the synergies and the efficiencies come out when you work at it like that. And you're using the expertise that is available in the relationship. And I think that's the key for us. And that's also why we believe that vested is really good also to drive further cost efficiencies in the relationship. Some people believe that Vest is a different way of not looking at cost.

No, it's not. It's just one of the KPIs that you want to look at. It just looks at it in a more informed and intelligent way that some of the more sort of command and control type of relationships are doing. I love that feedback. Thanks for that perspective.

You're welcome. I think that there's a change in how we're approaching the AEC industry and how we're doing integrated contracts and what have you. And I think that the vested approach is really transforming the facilities management realm. But I think there are other changes taking place. It's more specific to just how people are going to end up working in the space versus like managing the building itself.

I mean, I think that's been the focus of FM up to this point, but I feel like workplace is really now the focus of FM. And I'm curious as to your thoughts about that. Definitely. There's a lot of change going on and it's funny because I don't think there's ever been a more exciting time to be in FM than now. So much going on in terms of the workplace and how the workplace is developing, the way we work, I suppose, the whole purpose of the workplace is to support how people work.

And then also with the new technologies that are coming in, both in terms of us individuals, you know, the way we're working and the way we're set up to work. And then also the technology supporting the whole facilities management profession is just, it's changing every aspect of the industry as we know it. And I think that's hugely exciting, but staying with the theme of the workplace, so we're actually doing a new report together with the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies that we'll release in December called the Future of Work, Workforce and Workplace.

And one of the conclusions from that report is to say that facility management and corporate real estate needs to find some new best friends within the workplace. And HR, the HR function is definitely one of these new friends that we need to, to get much closer with because, and you can even argue that should FM and corporate real estate begin to report into the HR function or merge with the HR function. And we're seeing that already with some clients and some businesses around the world. And I think we'll see much more of that as we move forward, because the whole idea is to say, what can we as businesses, as organization do to make work more efficient, to have an ability to use the workplace to attract and retain talent, to make it more fun, engaging, inspiring to come to work because we don't need to

anymore. I mean, the technology allows us to work from anywhere we want. I mean, if I want to sit and concentrate in my daily work life, I would work from home. At home, I don't get disturbed as often as I do in the office. If I want to get disturbed, if I want to get some coaching or some inspiration, want to talk with my team members, want to talk to customers, then I go to work.

And so we need to understand as facility managers that the whole notion of why we work and the purpose of the work we do is changing. And even to an extent where you will find that the workplace as an experience will be emerging. And that's what we're also seeing in our research is to say, it's not only about workplace productivity and workplace efficiency, it's also the workplace as an experience. And we will see people coming to work to say, today, I don't need to do concentrated work.

So I'm here to meet with my clients, meet with my colleagues. I'm here to have some fun, to be social, to network. I'm here to have the great coffee or the good lunch and the canteen and just be part of that community that is important, a part of our work life. And I think that's something we will see increasing as we go forward. That's the big difference and the big shift that is moving from sort of the workplace of the 20th century into the workplace of the 21st century that we are just seeing the emergence of in various forms.

WeWork is one of the whole co-working type of movement is definitely some of the organizations that we are looking very closely at to get some inspiration and see if that's something we want to bring into the more corporate workplace environments. So there's a lot of moving parts and there's a lot of stuff happening in the space at the moment, which makes it really, really exciting. As Peter has mentioned here, ISS has commissioned the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, CIFS. If you haven't checked out the interview I had with Jeff Saunders about the future of work with the Copenhagen Institute of Future Studies, check it out at constructor.com slash EP38.

And so this process over the years has looked at a variety of areas affecting the facility management corporate real estate space, looking at how will organizations and people be working in the future? How will they be collaborating with partners to solve challenges and how could FM and corporate real estate providers work with others to deliver value for their customers? What is it that end users ultimately need to be supported? So you've had the last several years of focus on activity based working, but now we see that that's not enough just to look at the functional aspects, but also that people are looking for experience, are looking to fulfill what we call the immaterial values, a sense of belongingness with an organization, a sense of social connectedness with the people that they're working with, and they want to have fun, be inspired.

The workplaces are transitioning from a place where, hey, you can work in many places, in many spaces after your individual choice and what you've fulfilled that supports you. What is it that attracts people to the workspace and what can corporate real estate and facility managers, providers do to make the workplace something that's attractive for people to come? And that requires taking an entirely new perspective, which is focusing on the end user perspective. And for a normally very technical field of facility management with people with engineering backgrounds, how do they go in and start applying end user perspective using insights from anthropology, ethnographics, data sciences, and like actually understand what is it that triggers end users in the spaces that they're using?

Let's get back to the interview. That's really exciting. And in addition to that, like that's very interesting, the combination of the facilities and sign in construction and working with HR. But at the same time, the initiatives that human resources, they're focused on, it's more so geared towards how do you make sure that people are healthy in their workplace? Right.

It's more geared to how are people perceiving their jobs? Right. Do they want to stay? Is it somewhere that someone actually wants to get hired? And, you know, is that building somewhere they like to work in on a day to day basis?

You know, they want to have fun. Like you said, my client where I serve at now, they have foosball tables, they have video game consoles. It's really nice that it's encouraged to have people just kind of take a breather and fellowship, if you will, with their colleagues and build relationships with their colleagues in a way that is outside of the typical accepted, you know, work meeting. When it comes to us thinking about how do we design and how do we manage spaces around that? It really takes a culture shift for many different departments in the organization, including technology.

Now you didn't mention IT combining with those other groups, which many times they're separate. And I'm curious as to how that would work out. But, you know, those are my initial thoughts. FM and Corporate Real Estate Management have worked with IT for a while. And of course, we've also worked with HR, but I think the role of HR is also changing.

HR needs to be more curators of the office. They need to make sure that they are involved in the whole cultural thing. And we've renamed our HR department in ISS to People and Culture, because that what's it all about, it's not only about the resources and making sure we got the right resources at the right given point in time. That's of course also part of what we do. But how do you drive that culture in the organization and how can you design the workplace to drive a specific culture?

Now it's not all about, you know, there was a great article out a couple of months ago about, you know, how steep should our slide be into the canteen? Because everybody wants to be like Google. And I don't think anybody should be like Google because that's Google and that's what they do. And they do that very, very well. And it depends a little bit what industry you're in and what kind of target group that you are designing your workplace for.

Is it only millennials and the Generation Z that are coming into the market? Then maybe there should be a slide or foosball table or a skateboard ramp outside or something like that. But many of the other organizations that we're working with, that's just not relevant and you need to make sure that you design, develop your workplace to fit the culture that you have and the culture that you aspire to have in the organization. Because I would actually argue that the workplace is probably one of the biggest culture enablers together with leadership, of course, that you can work with in an organization.

There's a lot of organizations talking about we need to break down the silos between the various departments. Want to start with doing that, then start by breaking down the physical silos, the department silos. If you hide people away in constructed silos in the workplace, and it's going to be very difficult to break that those organizational silos as well. So moving into open plan spaces and moving into people where they can accidentally bump into each other, have water cooler talks and coffee machine talks and an open plan meeting spaces, whether you could just have that ad hoc meeting that you want to have, that's only 10 minutes, just catching up on a few items.

That's how you want to work on some of the design elements in your office. I think any big fortune 500 companies are working with that at the moment. See that also transcend into the SMEs as we move along for this. And of course, a lot of the creative Silicon Valley type of organizations, Google, of course, Big One, Apple, Facebook, some of these types of organizations are leading the way in terms of this type of workplace design and organizational engagement. That is really important part.

And it's going to be a very important part of the FM work to move forward that we as facility managers need to know this stuff. Not only do we need to know it, we need to know how you can enable it, facilitate the process around that, both from a construction point of view and a design point of view, but definitely also from a workplace experience point of view, as you move along, as you work on activating these types of workplaces on a day to day level.

So interesting. I love this stuff. So I did want to ask you, you're partnered with IBM to investigate innovative ways to use tech to improve delivery on a day to day basis. So could you tell us a little bit about some of the solutions that you're investigating right now? Absolutely.

In terms of the workplace experience, we made an acquisition and bought a smaller Nordic based design and space management company called Signal that we're moving into that whole workplace experience and workplace design type of agenda. And then we did something similar on the technology side, because we do believe workplace experience is going to be a very big component of our future and of the future of the industry. And another big part of our future and also the future of the industry, we believe is of course technology.

So last summer we signed a big partnership agreement, a strategic partnership agreement with IBM. That partnership agreement is really focused on three aspects. One is changing the IWMS system that we were having before into a IBM Tririga platform that we're working with, which is we believe a more comprehensive and more open platform. So it allows us to also connect with other technologies and other aspects of our business and use data in a different way. Do you mind, Peter, really quick, just explaining what an IWMS system is?

No, sorry. Integrated workplace management system. So it sort of combines some of these things we are talking about. Of course, the computer aided facility management processes, but also the whole workplace integration around how you actually manage your facilities, the activities that are going on at moves and changes, all that stuff, wiring, energy management, and all this stuff that's combined in one big system. Then the next area that we've looked into is what we call at ISS integration at ISS.

That's actually a workforce optimization systems. IBM, they use a platform called Cplex. Workforce optimization is to make sure that you're using your workforce in the most optimal way, both in terms of timing of tasks, capabilities, how long it takes to do a task, and then also logistics. So you don't send people from the 10th floor down to the basement to pick something up or do a task that they're only qualified to do, but you work with the cross training and multitasking of employees in order to make sure that they can carry out the task in the most optimal way, using algorithms and stuff like that to optimize the workforce according to that.

So if you sort of pool all your facility management resources in one big pool, and you add to every element you have in your workplace, a table, a chair, toilet, a boiler, an HVAC system, whatever it is, and you put sort of the work plan around that asset, and then the capabilities needed to maintain and service that asset, then you can actually calculate an optimal way of using your workforce. There's a big, big potential in that. And then of course, combining that with the whole service mentality, allowing people to provide a great, extraordinary service experience when they interact with the end user and the guests of the house or the building that you're in.

So that's number two technology that we are looking into. And then number three technology is of course, Watson IoT or sensor technology, the whole cognitive part around machine learning, using sensors to service, smart building type of things around what is the usage of the building, how people, you can do heat maps so you can plan your cleaning accordingly. You can put sensors on the HVAC system so you don't send technicians out to maintain a system that doesn't need maintenance, but you send people out to maintain it or services at the moment it needs services and use that cognitive element to show you, you do it before it breaks down or before the filter clocks off or whatever it is, you know, to we're filling up our workplace now with sensor technology and all sorts of sensors, smart sensors in order to really drive that level of efficiencies into the workplace and optimize the whole

workplace experience also using technology. And that opened up some entirely new avenues of both in terms of savings and optimizations that we can do for our customers, but it also opened up new avenues in terms of creating and predicting behavior that we can go in, then prepare for that before it actually happens. That is just something that offers a huge, huge potential. And that's going to drive efficiencies down double digit numbers at the moment that we're looking into that. Of course up to, you know, the customer together with their service provider to decide how we want to use these efficiencies, do we just want to take the money and run or do we want to use those efficiencies that we can drive through some of these using the technology in different way to then work on increasing that workplace experience that we're talking about, because of course that

doesn't come for free. And for that, we're using what we call service design thinking, customer journeys, that type of thing that we go in and map. What are the critical aspects in the life of an employee in this organization? You know, from when you come into the house or come into the building, even from before coming into the building, finding a parking spot and entering the building, moving through the building, finding a free desk, sitting at the desk, getting, you know, coffee or soda or whatever, going to lunch, going to meetings, picking up packages and picking up things that are relevant for you and your work, having guests visiting and that type of thing.

Each of those touch points, you can then optimize using technology and then provide an extraordinary experience. A very short, brief example. One of the things we're seeing a lot is people coming in, guests coming in visiting, and they have to register at the reception. Is there any way you can use technology to make that a more seamless, effective experience? Of course there is.

Why do you actually register at the reception desk? You can do that before. You can do that when you send out the invitation in the first place. So when people come in, report into the reception and say, you know, I have a meeting at my 1030, can you get whoever I'm meeting? That becomes more of a service experience that you can offer people a cup of coffee or soda or something like that when they're waiting.

You can send out a picture of guest has arrived and that can also be completely made electronically that your guest has arrived and you can come and pick him or her up in the reception. And you send that together with a picture of a person. So if you haven't met them before, you avoid that awkward moment where you're going to go down in a, in a reception area full of guests and you can go straight to the person that you're meeting with. So some of these things in order to make life easier and make life more efficient, avoid awkward moments and avoid these pain points of queuing up, of filling in forms that you already have filled in or that you could fill in just on a simple email or something like that.

Those are things that we're looking at now and something that will drive the efficiency and the experience of the workplace to completely different levels. That is very exciting. And that adds that level of workplace experience, right? And it makes people again, they feel more fulfilled in their work, their built environment again, right? It gives people a sense of concierge, right?

They feel like they're getting top-notch service and things are seamless at that point and technology can certainly enhance that. One of the things we are doing just as another example is part of what we also do is provide food services in cafes and restaurants and stuff like that. And if we know how many people are in the building at, for example, 10 o'clock, our chefs in the canteen get that information and using cognitive and intelligent learning, machine learning, then we know exactly how many meals we're going to do for that day, because then we'll know based on the experience and the learning capability, we'll know that there's going to be X amount of people down eating lunch today, and then we can make the food to the right amount of people.

So we avoid all the food waste, but we can also then incentivize, especially where I come from in Denmark, we have a tendency always going to lunch at 12 o'clock and everybody goes to lunch at that hour. So people are queuing up in the canteen. If you're paying for the lunch, then you can maybe incentivize people just to do it a little cheaper at 11 o'clock or 1130 or at one o'clock. You can also just put up a smart camera and just let people know that if you go down to the canteen now, there's going to be a five minute queuing.

If you go down in 20 minutes, you're just going to go straight to the buffet or whatever it is and get your lunch. And these are some of the ways that you can begin to work with these workplace experiences that just makes it much more comfortable, much more seamless and much more effective because nobody wants to spend their entire lunch break of standing in line, you know, and just waiting for your turn to get something to eat. Right. And then you become stressed. You rush up and it's sort of ruining that moment where you're actually supposed to have a break.

You're supposed to have fun. You're supposed to be re-energized. That's the purpose of the lunch break. Right. So what we can do as a service provider to break that up and make that a more pleasant and seamless experience.

That's what we can use this technology and these types of experiences for. The thing I like about this most, the company that are pulling this data, they can again review maybe new construction or renovation and take this data and be more informed for the design. Yeah. I think has a plethora of opportunities to utilize data. And I guess that's why lots of people are moving towards obviously sensor technology.

But you're right. I mean, we are doing that with the company that we acquired and saying, you can do the mapping on your meeting rooms and say every company that we're working with these days just have a shortage of meeting rooms. It seems like we're just spending all our time at work and meetings more or less. So and you can go in and take all the data you can analyze and say, well, for some reason, they're not using the meeting room down in the basement in the corner.

It's we take that meeting room and turn that into something else because it seems to be in a location where people really don't want to use it. So maybe we can use that space for something that is better. And maybe we can take other space in the building and then turn that into meeting space. So you're absolutely right for the construction and the redesign and continuous optimization of the built environment. This level of insight and data provides huge opportunities to continuously work with the facilities and the environment and adapt it to the changing need of the organization on the go.

I mean, you're continuously improving on connecting with people within the workplace and understanding how technology can also help with that. I want to understand, like specifically service management. I mean, I feel like I've heard this term affiliated with ISS quite a few times. And I want to understand what that means in a very broad sense. Our base is service.

I started in 1901 in Copenhagen as a security company. We also defined that as a service and then we sort of moved up. We believe we have 116 years of experience within service and some of the new aspects of service and how you manage service and how, especially, of course, how you manage the people providing the service, frontliners, the supervisors that are making it all happen on a day-to-day level. I mean, it's not rocket science. On the other hand, it is something that we take enormous pride in and have a huge respect for because I think we have a tendency in construction and corporate real estate and facilities management to always focus on the managerial role.

And there's no doubt that the managerial role is enormously important, but the people carrying out the work, the people making it happen on a day-to-day level, how we get these folks involved, how we make them engaged in what we do, how we create that DNA around being proud to serve, that's sort of the core of the whole service management thinking. And to be honest, I mean, some people has it and some people doesn't have it. Some people can be educated to get it and some people just can't.

We'll be a good service person. That's something we need to acknowledge and something we're working a lot with in our recruitment and onboarding processes that we identify them relatively quickly. So we don't move those in. So we have people that are sort of proud to serve. That is one of the foundations that we're working on.

One of the key elements, the recruitment hiring process, onboarding process, and then training and then continuous training and development, those are also key aspects of any good service setup. Last year we were fortunate enough to do some work with Disney and especially the Disney Institute on service design and service design thinking, Disney call it architect services. So I alluded to before that the whole customer journey and the whole experience driving that level of service experiences is basically take these types of touch points that you have during a working day and you look at each of these touch points.

For example, the reception services or canteen service or catering services or whatever it is during a working day, you know, going to meetings is also a touch point and you can say, how can we take that touch point and then optimize it from a service point of view? When you go into a meeting, you don't want to spend the first seven or eight minutes on figuring out how the AV equipment works and getting frustrated that depends on the whiteboard always seems to run out of ink and all of this stuff.

And if you have a good service provider, these things are checked on a regular basis every day, maybe even several times a day when they go in and create the room. So you get that great service experience that thinks just to work. You shouldn't worry about how to connect the computer, how to make sure that the TV or the whiteboard or whatever is working and it's functioning. And you don't, you shouldn't need to erase on the whiteboard what the people who've been in the meeting room before you had done.

So we need to sort of understand each of these touch points individually and then work backwards and say, okay, what kind of service experience would you like to have in this touch points? And what do we need to do as a service provider to create that service experience? And then once we understand that, then what kind of capabilities do our people need to have in order to create that experience? So it becomes that optimal touch point for you and it's just seamless. And then there's this thing about service that it always has to improve because all of a sudden going in, having an effective meeting where everything just works.

Now, because it doesn't work, it becomes a level of frustration. But once it works, you don't think about it. You don't walk into a room and say, oh, how wonderfully clean this room is. You expect it to be clean, right? So there's something also about services that has that innate sort of improvement all the time, that it just continues to change.

And your expectations around those touch points, these service moments that you have continues to change all the time. That once it works, once there's no dirt on the floor, the table are clean and stuff like that, that's your new baseline. That's what you expect as we move forward. So your service provider, whoever that may be, also need to change according to these changes in perception and expectations that you have and make sure you can still provide that level of experience, still in the same touch points, but at a new sort of expectation level.

And I think that's also one of the core foundations of providing a great service experience, that it changes and you need to change accordingly. And you need to have your frontliners to provide that because very often also the services are a very personal matter. We always believe in our organization once that the service person, the person providing whatever service that you're receiving, once that that person gets a face and a name, then it becomes more of an interpersonal thing between you. For example, here in my office, Theresa comes and cleans our office.

In Denmark, we have what we call daylight cleaning or visible cleaning. All the cleaners that will work through during the day, they wouldn't clean our the near areas, you know, under my table and stuff like that, but they'll clean all the common space and everything. So they're very big integral part of our daily lives. And I know Theresa, I know her husband, I know her children, I know, you know, her husband is a big football fan and supports the same team as I do. And, you know, we can have a chat about that.

I would never ever in a million years do a complaint for Theresa, the work she's done. I would always tell her that, you know, you need to reach higher or you forgot this the other day or whatever it is. She does a great work, so I don't need to complain, but that's also part of that service experience. You need to make services personal because once you make it personal, the whole experience changes and it becomes more a personal thing between Theresa and me, what she does and how she does it.

And not just that invisible person working through the night that cleans your office or maintains the HVAC system or do the energy management or whatever it is. So as a service provider, making this visible and making it more tangible is also a very big part of what you need to do in order to manage expectations and work with the perception of what's going on, what's happening behind the scenes. I love this aspect of what you're talking about because it is, like you said, interpersonal and it just, it really elevates your experience.

My next question for you is more around mindset and culture as you work with your clients. How do you encourage your clients to adopt that level of thinking when it comes to orchestrate the service providers throughout their space? We do encourage to make it as visible as possible. We have to understand a lot of facility management services. It's a lot of hard work and it's a lot of work that sort of happened behind the scenes.

If we can help together with our customers, make it more visible, change the perception of what we're doing. I mean, we could do exactly the same level as an example, take cleaning again, which is always very nice to talk about because everybody has an opinion about that. We could provide exactly the same standard of cleaning, same quality level of cleaning. But if you see the person doing it or you don't see the person doing it, it makes a world of difference. Now the quality is exactly the same, but you believe that the place has been clean.

If you see a person do it, if you don't see anybody do it, you always doubt it, whether it's clean enough and stuff like that. But when you see a person doing it, you don't doubt that at all. You believe, okay, it's been done. I saw it, you know, it's fine. So it's very, very important that you visualize services that are happening, that you open the kitchen, you can see the chef preparing the food, you see the maintenance people walking around.

It depends a little bit, of course, on the projects that they also are visible during the day that you can see that something happening behind the scenes. And that changes the perception of the services that you receive. So we always encourage our customers to make as much of it as visible as possible without, of course, interfering people's work. It's not like you have to sort of get up and leave your desk because somebody's working with a power drill next to you and you can't concentrate. That's not the purpose.

So it has to be, of course, a high level of service and a high level of understanding of current situation. But when you work with the visibility of the services and the visibility of your people, the perception of the services changes quite dramatically. Then we also encourage our customers to celebrate the unsung heroes of the organization, make sure they are invited. Christmas gatherings, parties, these types of things. And we also work a lot with what we call experience management.

One of the latest developments we have done is that we actually now hire and offer what we call experience managers as part of the workplace experience. So you have dedicated people working with that whole experience management, celebrating people's birthdays, celebrating events, having a food truck come in every now and then, doing a little bit of these things that just makes the workplace come to life. And that experience we talked about come to life in a different way. I think those are some really important aspects of how you can actually work with this stuff.

Right. And I guess my other question to kind of piggyback on that, are there potential clients coming to you guys saying that service management piece, we want that and it's very different and we don't know exactly what to do. Like what are the best things to start with? Yeah. And we always welcome that because I think that's actually the right way to start to say, you know, how can you do this?

Of course, you know, we'll love to do it. That's what we do. But I think, you know, there's some strong learnings in this way of working. And I would encourage any customer to say whatever type of partner or supplier you have today, see if you can bring that level out because, you know, it does make a world of difference. That whole, it's almost like this, what was it called?

The film with these large blue people on this planet. What was it called? It was really cool. Avatar. Avatar.

Exactly. They had this saying, I see you. That was the way they greeted each other in that film. And we were talking about we should do the same with our people because very often if you put on a service uniform, you become invisible. And it's really weird.

People just don't notice you. And we wish that they would notice us as service providers or whoever provides that service because it's human nature, you know, everybody want to be recognized, everybody wants to be seen and understand, you know, feel part of the environment of the office, what's happening and stuff like that. But for some reason, when you put on a uniform, you just become invisible. And even worse, I mean, sometimes we just hide it away during the night to make it even more invisible. And that's really not a good thing.

It's not good for the perception of the services provided and it's not good for the people providing the services either. So I think getting these people more visible, make them interact, make sure that they are acknowledged and celebrated and part of the team, it makes a world of difference to not only the perception, but also the actual service that are being provided as soon as you being recognized for this stuff, also you also provide a better service and a better interaction with people. So I think that that element is really important.

Do you think there's a huge resistance to it still though? I mean, like you said, people just seem to ignore anyone who has a service uniform. Do you feel like there's one particular thing that could maybe someone wanted to start one thing, what could that be to start breaking those walls down? Just sometimes just say thank you, a simple thank you or a simple recognition, saying good morning and stuff like that. Every year in ISS we have what we call company day, where all leaders take on a uniform and go out and work on the frontline.

First of all, it's a lot of fun and it's a very great, but also humbling experience. And sometimes you got our CEO coming into our customer's office in a cleaning uniform and you know, he goes in and greets people and says hello and stuff like that. And often you get a grunt back or you get nothing. And then you sort of insist a little bit more on it and you begin to say good morning and hello and how you doing, have a great day type of thing.

And then people begin to recognize you. A lot of our staff and a lot of frontliners in general need to do that more often. Also need to have that self-confidence that they don't feel that they're invisible. Then they want to make sure that they are noticed. I think from the customer side, just that little hello or thanks for what you're doing or let me help you type of it's human behavior.

It's very fundamental human aspects of how we treat each other, how we see each other, how people interact with each other. And I guess we all living in a busy world where you don't have that time, but I wish more people will take that time and just recognize whoever it is that comes in and do a little bit of a service for you because you know, the best thing we can give our people is that level of recognition that like avatar, I see you, I recognize you, thank you for doing a great job.

More people would do that on a daily level. We would get far and we will also provide some jobs that are much more rewarding and interesting for our frontliners. I mean, I think our part of the industry is struggling with high churn rates or turnover rates that people will do these types of jobs for a certain period of time, and then they'll move on to other aspects. I think if we had that level of recognition, both for frontliners, but also for more engineering staff and technical staff and stuff like that, then I think it will be able to keep people in the jobs and also begin to create better career paths and salaries and stuff like that.

It will become more of a virtuous circle if you have that level of recognition. It's more fun also for the people providing the services to go to work, not only for the people they're serving. That would be a nice wish for the future. Yeah. Well, I'm really thinking as I'm speaking with you, how this also translates to our contractors and our architects who we may not necessarily like maybe the junior architect who is in the office that we don't see on a day-to-day basis, who's still providing a service.

Obviously our laborer is on site. It's again, seeing and recognizing the skill that they're there providing to you and acknowledging that getting to know them, being human is really a simple thing to do and really enhance the experience of the people who are engaging. You know, it's a simple thing to appreciate someone. And I think that's something that just having talked a lot about lean construction on the podcast, something to highlight is always just respect to the people that you're working with. And it takes just really small efforts often.

Yeah. And I really appreciate that feedback from you. And I think that's what sets companies apart when they really do do things just a little bit differently. So that's awesome. I know you mentioned earlier about the sixth book that's coming out.

Did you want to briefly tell us about 2020 Vision? 2020 Vision was really a series of books that we agreed to do back in, I think it was late 2010, we launched our first book in 2011. And it's rare that you as a marketing person actually get to do what you plan to do, especially if you're planning for a five, six year horizon. We sort of stuck to that. And we developed our fifth book that we thought was the last book last year.

It was actually called the Future of Service Management, where we describe some of these aspects that we just talked about. But then the demand was so high and also thought that everything was about, you know, looking into the crystal ball and trying to sort of predict or come up with avenues about future developments of our industry. The book from 2011, we're getting closer and closer to 2020. Maybe we should do a sort of a recap where we looked at some of the things we did that we were wrong and we're also we were right.

So and that's the one that coming out now in December. We call it the Capstone book, but it's sort of the last piece of the puzzle or the last stone in the building that we are setting on this. And it sort of looked back from when we started in 2011 and go in and say, okay, what actually happened in the FM industry? What are some of the scenarios that we were planning for the future? What actually materialized and what kind of avenue did we take in some of these scenarios that we predicted?

And then also looking into the whole in 13, we wrote about new ways of working and the workplace of the future. And that's four years ago. What has then happened in those four years? And we can just see that trend that we were describing at that time really have taken off and we are very happy with that. But we can also see there are some new aspects to that dialogue that we've sort of gone into, especially as you mentioned, Brittany, around health and well-being in the workplace, which seems to be a big item at the moment.

And we did a survey together with Cornet Global on health and well-being where we asked some of their members about where is this progressing? What are some of the focal points in terms of health and well-being that we need to be mindful of as we are developing our concepts for the future? Those will be aspects of the new white book. I do want to give you the opportunity to give us some resources. Where can we find the book?

Where can we find out more about what you're doing at ISS and at IFPLAN? Yeah, absolutely. One place to look is we have a blog, two or three posts a week on our blog. It's called servicefutures.com. Talks a lot about services and service development and service management, but it also talks a lot about workplace and workplace experiences, all what we have talked about here, actually.

There's the IFMA website. That's always a good to go in as a reference point. There's a lot of good stuff there. And then all our white books are also available at betterworkplaces.issworld.com. And here you can also find articles, insights, references to other aspects of that whole workplace dialogue that we are part of and we are trying to sort of provide some research around.

There are many areas where you can find insights to some of these aspects. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing that. All of those resources in the show notes for everyone to have access to. With that, I would like to just thank you, Peter.

This has been a pleasure talking with you and I'm sure this is valuable to the audience. Excellent. No, thank you, Brittany. Thanks for the invitation. It's been a pleasure for my part as well.

I always enjoy this and it's great to be invited to talk to something about some topics you really feel passionate about. So thank you so much for the invitation. Thanks for listening to this great interview with Peter. If you liked it and learned something valuable, please share this episode with your friends and colleagues. You can also let me know if you enjoyed our discussion by connecting with me on Twitter at Brittany underscore CT or find me on LinkedIn, or you can just email me at Brittany at Constructor.com.

That's B-R-I-T-T-A-N-I-E at ConstructRR.com. Next episode, I will be doing a 2017 recap. We have covered some amazing topics and I'd like to highlight a few of them. So if you've missed it, you can see how they're all interrelated. Also, I'd love to talk with you about some of our goals for next year and what you can be looking forward to hearing from Constructor, some of which will be some local events.

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