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Liz Benison in conversation with i-FM

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Liz Benison joined ISS UK & Ireland as country manager in March 2021. In this piece, based on a i-FM interview originally published in August 2021, Liz reflects on the challenges and opportunities for services outsourcing and explains how ISS is investing to help customers emerge stronger from the pandemic

The ISS UK and Ireland country manager is effectively CEO of the ISS group’s largest single business. Liz was approached on the strength of her extensive background in transformation and outsourcing, especially technology, which aligns to a key element of ISS strategy to become more technology-enabled.

The right credentials

Trained as a production engineer, Benison moved into process re-engineering and consulting, then moving again into technology outsourcing where she spent 15 years. She subsequently moved on to become MD for Europe at transport group Arriva, a quite different business but still outsourced services with a large public-facing workforce. There’s a lot of similarity, she says now, across the range of services outsourced – bids go in in the same ways, and customer service, contract management and the economics are all similar despite the precise service differences.  

An outsider with inside knowledge

 “To me, the biggest thing with outsourcing is that we promise in the bidding cycle that we will deliver better, faster and leaner…

Living up to the promise is what the refreshed ISS [OneISS] strategy is all about – firstly, fix all those basics so that everything is simpler and stronger, so that we are more robust around the process-driven side, and then enable us to be more innovative and to differentiate on that innovation. A lot of that is technology-enabled, and we are investing a lot going forward in this area. 

 

But it is also about the customer experience. We use the term ‘placemakers’ for our frontline colleagues, the people who bring to life the services on all of our sites across the UK and Ireland, and for the group across the world. All of our customers should have that positive service experience, whether that is a porter in a hospital who is trained and rewarded for providing great patient support, or Adam who has just walked in now to ensure the technology for this meeting is working properly for us.  That’s how we will differentiate, because we will enable those placemakers to be the best that they can be on any day and in any situation.” 

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“All of our customers should have that positive service experience, whether that is a porter in a hospital who is trained and rewarded for providing great patient support, or Adam who has just walked in now to ensure the technology for this meeting is working properly for us. “

Making her mark

 “There is a theme around transformation and innovation that is a sort of golden thread running through all outsourcing,” Benison says. “When service providers make those promises about better, faster, leaner they have to count; they have to be deliverable.

“Once you create that robust base, then you can take some risks with customers. I am a big believer that you innovate with customers that you know well.  To me, the key is picking long-term relationships where we have a trusting partnership and using those as the place to really innovate.  We have some really good examples of that among our contracts and projects that were shortlisted, and in some case won, IWFM awards.”

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“…the key is picking long-term relationships where we have a trusting partnership and using those as the place to really innovate.”

And just to be clear, Benison adds that her advocacy for leaner is not code for cheaper. “The cheaper argument, the race to the bottom, is harmful for everybody,” she declares. 

This argument for doing things better and bringing the benefits of innovation to clients, built on top of the continued evolution of the FM business, doesn’t just apply to the UK & Ireland operation, of course.

Benison explains: “This is one of the things that really attracted me to coming to ISS.  When Jacob [Aarup-Andersen, ISS Group CEO] arrived he looked at the group strategy and concluded it was sound: its focus on customers, services and countries is a solid basis for success.  Wrap those up in great commercials and underpin them with good technology and that, in essence, is the high-level OneISS strategy. 

 

Challenges & opportunities

Change at home is a big challenge in itself, of course; but how does Liz Benison view the biggest challenges in the wider FM marketplace [speaking in mid-august 2021]? 

“The single biggest one,” she says, “is still the pandemic. It’s easy to sit in an office, wherever it is, and think well ‘it’s getting back to normal again’ – but it isn’t. Sitting here in our newly refurbished London Docklands offices, I can see across to the floors of many buildings and they are empty, no people. Our occupancy stats are still very low for all our customers. 

“The difference at this point, as opposed to last year, is that many more people seem to be more cautious, watching and waiting to see what’s going to happen. Certainly, we know from talking with our clients that they are very much feeling their way forward now. That leaves us with the challenge of how do we get people back into the workplace and what changes are with us to stay – if hybrid is the way forward, in what form and what is the best way to manage that?”

 

“I think the longer the pandemic has gone on, the bigger the question mark has become. We’re seeing a desire at our customers to get people back into collaborative workspaces, but we’re also seeing a lot of uncertainly around the how and the when.” 

One positive aspect of this is that ISS has taken the opportunity to refurbish its South Quay offices (more on this here). Benison comments: “We can now use them as a showcase for our latest thinking on IFM services and a curated workplace experience. It’s a real pleasure to be back in the office here: the team is doing an amazing job of making us feel welcome. It feels safe, productive, and fun as well, with good use of space, new technology - it’s a new world of working!”

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Sustainability

“Sustainability is a huge thing in tenders now, and we are seeing a lot of action on customer sites, too. And the expectation on us reflects the scope of the group – ‘ISS, you work on many sites across many industries: bring your experience and best practices to bear for us’. I think we’re doing a good job of that, and at the same time we can learn from our clients. All of this is reflected in our published net zero commitment and  we have also continued to make further moves such as revising our company car policy and our commercial fleet policy, creating a path to move to electric.” 

Scaling up

Clearly, there is a lot going on at ISS, both locally and at group level, as there is across the wider FM industry. 

“… the way that we are bringing the changes into the group is going to allow me to bring the full weight of the ISS organisation to bear on those unique client situations – and that is hugely powerful. We’re starting to see that already in some recent large-scale contract extensions and some new wins.  And I am confident we’ll see much more of this.”

Read the full i-FM interview here.

 

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