Voice of the Occupier - Allison English & Steve Wright

[Music] Welcome to Voice of the Occupyre from Cornet, UK. We explore what it really takes to create spaces that work for people and organizations through candid conversations with the leaders, thinkers, and doers behind the decisions. I'm your host, Alesson English, let's dive in. [Music] Well, I'm delighted to be here today with Steve Wright, who's the Global Director of Workplace Design at GSK, as well as the Cornet UK Chapter President for 2026. Steve, it's pleasure to have you. Welcome. Thank you very much indeed for inviting me, Alesson. Absolutely. We're going to talk today about some of your experience in GSK, as well as kind of your double hat role as the Cornet UK President. And if it's all right with you, let's start there. Can you tell me a bit about your main areas of focus during your term as President this year? It's a great question. I think, yes, the issues for me are really framed by the fact that I'm also a Cornet member, as well as being the President. And I think that gives you a bit of an insight into asking yourself the question, what would I want from my own membership and the benefits that I get from being a member of this great organization? It's those questions that allow us to bring back to our audience and our members, the hot topics, the things that really matter to them, the things that they are dealing with in their day-to-day work lives, or see them wear trends are going, and to reflect that voice, to see what it is they want back for their membership funds, as I do. So, to that introspection, and it's about respect, I think, and hopefully, if I can deliver on those things for our membership, it'll be a good year. It sounds like worthy goals to strive for. So, that's really great. You've been a member as both a supplier and an occupier in your current capacity at GSK. Can you share a little bit about what that transition was like from being on the supply side to the occupier role? That's another great question. Yes, having spent most of my professional career on the service side of the business, and doing the things that I now purchase and procure for the organisation, gives a very good insight into the way that everything works dynamically. My own journey has always been one of trying to reflect solutions that work for clients, and beyond the aesthetic, I think the things need to work, and if they work, and they work beautifully, then you have a double win. So, not just focusing on the colour of a ceiling or the carpet, but much more down to, how do we actually enable and equip people these days? I, as well as being the designer and architect, have been working in workplace strategy, and workplace strategy really allows you to take apart the organisations that you're providing those services for, and to see how we might put them back together again. That involves asking an awful lot of pointed questions. The questions that I would normally be asking of a client, I am now giving the answers to as a client for the organisations that support us, but understanding the way that the industry works, and what both parties are in that relationship for, I think, gives you an additional focus on the level of outcome that you're actually looking for. And it makes the journey quite clear. I am actually trying to deal with XYZ sort of problems issues, questions, future proofing, thinking, how do I iterate into a brief? What would I want back as a brief if I was back on the other side of the fence, and how would I then respond to the client to answer that? So, I think that what it's done is giving me a position of clarity, and the phrase 'pocha turned gamekeeper' has been used many times. And I'm not quite sure it is exactly that, but I think it's about equity in a relationship. It's a position of trust. How would I have given that trust? How would I have received that trust? And how do I perpetuate that now in the role that I'm doing? Oh, that's brilliant. It sounds like with experience on both sides, you come to the table more prepared than most probably, to ask tough questions, but also be able to answer them. And I think maybe sometimes it'll be a alternative thinking. One of my key journeys into the world of workplace was really asking the question, what does it like to work for the brand? What does it like to be an employee of an organisation that portrays particular values out to its customer base? What's my experience as a person working within that? That takes things beyond, I think, the aesthetic and beyond the physical surroundings, because you start to get into some behaviours and those things which actually underpin all of the human nature that we need to bring, how do we make people comfortable? So maybe that alternative thinking does give me a slightly different perspective on it, but certainly a very interesting journey. It sounds like it. You mentioned earlier about things working beautifully in the space. How do you try and identify that? How do you quantify that? What exactly does that mean for you? If a space works beautifully instead of just being aesthetically beautiful? I think that that's. Some people have heard me say this before, but I do use a bit of a phrase, but design without a purpose is art. I think that's almost. They're stripping it back way too far. That's been a bit unkind to designers and architects. But we have to understand why we're designing certain things. What are we trying to do? How are we trying to enable? I do use that term 'enable' as well. It's the people who work for an organisation who needs to be getting on with their day job with the minimum fast, the minimum problems that they can actually have. So the functionality of what it is we deliver has to be there in the first instance. It also goes beyond functionality. It goes now into inclusion. We're looking at a world where we now recognise that there are many different neuro types who work for any organisation, but not everyone receives an environment in exactly the same way. We should be conscious and cognizant of the fact that we need to provide solutions that do actually include everyone. That could be down to coming back to the question of beauty. Red might look great on a wall, but if you put it in a medium room it can actually be a trigger colour. It's that kind of thinking, and also recognising that maybe somebody with a neurodiverse perspective on life does want to sit with their back to the wall. How many times do we actually pause and just to think how comfortable that person be if they're sitting in a low-plan area. So it widens that thinking out. If you then say that, okay, we've got the functional elements thought through here and the constituent parts of how we put a workplace environment together. It's not to say that the materials and finishes are of the near, because I think they're an intrinsic, interwoven part of how we do all of that. But they should be seamless and they should be very well thought through in terms of how that gives us a continuous effect across any workspace, enabling environment to make sure that it actually does deliver. With some style and panache. And so, yes, the marriage between the beauty and the functionality, I think, are intrinsic. So it kind of needs to have the aesthetic, the mark of the brand, not necessarily in a logo form, but showcasing that in the environment, as well as catering to an inclusive environment. It's marrying those two things. And this is where I think branding is probably. I think we understand branding now, probably a lot more than we did at the, maybe in the '90s. Who's we when you say we? What do you mean? Designers. And design, design profession. But also, I think, brand is because people are marketers who bring you forward and awful lot of things. You had to put a stamp on everything. You know, there was always an Apple logo on something, or there was a so and so logo on something. But we don't work in a letterhead. We're working a building. Or we work at home, right? So how relevant is the 2D? If you start to strip that back, when you start to look at what the brand values are inside an organization, there is much more the softer things that are harder to determine. And sometimes a little bit more intangible in the way that you actually have to try and get a grip with them. But do I need to be reminded where I work with having a massive logo 10 foot hard and the wall behind me? Maybe not. Because I pretty much sure I do know who I work for and where it is. Yeah, that makes sense. But as the person then responsible for design globally for GSK, how do you wrap all of that together? And how do you manage that across a global portfolio? In GSK, we're very fortunate to, I think, have the foresight to think about things from a slightly different perspective. Working for a pharmaceutical organization. Nothing is released to the market unless it has been through rigorous testing, proof empirical data and things that sit behind that to make sure that what we're doing is safe. And it will also have an effect on people's lives. But the same level of thought we try to bring to some of the research that we do. So for us, almost having the human lab where you can look at the impacts of the kind of solutions that we're pointing for people, whether that's a single screen, a curved monitor, the ease of plug and play between devices, the human benefits that come from that. Are people actually more focused? Did they have a better decision making? Are they getting better sleep? No, or is the screen keeping them up? Because they've been so active during this. Those things to try and get underneath that skin to understand that is one thing to deliver at scale is another thing. And the cooperation you need between that cooperation and level of understanding and commitment to what the goals are across any professional team is maybe one of the harder things to harness because you do need to be people to be on that page. And to support those overall objectives. I think once we've got to that point, which I know enough a lot of people have seen our HQ in the industry and it's a place that we're very proud of and it's somewhere that we've actually taken all those ideas and brought them together. But the second part of the question you just asked me is what do we do with that at scale? And how does one deal with that? Because we're not fit to now and HQ premises is every week and we're not going to stop the program and go back and revisit that site. But what we can do is bring workplace improvement measures to bear. And that's about taking scalability from the macro solution and making it into something which is deliverable, smaller scale and in different location. And globally, we also do need to be aware and we are cognizant of the fact that we operate across the world with many different cultures and that sometimes those solutions do need to be massaged into the cultural environment in which they're going. So there's a degree of sensitivity that sits around all of that. But I think we think long and hard before we do and we add the research to that and we try and deliver proven benefits from the solutions that are stock benefits from themselves. Fantastic. Do you have an example maybe when you were just talking about some of the scalability and bringing some of the elements maybe from the HQ to something that's more easy to distribute kind of globally again on scale? Is there an example that you could share of how you've done that? If we were to take this away from the design discussion and take it more into an enabling discussion if we look at the meeting solutions. We know everyone's been on this huge journey and we were going to hybrid before COVID and we had enforced hybrid and now we're in a kind of accepted hybrid situation where meetings take place over the airwaves. How do we actually make that seamless and easy as possible for the people who need to use it? How many times have you walked into a meeting room and tried to plug in your laptop and then been asked for a code and you're trying to find a meeting code when you're already under pressure? So one of the solutions that we have here is throughout technology single single cable plug and play enter a room plug in your laptop with a USB C and you're in. It repeats straight onto the screen. We have that level of connectivity now being delivered globally. So that means changing our text solutions but it also does go back to what I said before give you a scalable improvement that you can bring to bear and some other thinking which actually will do what I would want it to do for me as an employee as well. It's to make my life as easy as possible. It's more important what I'm saying in the meeting than it is for me to sit there feeling with a keypad. Yeah, it sets the whole meeting on the wrong tone if you waste the first half of it dealing with tech. So yeah, absolutely that makes sense and I think it's a great initiative. You're a question from earlier how many times have I been stuck in that situation? The answer is too many. I think most of our listeners would probably agree they've had a similar issue. So I guess if they had to one of your offices they shouldn't be experiencing that. You mentioned also within the HQ it was a huge initiative in London. You said many people have seen it. I've been incredibly lucky to have been in that space and seen what you guys have done there. And the objective there was incredibly clear. You wanted to set out to build one of the world's healthiest offices that was as you'd mentioned as a pharmaceutical company. So that worries in really nicely with kind of the principles of health and really helping people. Can you talk a bit about that initiative? The project went well, didn't go well. Learning's kind of can you sum that up for anyone who hasn't been able to see the space? So we set out through those pieces of research that I started to describe earlier on a journey which proceeded our relocation by three years. We were supposed to have a space where we could go and try a lot of those initiatives. And coming back to the things I said about our people are happier, are they healthier? It's all those things which are playing into the human need. And by going through that what we did was allowed ourselves to pick the things that had the most impact for people. And so when we picked up on things like circadian lighting, yes, it does have an impact. Most people don't notice it and most people don't know it's there. Having a sound system which mimics biofilia in background for us but also using a lot of biofilia in the environments. Certainly in this building is very green for something in central London. And knowing an understanding the effect that there has on people, what is that relationship with nature when we're actually inside a box or day long, how do we actually start to break the walls down and take ourselves beyond that space? So it's really around the impact of that. It does come back to certain other things like color palettes, working with color palettes that work with nature, which we have here. Everything is pretty much earth toned or natural in terms of the materials like timber. And there's nothing here which is really harsh because we discovered that the harder you go on some of those things, the more radical you are. That the impact could be visual but not necessarily in a good way in the way that people receive that messaging and. Even if it needs to be comfortable right inside an environment, you need to be comfortable. Temperature wise, everything else. So all of that stuff, even the way down to acoustics. And we consider all of the different areas that we provide for people across a workplace from a quiet zone through to a more noisy zone, which is a semi social space. But allowing people to choice and to find their own way within that. It's almost like we're creating a world of a world of personal choice, I suppose, in the way that people equip themselves when they are in the building. We also do try to be mindful of how that affects people when they are not in the building. So people who are working remotely or in a hybrid fashion, when they're dialing in to understand the environment that their colleagues are in the meeting room. And those things are experiential. If we can deliver on that experience, then I think that is the responsible thing to do for workforce. Brilliant. And when you talked about the way GSK brings drugs to market is lots of research, lots of empirical data, lots of testing. You spoke about having happier people, healthier people, better sleep. How did you try and quantify some of that? How did you measure that in the workplace and then know that there were that what you were doing is having a change on people? That's a great question and very, very valid. The way in which we started out on that was on a workplace science journey. And we were fortunate to have the benefit of space whereby we could create a test zone for people which accommodate 50, 60 people. And with their consent, they could work in that area knowing the elements were going to change. So we would change the lighting. We would change the desk, the chair, the amount of planting that was in that space, the soundscape and some other physical elements, including the technology. So I mentioned briefly the curved monitor. The curved monitor has very, very surprising results for people. But how did we harness that is a really great question. We used a series of apps on there which were all about setup of testing. So after people had been working for half a day, for a day in that space, what we did do and we got them to sign up to do was to contribute to that research by taking those tests. So cognitive behavior, the decision making, the other things that came with it. So they were measured in the morning. They were measured at the end of the day or lunchtime. Alongside some of the other measures that we did and all by volunteers are hastened to add nobody was ever forced to do anything but to use the Fitbit or your own personal device, which would then monitor your sleep quality. And the other physiological elements of what we're going on. So we measured those against what was going on inside people's heads. They come for levels and their performance, the cognitive performance captured by those apps and those programs were run over a period of months. It was not just over a sort of short week and you got forced results. You actually got a bed in the end period for all of those things. So the empirical data we came out with, from came out with at the end of the exercise was actually meaningful. That then informed the elements that we knew we should be building in or would really like to build in this desirable components of what a workplace should be. So we backed ourselves with science in a water science. Imagine that. But it's logical you took the principles of test and learn that I think are often talked about but not maybe not executed certainly not to the degree that you were able to do that. And I think also, Alison, you have to adopt a degree of realism and there is a fail fast mentality too. So if you can see the things maybe not panning out in the way that you hope they may or you're starting to explore a new avenue which is unfamiliar, recognize early and don't necessarily push things to the end degree. If you can see that it's fundamentally flawed at the beginning. So fail fast change course and actually fix that solution and come up with something that does work. If you had one major takeaway from the project with that be it or any advice to someone who might be undertaking something kind of similar. Well, I would say to anyone who's going to be undertaking a similarly significant change or commitment to making that change is to think at the front end spend some time thinking at the front end about what you want the end result to be. And this is then pick your starting point and how you're going to get there. And I think that the way in which I went on the journey with this organisation and the partners that we worked with. It was actually about establishing that really quite early on and creating the buy in for that but remembering with a professional project team you have you're not just looking at the colours on the walls you're looking at. Everything from the furniture to finishes to the program to enabling the the MEP systems and how they're working with the integration of the technology. So it's about setting several courses running at the same time and recognising that there needs to be points of convergence when you come back in together on a regular basis to check where you are with that. Analyze how things are working and we will see then I suppose better cumulative results because you got more than one person working on it. Yeah, superbivized so fail fast. Be realistic and start with the end in mind. Amazing Steve. Well, this is my first time taking over as host of the podcast but one of the things Adam used to do at the end which I really liked and wanted to carry on as a tradition was asking about the future. The future is in the young leaders new people joining the industry or thinking about kind of joining corporate real estate. So Steve with your diverse background, expansive career in this space, what advice do you have for them? What would you suggest that I don't know that a nugget you could leave them with to think about for the future? Never stopped learning. I don't think that's quite a simple message. I think that all of us who have had some time in the industry or a career will maybe remember one or two leaders who gave us not just a foothold but also demonstrated us ways that things can be done. And I know I certainly have that in my background. It's recognizing what you can maybe draw from those people as a mentee with those people acting at more of a mentor and not be afraid to ask those questions. But to equip yourself with the knowledge, I think that for the future at the moment, I think we're going to see a blend between AI and HI human intelligence alongside the artificial intelligence because what artificial intelligence at the moment can do is offer answer an awful lot of questions that doesn't necessarily give you a personality. I think that's one of the other things this is quite important in an industry such as property. So hopefully we'll have some people there looking for some support and some people in positions like mine to be able to offer that support to the younger generation coming through. Yeah, you've been a fantastic guest. I appreciate you answering answering our questions, taking us on the journey with you of your career, your role as the coronet UK president and all the brilliant work you're doing at GSK. So Steve, thank you so much for joining. Thank you very much. Big thanks to everyone for listening. Be on the lookout for our next episode, next month. Take care everyone.