Building culture inside a Fora office
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Is the office becoming less important for our jobs? Is it due a five-day comeback? Or are we in need of a rethink?These are just a few of the questions I discussed with Fiona Wenlock, the chief people officer at Fora, recently. Her role at the leading flex office provider in London gives her a unique insight into the thoughts of tens of thousands of workers across the UK.
Fora have multiple locations in London, as well as sites in Bristol, Cambridge, Leeds and Reading. I’ve used several of their beautiful London offices, as well as recording a podcast from the site in Reading – something which I arranged in an emergency within 30 minutes of needing it – which was a dazzlingly good experience.
The conversation with Fiona was full of surprises – and I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on it too.
Bruce
Welcome to this conversation about Fora. I’m Bruce Daisley, author of The Joy of Work, host of the Eat Sleep Work Repeat podcast, and all-round workplace culture obsessive. And I’m delighted to be joined today for a conversation by Fiona Wenlock, who’s the Chief People Officer at Fora. Fiona, thank you for joining me.
Fiona
You’re welcome.
Bruce
Firstly, I wonder if you could just introduce who you are and what you do.
Fiona
So I’m the Chief People Officer at Fora. I am responsible for over 650 employees across our business covering all aspects of the people agenda from hiring people through to seeing them right through to exiting the business, but all aspects, including workplace culture as well.
Bruce
So that must give you a unique perspective because you’re thinking about the people who work at Fora, but also you’re a business which is about other people and other people using your spaces.
There’s so much going on in the world of work right now. How do you reflect on the changing environment for work?
Fiona
I think it’s a constant ongoing study really in terms of what’s happening in the workplace now, particularly since COVID. So as well as looking at our own internal employees, we’ve got 30,000 members across all the portfolio. So we’ve got the best test base really to look at what others are doing, what exciting ways of working are happening right across our Fora buildings. So it’s an ongoing piece of work as to what really is now happening in the workplace and what changes we foresee taking place.
Bruce
wonder if you could take a step back and just introduce us, tell us the Fora story because you’ve talked about 30 ,000 members there. What is Fora’s story?
Fiona
Well, Fora is an exciting story. It’s been a merger of two leading flexible office brands. It was originally The Office Group, which has been established nearly 20 years ago with the merger was with what we would turn the legacy Fora business which formed about seven years as a start -up. Both businesses with slightly different ethoses came together to create what is now the newly merged Fora that happened in 2022 actually and the rebrand was in 2023. So we operate under The Office Group but the front-facing element of the business is Fora for all our members.
Bruce
My experience with Fora was that I’d been invited to have meetings here and they are always these beautiful elegant spaces. I was always really impressed with the way that the space was set up and the location of them. Is that something that you think intentionally about?
Fiona
Yeah I mean there are over 70 buildings across London, some UK cities and in Germany and every single building is completely different with its own personality. They’re all beautifully designed, the fixtures, fittings, facilities across all of our buildings are amazing. There are small ones, large ones, medium sized, so it’s basically something for everybody and there’s a building that will suit the personality of the different businesses that operate within. So we’ll often look at our members and say, this is the building that may suit you and your business. There are hubs around King’s Cross right now that we’ll see more AI companies going into, along with Shoreditch is also a lot of tech companies. So you get different businesses picking different buildings in different parts of the city to operate within, which is part of Fora’s real appeal, which is because we’re now one of the leading market providers in London, there’s a smorgasbord of options for someone to come to one of our buildings and also they can access the other buildings as well in that. So the variety is huge but they are all beautifully designed but in very different ways depending on what part of the city they’re in and the age of the building.
Bruce
Obviously the flexible office space is an incredibly competitive business sector to be in right now. How do you think about Fora’s point of difference there?
Fiona
I think that Fora’s point of difference is about firstly the variety and the size of the business now gives everybody the opportunity to pick and choose what suits them and their needs. There’s also the range of facilities that our buildings offer so it’s not just about traditional workspace anymore, it’s about work -life balance, it’s about creating space for people to go and relax and have their best thinking. So we’ve got gym facilities, we’ve got rooftop terraces, running tracks, a beehive at our Chancery House office, lots of areas for people to go and just spend quiet time. So there are a real variety in terms of what they’re offering and I think that is the future of work now. It’s not just about everybody sitting at a desk, it’s about having the chance to go and do different types of work in different ways. The importance now of obviously health fitness, mental health etc. These buildings having the space to offer facilities for people to be able to get exercise and to think clearly and to get quiet time is just as important as meeting space and traditional open plan offices.
Bruce
There seems to be something really organic in the evolution of the business as well. I’ve just come to, I’ve joined you here at this 42 Berner Street office which is beautiful, stunning, but as we came in it’s a real illusion as you come from the street you expect it’s going to be a certain size and then it just goes into this sort of vast expanse and someone said ‘it’s because we bought the office opposite and we expanded into that’ and I guess that’s a reflection that sometimes you find little communities that are growing that have got more demand on them and you expand into that space. Is that right? Is there something organic about, you’ve mentioned in different areas you’ve got different specialities that seem to live there, is there something organic about how the locations expand and develop?
Fiona
Definitely and I think if we just look through London over the last 20 years areas and geographies move around. The city is not what the city was now post -COVID. It isn’t quite as populous as it used to be. And more businesses are moving in towards central London, Shoreditch, King’s Cross has become a thriving community and 20 years ago definitely wasn’t in the same way. I think the word community is also important in this conversation because as we evolve through what people’s wants and needs are, what we do know post -COVID is as as much as people value time at home and having their own space to work and quiet time, the importance of community and being together has become paramount. And we saw that. We saw the rise in mental health issues with this generation coming through now, but particularly through the pandemic, where people were trapped on their own in one -bed apartments, et cetera. So I think the importance of our buildings is that they provide a destination for people to go to and to mix with one another. That’s the same for our employees as it is for our members, for our members to mix with each other but also with other businesses and like -minded professionals in our space. I think that’s really important. We do a huge amount of internal events to bring our teams together and to bring our different businesses together to network and I think that’s as important a part in terms of what Fora has to offer going forward as well as the physical office space.
Bruce
IF we were to imagine that then, so I’d love you to paint a picture for us really – so within any of your buildings. have you got some people who are just sole traders who just want a professional office space, other organisations that may be using it two or three days a week. What are the different stories that live inside any Fora building?
Fiona
Well you have a complete mixture and I think that’s again the beauty of the brand which is that you’ve got individual members who may just come and use the open plan office space to work. You can have your own independent office, you can just come and use the offices as and when is needed and book meeting rooms. So, you’ll have a sole trader right through to really large multinational global businesses. And there’s a bit of everything in our buildings. You tend to get at times certain industries gravitating to certain parts of the city, as I said, but there is a real mixture across. And one of the brands that we’re really proud to have within our buildings is Pangaia, the ethical fashion brand. They’re at Chancery House. And we know that that’s been a really good match to have them coming into our space. They feel like they’ve got a real connection with our DNA in terms of how we like to look at the fabric of our buildings now, the sustainability, the ESG agenda. I think that really matters to them. I think they take opportunity to use the honey that we get from our beehives there. But it really matches their ethos as well, working with us, and we feel we’ve got shared values. So Pangaia is just one example, but there’s many different businesses, from fashion businesses. to tech businesses, to lots of start -ups and lots of really interesting independent businesses. Some that we’ve not heard of actually that are doing really interesting pieces of work. So, we kind of learn all the time from speaking to our members. We have so much insight into the world of work really across this portfolio with the memberships.
Bruce
It must give you a really unique perspective on the ongoing change of working habits of how we’re all working in completely different days. Are there any trends that you see that are emergent or that are maybe receding? What should we be looking for if we’re looking across the whole savanna of work? What changes are taking place?
Fiona
Well, you know better than me, given the research, but we definitely are seeing a decline in a five day week in our buildings and we know that people are optimising across the five days but in a very different way and we’re seeing you know more presence towards the middle of the week sometimes less so on Fridays that tends to be the typical day where people are going off and maybe doing quiet work so it can be – there is a real variety – but there’s a definite trend towards less of a five -day working week holistically and obviously we’ve got lots of data and insight at our fingertips so we can see we can see what our members are doing and they are using the space differently in the time that they’ve got it as well. And that’s what’s really important about the Fora brand because we like to enable our members to personalize the space so that they get the most from it for what their needs are. And we are seeing less desire for massive open space and more desire to have the space perhaps broken up a little bit, to have private areas for people to go and have teams calls and private chats.
So, we have a growth in what we call the phone booth, which is an insulated space for someone to take their laptop and have private calls. I see a lot of the members requesting more phone booths in terms of when they’re picking the layout for their designated space. And obviously, we’ve then got a good uptake on the buildings where we’ve got lots of facilities. So where we’ve got gyms, bike sheds, roof terraces, event space. We have a wine sommelier that is connected to our brand that will go and do wine tasting sessions. We’ve had DJs coming in. So, the space is getting used in a really different way to the traditional nine to five, five day working week.
Bruce
Does that mean that some organisations have got a certain amount of space that for people Tuesday or Wednesday and then they expand into a big meeting room maybe on big occasions or they hire a big meeting room. How do people use the ability to dial up and dial down the amount of space they need?
Fiona
You can buy meeting room tokens basically and you can get credits so to speak so you can have you can have credits with your particular business to have the use of the meeting rooms or you can just book them. We’ve got an online booking system which is amazing so people can just look – and book and if there’s nothing in the building that you’re in, we are minutes usually from the next Fora. And on average, we’re only eight minutes from most of the train stations, tube stops, et cetera, where our locations are. So, it’s really easy to go to another building and see what space there is. You can look on the booking system and see the availability. But yes, people are definitely using the space more flexibly as well. So, it’s good because it allows everybody to tailor it for their own needs and that is the point of the brand.
Bruce
Tell me a little bit about you and your perspective. Obviously you’re a Chief People Officer, so that means you need to be attuned to the needs, the changing needs of current employees, future employees. As you look at that job and you’ve previously worked at other organisations, do you think that there are big changes generationally coming between, not just from a Fora perspective, but generationally coming from between Millennials, Gen Zs, Gen Alpha? How do you think about those generational differences?
Fiona
I don’t think the differences are as big as we think, but the one word I would use is expectation, because expectations have changed through time. I think fundamentally, young people that are starting in the world of work now, have very much the same wants and needs as the older generation. You know, there’s lots of studies that done on this and how people are is often affected by lots of demographic factors and upbringing, education, et cetera. And I think that’s always been the case but I do think expectations have changed and the pandemic was the one thing that was that that milestone moment that forced change and it forced change upon employers. Where they were thinking previously a pandemic, well, you know, we’re in control of the agenda. We’ll say what the working patterns are, et cetera. The pandemic turned it on its head, and employers found themselves sitting in the back seat to a certain extent after that because employees started to determine what they wanted to do more of, and the pandemic had allowed that to happen because there had not been a choice. So, I think there is expectations from the younger, upcoming generations that it is perfectly acceptable to work in different ways and to work remotely and to not be sitting at a desk all the time. I think that’s an expectation now and that is different. But aside from that, they still want to be inspired, led, connected with, developed, have the chance to be creative, the chance to do quiet work. I think that still exists, but it’s the expectations in the main that’s the change.
Bruce
You’ve talked about expectations and that leads into expectations about office space and the way you’ll do things but the things you’ve mentioned along the way here is that duality of needing space to connect, to be together, but also space to be private and going to, I think you described booths and cubicles that people do calls in. The expectation that your office space will be fit for the job must be something that’s quite important to people who are customers who are coming and saying we want to become members.
Fiona
Yeah and I know in your book you’ve looked at different ways that people like to work and you’ve got three different approaches et cetera and I think it links through to the world of work in terms of what we are dealing with here as well. It all matches. People want to be able work to suit their best style, to get the most out of work, to feel like they are getting intrinsic value from the jobs that they’re doing and they’re enjoying it. And to get that intrinsic value, I think it’s bespoke, I think it’s quite individual and it’s not a one-size-fits-all. And if you look over the years, the changes in the world of work, I think we are entering into quite a bespoke era for our members and for the employees that I’m responsible for. We have to look at fitting really everybody’s wants and needs and that’s not easy. The job’s got harder, the Chief People Officer role is fundamentally harder than it was five years ago. Expectations – I’ll come back to again – have changed and our workforce and our members want and need more from us in terms of workplace provision and as an employer. People are expecting more and more and more, so that they can do their best work, and I think it’s exciting that we’ve got the opportunity to personalise and bespoke space to suit our different members. I think that’s the exciting part of all of this.
I have to look as well internally at our own employees and making sure that we are creating the space within our own Fora backstage office that allows them to do their best work. It’s the same as with our members. And like with our members, with our employees, we’re also regularly getting data and insights through employee surveys, et cetera. We have a net promoter score that we use with our members as well. And both of those surveys give us guidance on what people want and need from us, and then we have to that and decide what can we do with that with the boundaries that we’re operating within.
Bruce
You’ve talked a couple of times about the idea of members making their space bespoke, tailoring it to their needs. What does that look like for clients?
Fiona
Well, what it looks like is that people will come and look around, look around these amazing buildings and then they will get great, expert advice from the teams that we have on the ground, helping to showcase this space and they will say often our teams will be asking them what they want and need. And so, when they’re showing them the space, it might be that they are asking lots of questions of our potential prospective members about what matters to them. And then we will work with our design team, our in-house design team, to recreate space for the members to suit their needs. So it might be that they say, we want to have more offices, more meeting rooms, we want event space. It can really vary. One of our buildings is just completely assigned to one business and they’ve taken all the floors. So, in that instance, they’ve got the whole use of all the facilities, et cetera. And the teams, we have teams that work in all of our buildings and those teams then become an extension of that business and that brand. And the companies and the members will see our teams, the people that work on reception, the managers, our member hosts as they’re known, they will see them as part of their business.
And if we move them to another Fora building, they’ll often complain and say to us, “You’ve moved them!” and “You’ve moved one of my favourite people out of the team”. So, so our own teams are really pivotal in that. But the space itself, there is, there’s, you know, anything is possible. We have dogs, we’re dog-friendly buildings. So, there’s often dogs wandering around. So, you know, everybody will say, this is, this is the amount of people I’ve got. Guide me and help me with what is possible because sometimes they don’t know as well. So sometimes they’ve got a very clear idea on how they want the layout to be and other times they’ll say there’s 10 of us, we’re not all in every day of the week, tell us what you think is best. And so, that’s the whole point of Fora again is to advise them about the best way to work and to say this is what we’ve seen with similar businesses to yours across the portfolio, we would recommend this or we’d recommend this building’s better for you than that one – because actually you like to do this or you want to be in this area.
So, there are no kind of templates on the space, so to speak. Obviously we have across our portfolio, you’ve got meeting rooms, you’ve got open plan space, you’ve got independent offices, you’ve got phone booths, you’ve got kitchen area – we’ve got a lot of kitchen areas – a lot of shared space for people to congregate around and we know that’s important for driving the sense of community, whether it’s a coffee machine or traditionally a water cooler. Those central spaces are really important for collaboration as well, for people to meet and have all those ad hoc conversations that add value.
Bruce
What you’ve described there is something where I suspect if people, businesses were currently in their own let building and they’re debating moving to a flexible office space, maybe one of things that they’re anxious about is will we have the same sense of belonging? Will we have the same sense of home? And what you’ve described to me there is that, oh no, very much so, it’s your space. You can make it feel the way you want. But, in collaboration with experts who do this all the time, that’s the way it feels to me. Is that how people experience it?
Fiona
100%, that is what it is, that is providing them with the physical space but also the facilities to save them having to worry about it or to even have to think about it. The facilities around them, the facilities team, we have a facilities team, we have painters, decorators, maintenance people, we have the management team that will run and facilitate the building and make sure everything’s in good working order through the teams around them. So, there’s a whole host of support to allow that brand or that business to not have to about it but does it feel like they’re in their own space? 100%. Can they decorate, do whatever they want to that space? Yes. Will we help them? Yes. And then they’ve got the amenities and that’s if you’re only a 50 person organisation you might not be able to get that so easily somewhere else or 10 person and you want to drive, that there’s an opportunity to do it and I think that’s what is part of the USP and it’s an elevated experience as well it’s not like some of the more traditional workspace providers of the past are. It’s an elevated experience where it is beautiful tables and chairs, it is beautiful surroundings, pieces of artwork around you and I think that drives something different. It’s moving itself on. It’s like everything, we’re evolving, moving forwards and you can cite competitors and people from the past in terms of what they’ve done, this is a progressive business.
Bruce
To wrap up, clearly there’s a changing expectation about what an office means for individuals. It’s not just a meeting space. It’s not just a workspace. We’re also thinking more broadly about individuals’ health and wellbeing. How does Fora think about that?
Fiona
I think that Fora has so much potential to push the agenda forward in terms of the future of work and to be the advisor to all of our members on what goods looks like and what the future trends are showing us. I think the ethos is about delivering an extraordinary customer experience to all of our members across all of our portfolio. We want to really drive the agenda on wellness, community, bringing people together, the networking. As well as continuing to deliver beautiful office space with amazing design and architecture, at the heart of that is our members. I suppose from the hat I’m wearing, it’s to make sure that all our employees are delivering an amazing experience to our members, that’s kind of my lean.
Bruce
We’ve talked about ‘work modes’ but how about when we’re not in a work frame of mind. Is there space inside a Fora building for personal recharging and unwinding?
Fiona
There definitely is space within a Fora building – so across our portfolio we have lots of amenities and activities in place. Some of our buildings have things from running tracks, to Peloton studios, we’ve got gyms – we do boxing and wellness classes. There’ll be creative workshops, we’ve got cafés in lots of the buildings, rooftops, courtyard areas, beehives – I think I’ve touched on before – but there is definitely a wide range of things for people to do, and we think that’s really important. People’s wellness and mental health is crucial, in terms of being able to get the best from their day-to-day work.
Bruce
I’d love to know what you’re thinking about next. What’s next on the agenda for Fora? What’s coming?
Fiona
I think for Fora, there’s lots of exciting things coming. It’s newly formed as the new Fora, which was it’s only really a year or so since it became Fora. We have got lots of work to do in terms of gaining more data and insight into our members around us and what good looks like and how we evolve the agenda for the future of work, how we advise and offer really the future focus to our brands, how we look after our employees and how we make sure that they do their best work, how we evolve the design of the buildings, the events, the community that we drive within them. I think everything is continuing on a journey now as we move forward to the future.
