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003 The Amazon Workplace with Jamie Murray
87 Plays5 years ago
Guest: Jamie Murray of Amazon Corporate Real Estate EMEA / LinkedIn profile
The Spheres by Amazon in Seattle
Host: Matt Morley, founder of Biofit natural gyms and Biofilico design studio
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to episode three of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we take a deep dive into the role of sustainability, wellness, and community in real estate today. This episode takes us to James Murray, an expert in the Big Tech workplace.
Role and Responsibilities at Amazon
00:00:29
Speaker
Currently at Amazon, as head of workplace experience and portfolio management, covering around 130 buildings spread across 32 countries
00:00:39
Speaker
within the EMEA region.
Key Topics Overview
00:00:42
Speaker
A conversation touches on what he calls the world's biggest work-from-home pilot. By affiliate's role in employee wellbeing, Amazon's preference for multi-use fitness rooms over dedicated gyms, the role of ground and first floor amenities in creating central energy hubs within the workplace, team totems to foster a sense of community, how to think of the workplace as a theater,
00:01:10
Speaker
and the increasing importance of green and healthy building certification systems. Jamie is a dynamic leader and a vocal advocate for the workplace of the future. He's doing his thing for one of the world's most valuable businesses. Natomas, enjoy the show. Jamie, thanks for joining us from what is presumably a temporary work from home office in Luxembourg.
Experience at Amazon
00:01:39
Speaker
Thanks, Matt. Yeah, pleasure to be here. Jamie, perhaps just to set the scene, you could describe a little bit about your professional background and your role at Amazon Webplace today.
00:01:49
Speaker
Yeah, sure, Matt. I've been with Amazon for close to five years now. My role is the head of workplace experience and portfolio management. That effectively means a key focus on employee experience within the physical environment. It also means that I'm responsible for the day-to-day management of our existing portfolio and helping plan for our future portfolio.
00:02:16
Speaker
So I work really closely with our business teams of which there are many under the umbrella of Amazon to really business partner with them, understand their needs, their growth, how they use their space, what's working for them and what's not working. Just in terms of some of the numbers, we've currently got about 130 odd buildings across 32 countries and that's really across the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.
00:02:45
Speaker
A little bit about my background before joining, I kind of started out my career close to 20 years ago now, working for charities in the UK, so specifically around helping them develop management plans, focusing on technology and real estate to help enable that change. And then I worked for a number of years for key service providers like CBRE and JLL.
00:03:12
Speaker
So I've got quite a broad breadth of experience in transaction management, portfolio management, a little bit about FM and really for the last 10 or so years around Workplace.
Impact of COVID-19 on Workplaces
00:03:26
Speaker
We're recording this obviously at an interesting time, perhaps a turbulent time for the Workplace, but it would be, I think, remiss of us not to begin a conversation around this theme
00:03:40
Speaker
with at least a cursory glance at what you see happening around us right now. It's surely there are both opportunity and challenges in what's going on in regards to people and planet and their relationship with the workplace and nobody's doing it better than the big tech guys at the moment. So how are you seeing things? What is going on around you in that world?
00:04:05
Speaker
Yes, a great question. I think, you know, undoubtedly, more has happened really in the last kind of 90 to 100 days, in terms of the world of workplace and office management than has probably happened in the last 15 to 20 years, if not longer, certainly as long as I've been working in the industry.
Effectiveness of Remote Work
00:04:25
Speaker
And I think, you know, from
00:04:28
Speaker
a position where a lot of companies weren't really well prepared for this type of thing. I think what it's shown is that through what is typically an outsourced delivery model, there is a lot of agility in that system and there is a lot of ability to move and flex as needed. I think with the COVID-19 piece that's been super interesting because almost overnight,
00:04:55
Speaker
kind of 95 to 97% of the company have effectively gone into a role and worked from anywhere, you know, it can be home, but it can also be, you know, other locations that the best suits people's needs. And I think that's really, really interesting. It's, you know, effectively, the world's biggest work from home pilot has happened, you know, for the reason of the virus that's out there.
00:05:21
Speaker
And I think what's interesting is measuring, you know, how that's working. So, you know, part of my role is working with all of our business leaders to understand, you know, what's working well for them, what's not working well, and the overarching feeling and data is showing that it's working pretty well.
Future of Office Design
00:05:39
Speaker
There are always exceptions. There are, you know, people that maybe have, you know, physical or personal constraints that it simply doesn't work. I think everyone's in the boat now of
00:05:50
Speaker
of joining those video calls where you see kids running around or dogs barking, whatever it may be. I think that's not a bad thing. I think it adds a layer of humility. It adds personal experience. It takes down a little bit of that veneer of the corporate office environment. That's not a bad thing because that helps people build trust and relationships.
00:06:15
Speaker
It's been a super interesting time to try to get to your question. And I think we're working through how we safely and securely reintegrate people back into the office environment. That's absolutely our primary concern is the health and safety of employees. And I think also what we're seeing is a lot of people are in no rush to come back in to the workplace.
00:06:40
Speaker
just because of a variety of factors. I think the benefit that's happened is a lot of people have kind of hit the pause button and they're looking at how to best either schedule their day or their week to best suit their needs. I think I'm hearing a lot of anecdotal evidence that people are kind of happier and healthier. People are maybe doing those runs that they never got a chance to do at lunchtime.
00:07:04
Speaker
there may be buying better food in the supermarket. So I think that's a really interesting angle. I'm seeing a lot of other
Flexibility in Office Spaces
00:07:11
Speaker
companies looking at how they can quantify that and measure either through Fitbits or Apple Watches, whatever it may be, those steps or those heart rates or those sleep patterns. And I think that's really, really interesting to actually put some data around some of that anecdotal feedback that I'm hearing.
00:07:30
Speaker
Then within a role that effectively is about building one of the world's finest portfolios of commercial office spaces, you want to be the best and the best. How is that impacting then your perspective on building that portfolio? Is it a case of you having to slim down if you look 24 months down the line,
00:07:53
Speaker
Or is it more a case of reusing or repurposing or giving a different focus to the workspace, but keeping the same sizes, the same floor plates, or are you having to slim down over the next two to three years?
00:08:08
Speaker
Yes, a great question. The simple answer is it's way too early to tell. We just don't know. So I think, you know, ask me again in, in six to 12 months, and we'll have a better picture. But, you know, it's something we're looking at. And I think undoubtedly, one thing that needs to happen is, you know, design
00:08:29
Speaker
Office design in particular needs to be people and function led rather than just real estate led. And that applies kind of cross industry applies not just for tech companies, but for all companies really. And I think, you know, if you look at kind of standard office design, you've got some great spaces, but they're few and far between.
00:08:50
Speaker
And then you've got a lot of mediocre average to actually really bad spaces. And that's in terms of the, you know, the layout, the functionality, the furniture, the look and feel, you know, the lack of biophilia, whatever it may be. And I think now, you know, COVID has probably allowed people to reflect on that a lot is, you know, the workplace needs to be
00:09:14
Speaker
a destination that people want to come into. It also needs to be flexible and agile to change because, namely, one company where you've got exactly the same type of employee, it just doesn't
The Office as a Theatre
00:09:29
Speaker
really happen. You've always got business divisions, you've got different teams,
00:09:33
Speaker
At Amazon, there's probably about 150 different businesses, all of whom tend to be quite siloed in their operational structure just by design. Any workspace that we design has to be relevant to those individual teams who grow and move and change and are dynamic.
00:09:56
Speaker
So it needs to be, the design needs to be flexible, living and very much function stroke people led. So I think by putting employees at the heart of design is going to really allow companies to set up their space correctly in the future.
00:10:12
Speaker
But I like the analogy, and I've heard this a few times over the years, that it needs to be like a theatre where you've got the back of house, the stage setting, and that can change regularly, either through intervals, performances, week on week, month on month, whatever it is.
00:10:34
Speaker
and you need to design your spaces to have that agility because the world continues to change and will continue to change. What we know today will change tomorrow and our office design has to reflect that.
00:10:49
Speaker
Is that then purely a case of moving furniture around or is it deeper than that? Does it affect actually the kind of full plates that you might be looking for or is it simply, okay, we're going to change this communal zone into more of a quiet working zone or give it a different purpose? Is it that type of flexibility or do you need something that goes deeper into the more sort of architectural or engineering level of the building?
Smart Buildings and Design
00:11:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's a bit of both, right? I mean, you're bringing up a great topic there around kind of smart buildings, you know, efficient floor plates, how they're structured from, you know, HVAC, you know, infrastructures as well. I think, you know, I'd never heard of the MURV rating up until about two weeks ago, three weeks ago, which is now a very relevant topic, right? Because people are looking at quality of air circulation, they're looking at natural light.
00:11:41
Speaker
And I think again, it really depends. I think it's a bit of both. I think I like the idea of flexible furniture solutions that allow for kind of a little bit of tailoring to individual business needs, but not too much. I think you've got to think about the practicality of large scale organizations and their reporting structures as well. You know, what tends to happen with corporate real estate functions is they either report up through kind of HR
00:12:09
Speaker
or through kind of the cfo type and i think both of those. Kind of lenses have a different focus point and you know hr tends to be more about employees and employee experience and cfo is clearly around numbers and metrics so i think the big companies they need to.
00:12:29
Speaker
work with the constraints that they have and within their reporting structures. And you're always going to have to, because we're talking about large scale here, we're talking about millions and millions of square feet, you have to be able to do these things at scale and with flexibility. So I do think having that element of customization is needed, but just on the right level.
00:12:55
Speaker
And how do you think then in terms of fostering deliberately interactions, fostering increases in interaction or offering opportunities for staff on a large scale to have some sense of shared identity in a community within the workspace, if they're all doing the different things, like what strategies do you use to, if you like, create those opportunities?
Fostering Team Interaction
00:13:20
Speaker
Yes, it's a great question. And it's absolutely something we, you know, we think about we work on a lot, you know, we, we look at it really from the kind of employee journey. So that really starts with everything from, you know, transportation, be it on a bike or on a bus or, you know, still around kind of car sharing, you know, still, there are some areas in some
00:13:44
Speaker
geographies that still use the car more than others. So we start with the employee journey, and then it's really what does that flow look like through a building? And what is that experience when you come in through the front door up through the elevators? You know, you want a effectively what we refer to as a kind of center of energy. And that's somewhere that just feels great, smells great, looks great, that people come into be it an employee who's in that building every day.
00:14:12
Speaker
or a visitor that comes in, or even a candidate who comes in for an interview and who may be choosing between, you know, other big tech firms or other companies. And it's almost like, you know, like I said, a center of energy, which is a great place to be. And then from there, you kind of branch out into more of your working environments, more of your collaboration spaces, more of your, you know, focused areas.
00:14:39
Speaker
on the upper floors of a building. So it tends to be kind of ground on the first floor where you've got a visual impact of that center of energy that really points towards collaboration. It's that community space that we can often use for local artists to showcase their work or even internal business teams to showcase new products or services. And then on the upper floors, to your question about how we foster team identity, which is a really, really important factor,
00:15:09
Speaker
We work with kind of team neighborhoods, effectively. So teams will be given a neighborhood and they're absolutely expected to kind of customize that. We use team totems as well, where people can put up anything from dog pictures to baby pictures of themselves to their products and services. So it's really wide and varied, but it allows people that
00:15:34
Speaker
that, you know, you need to have a central focus point, you need to have points of reference, you need to know kind of where you belong. So we've got kind of town hall type spaces, like I mentioned in the centre of energy. And then we've got, you know, team neighbourhoods on the individual working floors. And that works really well. So those individual team totems then, for example, that would be if you like filling the gap where a private allocated desk would previously have been, right? There are no allocated desks.
00:16:04
Speaker
Well, there are, there are, there's a mixture, because again, it's not a one size fits all. But in general, we have, you know, a balance of kind of, you know, agile spaces, where, you know, they're, they're unassigned, and then we have fixed which are assigned. And that's because, you know, the population of employees at all big tech companies is
00:16:27
Speaker
you know, a balance of kind of knowledge workers. So, you know, people that have a mixed variety of a day with meetings and calls and so on. And then those that are much more kind of resident, so they tend to be 80% or more at their individual workplace.
00:16:44
Speaker
and they tend to have technology constraints. Developers is a good example, software developers who are writing code, who have specific technical requirements. There are also individuals that have personal constraints, be it vision impairments or any other type of disability. You touched on the idea of certain amenities being
00:17:09
Speaker
If you like, essentials, for example, I'm guessing bike facilities or a changing room.
Essential Facilities in Offices
00:17:16
Speaker
Where are things going with that? What would you now classify as pretty much essential pieces of that puzzle? And what do you think are perhaps sort of the nice-to-haves today that might yet become essential elements going forward over the next five years? I mean, from the gym to a recharge room or a mother's lactation room and things like that.
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah, so we've got, you know, we've got kind of our design principles and guidelines that we use for
00:17:44
Speaker
for all of our new spaces. That was a big piece of work we did in 2016-2017. It's a live document, I'd say, so it's continually changing based on our internal customers' needs. To your first point, what's a must-have? We've got things that we absolutely have
00:18:08
Speaker
in most of our buildings, which are, you know, things like mother's rooms, where, you know, mothers can come in, like you said, to, to express breast milk, or even if they come in with, you know, with their babies, and to change them, we've got bike, bike facilities, showers, we've got multi
00:18:29
Speaker
multi-faith rooms as well, where people can go meditate or pray. So those are some of the areas that we have outside of the typical kind of working spaces, social connect type environments.
00:18:46
Speaker
I think you touched on a good one with Jim and I know that the great work that you've done with the likes of the Karolinska Institute and Singita as well. I really enjoyed listening to both of those podcasts. But Jims are an interesting one because some people love Jims and some people don't love Jims. And so the way we look at things is it needs to be to the benefit of everyone.
00:19:12
Speaker
And so a gym, it can be pretty divisive. Some people just don't enjoy it or don't want to go to it. So what we try to do is, again, to that point of flexibility, which is creating spaces that can be curated or changed to be used for different purposes. So they tend to be kind of multi-purpose type rooms.
00:19:35
Speaker
that on a Monday could be a meditation class, on a Tuesday it could be a pottery class, on a Wednesday it could be a boxing martial arts class, all of which are kind of curated by external parties, but allow that range of involvement by anyone and everyone. And I think that's an important differentiation. So you've got, rather than having a space that would typically be used as a gym,
00:20:04
Speaker
It can be used for a high intensity training or a CrossFit type workout with removable items, just as it can be used for a photography lesson.
00:20:17
Speaker
You mentioned the word biophilia a little earlier on as well.
Biophilia and Employee Wellness
00:20:21
Speaker
And it seems like really nobody's doubling down on that more so than the big tech firms. It's just fascinating to see what's happening and how far the theme can be pushed. From the inside looking out, how do you see the role of nature and biophilia within the workplace? Is it about the brand and the brand perception? Is it about employee wellness primarily? How do you see that?
00:20:45
Speaker
It's absolutely about employee experience. And part of that is wellness. So I know that you've seen the spheres in Seattle. I mean, that is a hugely impressive building I was lucky enough to be involved in.
00:21:02
Speaker
in some of the early stages of that project and really see it from design through to construction through to full operation now. And it's a massively impressive structure with a huge amount of floors and fauna's in there, but also with a really considered range of settings that can be used for individual focus work, collaboration, team meetings,
00:21:28
Speaker
And so I think, you know, when you when you see the the CFO of the company sitting in those in those buildings holding regular one to one meetings, you know, you think, wow, you know, this is this is absolutely incredible. And I think, you know, the experience that people get, and the feedback that the companies get on on using that type of space for what would normally be considered just a standard office environment, you know, is really
00:21:56
Speaker
Revelation for a lot of people and it's very much improving the overall experience of the workplace and physical environment now wellness is absolutely part of that i think when you look at it outside of the headquarters of amazon in seattle and you look at the building.
00:22:16
Speaker
in Munich or London, you also need to be practical about how that biophilia is used, how it's procured, how it's maintained as well by facility management teams.
00:22:32
Speaker
And so there is absolutely a balance of kind of design and, you know, an actual pure benefit from it. But it's really well received. It's really well liked. People have been crying out for it for years. And I think, you know, even if you've got maybe some synthetic or artificial plants in certain areas that are maybe hard to maintain. So I'm thinking large atrium is where you maybe have
00:23:01
Speaker
You know behind reception desks that typically you can't go clean or water that often That's okay because people still get a benefit from it visually there may be no
00:23:11
Speaker
There may be no other benefits from an air quality perspective from those, but visually, that's also a big element around wellness, that people feel that their workplace is designed well, is thoughtful, is considerate, and that there's a balance between real and fake plants, I would say.
00:23:36
Speaker
Just one final question then, you obviously have your own internal guidelines and really with the spheres, I think you sort of rewrote the rule book there.
Importance of Certifications
00:23:46
Speaker
I mean, it's almost as if the green building certifications or healthy building certifications, I'm not sure they could even keep up with that. You really took a giant leap forward. How do you see, is there a role? How do you see the role of certifications like LEED and WELL within your brief and your requirements when looking for
00:24:05
Speaker
a new workplace or thinking about integrating one of those strategies into what you do. Is there a role for it or have you moved into really delivering it yourselves? No, absolutely. It's a great question. Absolutely there is. I think there's a lot of responsibility now on landlords to do better jobs. I think the real estate, the corporate real estate market has been way too landlord heavy and focused for the last
00:24:32
Speaker
you know twenty if not thirty years where they've had it really good they just knew that people would come and use their space and they did very little to focus on the benefits of their occupiers or the individual employee benefits and i think that's changing now i think covid's probably a little bit of a catalyst there for that change i think you're looking at
00:24:51
Speaker
you know there's a lot of all of a sudden everyone's an expert in workplace overnight you know you're seeing articles popping up about the death of the office and nobody's ever gonna lose office space again you know i fundamentally disagree with that i just think that there's gonna be more considered.
00:25:07
Speaker
focus on the types of real estate. And the fact that the real estate needs to be a destination effectively, and it needs to be working for the users of that space. So I think there's around certifications, I think it goes without saying that landlords are going to have to up their game, they're going to be they're going to need to be aligned to these great building standards, because
00:25:33
Speaker
The employees using their spaces will expect it. The companies leasing their space will look at that versus one that doesn't have it and will more than likely choose the one that does have it. And Jamie, beyond the obvious Amazon.com, is there a site where if anyone's interested in the relationship between Amazon and how they think of the workplace, is there any specific web references that might be useful or
Connect with James
00:25:57
Speaker
relevant?
00:25:57
Speaker
You know, there's not really. I think a lot of it is not broadcast out there, but you can connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram as well, so I'm happy to field any questions and contacts that way. Jamie, conscious of your time. You're doing great work. It's been fascinating to see your career develop over the years. Keep it up, man. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Speak soon.