FM FOR ISSUU

HUMAN RESOURCES
The Importance of Connection
and the Workplace
Aramark Northern Europe’s HR Director, Jim O’Brien, shares with us why he
believes that getting back into the office will evoke more creativity and growth
initiatives, and how the Facilities Management business have been a key player
in facilitating the safe return to work.
The workplace is so much more than
somewhere that we sit at our desks
and complete our daily tasks. Instead it
is a place of socialisation, collaboration,
innovation and growth. Whilst working
from home introduced a more flexible
working routine to our lives, it must be said
that being back in the office motivates us to
perform at our best and enables creative
collaboration which is a real struggle when
everyone is working remotely.
Working almost exclusively through
digital platforms like Teams and Zoom
in recent months has driven unhelpfully
high degrees of task orientation and less
genuine human connection. We should
relish the opportunity to physically connect
again and we should use that time wisely,
not in going through rote tasks that can be
done remotely but by promoting debate,
discussion and collaboration. We need to
connect people outside of their day-to-day
boundaries and reengage a workforce
that has spent too much time in awkward
meetings interrupted by technical
connection challenges and not enough
time in dialogue.
While not every person will go back to the
traditional five-day working week in the
office, employers need to remember the
valuable role the office plays in engaging
employees and creating better products
and solutions. Work is not just about doing
a series of tasks; it is about collaborating
with others in an enjoyable and engaging
way. COVID-19 has unlocked a whole new
set of digitally supported solutions in that
regard, but there’s no comparison for faceto-face
interaction.
Facilities Management plays a key
role in helping us return to work
HR was perfectly placed to play a leading
role in the office return by focusing
on the principles that would rebuild a
company culture with real employee
engagement. However, this could not
be executed without the valuable role
of the Facilities Management business.
Aramark Northern Europe’s Facilities
Management (FM) business played a key
role in assisting the whole company to
return to their workplaces as effectively
and safely as possible. Whether it be from
the Cleaning Services team ensuring the
highest standard of training and cleaning
products are brought to the business, or
the Quality and Safety team introducing
safety protocols and procedures that
allowed us to return to work safely and
satisfied. All FM business departments
have been working extremely hard to
ensure that our employees can get back
to their place of work and begin to start
collaborating more creatively, with less
technical issues than their home offices.
It has been really impressive to observe
how quickly the FM business adapted their
business operations within such a volatile
environment. Aramark’s FM business were
lucky to have experts within each field who
all worked tirelessly around the clock to
focus their efforts on developing innovative
solutions that allowed business operations
to continue efficiently.
Going forward, Jim O’Brien hopes that
we adjust to a “new normal”. Currently, a
lot of people seem to want to withdraw
JIM O’BRIEN
HR Director,
Aramark Northern Europe.
from society and hope that COVID-19
passes over quickly. This isn’t a healthy
approach and is economically catastrophic.
However, not learning behavioural change
and adopting safety protocols is risky
and inappropriate as we have seen in
some limited sectors of society. There is
a sensible and vital middle ground. We
need to adjust our behaviours and apply
sensible proportionate risk management
principles founded on facts. This is not the
time for Ireland, or indeed Europe more
broadly, to go into a form of hibernation.
Office life has its ups and downs, and
some offices will require a bigger rethink
than others, but the role of offices in post
COVID-19 corporate life might just be
more important than ever. We are human
beings who thrive on personal interaction
and, speaking from a personal level, Jim is
really looking forward to seeing more of
his colleagues and friends at work!
FM AUTUMN-WINTER 2020/21 | 29