What if, in a heavily male-dominated industry, your gender wasn’t a barrier but a superpower, an asset?
Join us for a captivating conversation with Liz Benison, CEO of ISS UK and Ireland, as she shares her journey from an uncertain 18-year-old to leading a major organization, and how she turned her gender into a superpower in the automotive industry. This episode promises interesting discussions on gender equity, parenthood, care responsibilities, and the different life stages of a CEO.
Balancing work and family life is a delicate act. Liz shares fascinating stories, including one where her daughter demonstrated an incredible business acumen, and how bringing children to work and celebrating life milestones can shape a career.
We take you through Leila's trip to Hong Kong, where she retraced her father's steps showing that work, life, and business are not separate entities but a harmonious blend.
In the last part of our discussion, we tackle CEO activism, diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and the role of media in creating a polarized narrative. Liz provides insightful ideas on creating a positive, inclusive work environment, and the importance of setting measurable goals for gender equity. We conclude with Liz’s fresh perspective on leadership and her ideas on nurturing an environment where people feel safe and thrive.
Tune in and join our engaging chat with Liz Benison, a powerhouse paving the way for gender equity in the corporate world.
What if, in a heavily male-dominated industry, your gender wasn’t a barrier but a superpower, an asset?
Join us for a captivating conversation with Liz Benison, CEO of ISS UK and Ireland, as she shares her journey from an uncertain 18-year-old to leading a major organization, and how she turned her gender into a superpower in the automotive industry. This episode promises interesting discussions on gender equity, parenthood, care responsibilities, and the different life stages of a CEO.
Balancing work and family life is a delicate act. Liz shares fascinating stories, including one where her daughter demonstrated an incredible business acumen, and how bringing children to work and celebrating life milestones can shape a career.
We take you through Leila's trip to Hong Kong, where she retraced her father's steps showing that work, life, and business are not separate entities but a harmonious blend.
In the last part of our discussion, we tackle CEO activism, diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and the role of media in creating a polarized narrative. Liz provides insightful ideas on creating a positive, inclusive work environment, and the importance of setting measurable goals for gender equity. We conclude with Liz’s fresh perspective on leadership and her ideas on nurturing an environment where people feel safe and thrive.
Tune in and join our engaging chat with Liz Benison, a powerhouse paving the way for gender equity in the corporate world.
Hello and welcome to the CEO Activist podcast. This is a special series where I have the opportunity to meet, with an interview, a number of inspirational CEOs all around the UK who are leading UK and global organisations. We're talking about diversity as a commercial lever for economic growth and prosperity and, in particular, why it is critical that we, as leaders and CEOs, empower others to make a true and sustainable difference. Today, I'm joined by Liz Benison, ceo of ISS UK and Ireland. We're going to be talking about everything from the role of gender equity, parenthood, care and responsibilities, the different life stages that one goes through in order to get to the top, and where they are today. I'm really excited to be joined by Liz. So, liz, it's really great.
Speaker 2:It's been a while. We've been trying to set this up for a while, haven't we? So, yeah, great to finally doing it. I finally tracked you down, I think it's you. You were in New York just last week.
Speaker 1:So, liz, before I kind of get started into CEO activism and what that means, what would be so wonderful is for you to tell us a little bit about how you came to be where you are today, because it has been a pretty interesting adventure, hasn't?
Speaker 2:it.
Speaker 2:It has. Yeah, absolutely. So. Yeah, go back to 18 and hadn't a clue what I wanted to do at all. My dad was an accountant, my sister was trained as an architect. I was kind of like no idea what I wanted to do. Ended up doing an engineering degree, mainly because I just didn't know what else I wanted to do. Went to work for Jaguar, jaguar's responsibility, through university Kind of actually met a CEO, a guy called John Egan at the time, very inspirational, and kind of thought that's what I want to do, how do I get to do that?
Speaker 2:And then 20 or 30 years go by and lots of different steps. I did the start-up thing before. It was a sort of fashionable thing. So I went forward first for five years which is a great kind of business, finishing school. I then did the start-up thing before. It was really sort of trendy. Went to a sort of 50-man start-up for a few years, got my sort of buzz for sales and a bit of entrepreneurialism and that was brilliant. And then I've gradually just run bigger and bigger bits of businesses really. And this is what I like doing. I like the breadth of it, I like doing sales one day. I love the people side. I love the client management side, and it's only really through that sort of general management career that you get to keep doing all of that, and that's what I really love about it.
Speaker 1:Wow, do you know? What I love is that you say this in such an informal and casual way, that you happen to be an automotive, which actually, as we well know, we love the automotive industry. My husband works in the automotive industry but actually it's an incredibly male-dominated arena, and so take us back to some of those early years.
Speaker 2:Was it challenging? Oh God, yeah, Some of it. When I look back now I sort of cringe and it makes you realise we have come a long way actually. So, because at Jaguar I did a proper apprenticeship, so I and I had the situation where I had to wear overalls every day, but they didn't do them in my size, so I had to wear a belt and sort of tuck them over a belt and then I get to hold off the way in the belt. It was not the alternative. It was the kind of down to my knees. The shoes started two sizes bigger than my feet so I had to wear sort of three pairs of socks every day.
Speaker 2:I remember one day I was I had a brilliant project One of my summer vacations during university. I was in charge of a fleet of prototype cars, new XJS Jaguars, and I had six of them that had to ferry to different places around the around the country to get the photo shoots done or a different piece of work done on them. And I had a really bad day one day and one of the jobs had fallen through and I was and I was sort of sat at my desk like this and I had literally this guy come up to me, put his arms around me and say, don't worry, do it? Wouldn't it be easy just to have a family? And I sort of look back now and I think, well, at least it's not OK to say those sorts of things anymore. So it was incredibly hard.
Speaker 2:But there's also benefits. You know, I was a novelty and therefore you stand out and I learned pretty early on to take advantage of that. You know there were 20 guys in me on that program Guess who? They remembered. They remembered me and I did take advantage of that, you know, I think in a good way. But I think that's one of the things is, you've got to. You've got to use this. You know, when there is an upside to being in a, in a different group, you've got to use that too, as well as navigating the downside. I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1:And I think it is that difference, yeah, the superpower, absolutely yeah, that helps not only you know, clearly, in this instance, an example, help you stand out from the crowd and also make you rememberable for the future, for programs, because actually it is, you know, it's the skill, it's the will, it's all of those things, but also it's the unique power of difference.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I think you know it takes a long time to realize it's a superpower, doesn't it, and really play to it, and that's the, that's the frustrating thing. I'd realize that 20 years sooner. You know where, where could I have got to? And when I'm talking, I've got a 21 year old daughter, and you know when I'm talking to her, that's what the conversations I'm having with her Make sure you realize that now.
Speaker 1:And so you're a mother, you're a wife, you're a daughter, you're a leader, you're a boss you're managing many, many different and increasing in the modern business world. Different stakeholder communities oh my goodness, you know how do you manage to stay safe?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the parent thing I mean we could talk for hours about that bit. I'm at that stage now 21 year old daughter, 25 year old son. So it's different. You know, it's quite interesting at home now. It's all about getting their careers started and getting them to a place that you know, that I think they're content and they're happy and they've got a good shot at the next 20 years really. So that you know, we do CV sessions quite often in the evenings. We do, you know, I've done a fair bit of mock interviewing in the evenings recently.
Speaker 2:It's that kind of conversation now and all the different phases are, you know, differently hard. I think, really, when I look back, we've had a family day in ISS today and we sort of we've had, you know, everyone from tiny little babies through to teenagers, and it just brings it all back afresh again. But each of those phases brings, you know, completely different challenges and I sort of thought I'd get to them being in their 20s and I could start to relax a little bit. But actually in some ways it's just as hard. Parenting, you know people, and particularly, I think, entering the labour market at this point in time is really really tough. The daughter thing. Unfortunately, I lost my mum last year, so the daughter bit was really hard in those last few years because I know you also had a break in this year as well. The daughter bit got harder towards the end, definitely because you.
Speaker 2:Did my mum ever really understand what I did? I don't think she did. My dad came from a corporate world. I think he had a much better sort of insight. My mum was desperately proud of all three of us, but I don't think she really necessarily understood exactly what it meant, and so you know, particularly last year or so where she needed quite a lot of care. That was tough, definitely.
Speaker 2:And what did your mum do? If you don't mind the outing, so my mum's one of the reasons that I'm as driven as I am, I think. So my dad was an accountant and a sort of division of CFO, and I learnt lots from him. I used to go into work with him and sit at his desk and he was a brilliant manager. My dad was a brilliant manager. His team absolutely loved him and because he was an accountant, he had great morals. So he had a big thing about never go home and not be asked to look yourself in the mirror, and that's always stayed really, really important to me and I always used to think he was the person who'd sort of set me on the track that I'm in. But actually my mum was by far the brighter of the two of them, so she was a few years younger than him.
Speaker 2:She was phenomenally bright. She came from a sort of proud working class background. She was the only one to get into a grammar school. She did really well at school but felt very, quite often marginalised.
Speaker 2:She was the working class kid in a group of much better off kids and then she got married to my dad. They had an amazing marriage. We were shy of their 50th anniversary when we lost him and he was fantastic. He was very supportive of her. But she got pregnant within weeks of being married and it just wasn't done. Then People didn't juggle children. It was seen as well. Obviously the man's not earning enough then, so she didn't work. For a long time she didn't work. I was the third one. She didn't go back to work until after me and she was hugely frustrated. I think she could have done so much more. She was so bright, so they ended up working together. The last few years of my dad started his own counselling firm as she worked for him for the last few years of her careers. But she lived through my sister and my career. She absolutely lived every moment of that and, yeah, I think if I'm proudest of anything, it's probably making me proud.
Speaker 1:I'm rarely speechless, as the team would tell you, but it's just such a beautiful story and it particularly resonates because, having recently lost my father, who was a huge inspiration, you almost start to question after something like that happens. Oh, my goodness, you know the motivations and the why behind the things that you do every single day and it's not until they're gone that well. They sadly say that when you lose a parent, you lose part of your childhood and honestly, I think much of that is true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do. I felt it when I lost my dad, and then again your axis changes, doesn't?
Speaker 1:it.
Speaker 2:You know you're rotating on one axis and then obviously you're not there and there isn't a day goes by that I don't want to pick the phone up to tell her either what I've been up to. She'd have loved me coming to Downs Street with you guys that would have been huge with her friends she'd have been on the phone to one of them that night and you know there's not a moment goes by that I don't want to tell her. And also, you know what my kids are accomplishing as well now probably even more so, but that's it's interesting. Well, come on to privilege, won't we?
Speaker 2:But I think that is the biggest privilege I've had, because I had two parents who loved each other which was important, you know love does but were also very pushy and ambitious with us. You know they were supportive, very supportive. But you know there was never a consideration that we went all three going to university and we went all three going to have careers. And you know my father, I think, was very keen on making sure that his two daughters were just as driven and ambitious as his son. You know there was absolute equality in our household, you know, in the world where it wasn't really like that 30 years ago, 40 years ago.
Speaker 1:You can see the profound impact that your parents have had on the success throughout that journey and you know just picking up on something that you mentioned around the family day here at ISS, because when I walked through the door, honestly I actually said, oh my goodness, I think my ovaries are going to explode.
Speaker 2:I might literally so all these children everywhere.
Speaker 1:But things like this are so important. It's celebrating those different life milestones, ultimately from birth through to you know, sadly death, but also the celebration of life and being there at those pivotal moments which really shape one's career?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And you know, what we've done today to me is phenomenal because, you know, as working parents, we leave the door in the morning and we don't come home to the evening and if you've got no idea what happens in between, that, I think it can be quite scary, really, can't it? And I think it's so important getting children in to see their moms and dads in their work environment and these people that you talk about casually over dinner, actually getting to meet them and see them and I know, you know mine came in to work with me quite a lot when they were small and you know these things they still remember today from those times and you just don't realize what they're taking in. And I'll tell it quickly. But I'll tell a story about my daughter. I'd forgotten. I used to take them both to the bus, to the school bus, but my son's school bus went half an hour before my daughter's, so quite often she was sat in the back of the car bored for half an hour before her bus turned up or before I could drop her at school, maybe.
Speaker 2:And I worked for an American company at the time and we were having quite a lot of early morning calls over a deal that I was trying to. I was trying to get through the governance and I was having a really, really hard time because we'd had a similar deal that hadn't gone very well. And I'm on the call to them and she's in the back and she's got her iPad and she's kind of not really paying attention, or so I thought, and I hanged up the call and she didn't even look at me and she just went well, it's obvious why they don't want you to do it more and what on earth do you mean? And she said well, because she made such a mess of that other one. You know, they're not going to let you do it again, are they?
Speaker 2:She was not in at the time and she'd actually understood the context of the call better than most of my team at that time. And I just think it's you know, you don't know what they're taking in, and I just think it's so important that you get those moments that they'll look back and think, ah, now I understand that. You know, I understand that dynamic. So I've always, you know, I've always talked about work with them and talked about the conflicts and the challenges and whatever, and got their views on them, because I just think it's really important that you start to worry about that work ethic in, I guess and.
Speaker 2:I have that, you know, I would say is to sit on my dad's desk and talk to his team.
Speaker 1:I will tell a very, very brief story because actually this is very much about you and your story. But I've just come back from Hong Kong and I got to Hong Kong, ended up doing a little. You know, had a couple of business meetings whilst out there, but my primary reason for going was to scout my father's ashes and he often talked about this. This guy that he used to work for called called Mr Marken. Over Christmases, easter's, everything, it was always the stories about Hong Kong and we'd say, oh, dad, tell us another story about Mr Marken. He'd say, well, mr Mark and you know, say business cards, for example, and he must present business cards like this. He had an Australian came into a meeting through the business card over the table and he said, oh no, he knows he's never going to do business with it.
Speaker 1:Anyhow, when dad passed away recently and he was actually sent me an email a couple of years ago and it's one of the only regrets that I have in my life is I have not reached out sooner to his old boss's daughter and we're going back like 20 years back when Hong Kong was British colony and they lived out that Anyhow, I ended up tracking down his, his daughter. So I went to meet her last week in Hong Kong and retraced some of dad's footsteps, took a picture above, well, right by his old company logo and things like this and some of the moments. I mean I tell you I've never cried so much my entire life, over four days eating and crying my way around Hong Kong. But the story that you told there about how actually there's the sharing when you're young, business, work, life.
Speaker 1:And we talk a lot about business and you know kind of sorry work, life balance and things like this. And I don't know yet really why I sit on that, because I think so much of life is a blend of different things and actually some of the fondest memories I have of dad is when he's excitedly kind of you know and you can see the twinkling, is talking about different stories of when he went off and went to China and did business with so and so and it's just you know, it's what you remember, and those memories are the things that we hold dear and we take with us wherever we go.
Speaker 2:And they form. You Don't know those memories that you think they form. It's interesting you say this about the world I've been seeing, because it the frustration for me at the moment, I think, is it post pandemic was pandemic and escalation and acceleration of a whole lot of things? I'm sure it was. But my frustration at the moment is much of the rhetoric is almost work bad life, good, you know. So get out of work as quickly as you can, get home and do your fun stuff.
Speaker 2:Whereas I have loved, you know, nearly every minute of my career so far. You know of course there's some more challenging bits and there's a few difficult times, but I've largely loved it and I've made friends and I've laughed and I've had pride and satisfaction and all of that. And it's almost become a bit of a almost become a bit of a taboo to say that you're actually driven and ambitious and you like work. And yes, of course I'm really pleased that it's easier for people now to to manage child care. There were some nightmare times where it really was quite difficult to do and I'm really pleased that we can create environments for much broader people set of people to thrive now. That is all fantastic and let's not lose that little bit. That says actually this can be really good, fun as well and really really satisfying.
Speaker 1:I don't know I might, you're, you're making absolutely sense. I'm nodding here profusely. You're nodding here profusely because, again, it resonates a huge amount of things and I think there is a lot of. I think part of it's the media actually. Yeah, and you know, I had this very same conversation with the CEO friend of mine who said well, you know, we've got to listen to the goods and the bads and then make a well informed decision. It, you know, and and ultimately the media has got a big part to play in this polarizing narrative. Yeah, the same, at conversations downing street where we talked about, you know, kind of the the, you know diversity of commercial leave, you know there are people that would say well, why, why would you? Why would you talk about that?
Speaker 2:It's a nice to have.
Speaker 1:It's a moral issue, you know but there's opinions, good, bad, indifferent. You know why aren't we allowed to have opinions? Yeah, you know about things he says it shouldn't be the fear behind that, because otherwise we're never going to get anywhere. Yeah, those you know.
Speaker 2:Great things that can happen within business, great friendships can happen within business and you know, when you look back, I mean I did meet my husband at work. You know most of my long term friends were a work connection one way or another as well. And I do worry that the environment we're in at the moment where you know we're still 40, 50% occupancy in most workplaces All those just tension in the workforce now really going to get that experience? I really hope so and I think we create it here most days actually in this building, which I'm really really proud of and I think it's really important. But yeah, we've all got to lean into that a bit more. I think Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about CEO activism here. You know, we've we've talked a lot here and I, you know, honestly, I'm connecting so much with the personal, personal stories and the professional stories. But CEO activism, you know, again, could be a, could be quite a opinionated term. What does activism mean? Yeah, but what does CEO activism mean?
Speaker 2:to you. So I think we talked a little bit about privilege and what God is here and so far. Park all of that for a minute, the fact that I am here now and I'm in a position where I mean I've got nowhere near as many followers as you, but I've got a decent social media following you are literally absolutely rocking.
Speaker 1:I see you, I see you.
Speaker 2:So you know you've got a presence, you've got a voice. I've got, you know, 30,000 people who, every day, you know, rely on the decisions that I make to keep them in work. So you've actually got a platform that you can start to do something now and be heard. You know we've got very influential clients. We've got we are a strategic supplier to government here in the UK. So we have a voice through that and I think it would be completely wrong of me not to use that voice to move forward some topics that I feel passionately about and the ISS feels passionately about as well, and and I'm really fortunate at the moment that those two things collide probably a lot more than they have in any other company that I've worked for before. So you know what ISS wants to achieve in our social agenda and what I want to achieve myself are actually very, very aligned. So, to me, activism is using whatever got you here. It's then using that platform to do some of the right things and some of the things that you're really passionate around, and I guess, on you know, my house of DNI journey started with gender. So I go back.
Speaker 2:Well, 2014 was a sort of pivotal year for me, so I. I did do very male dominated career path up until that point. So I did an engineering degree. We were about 5% female on my course. I was sponsored by Jaguar. Again, I was the only. There were two of us on the whole program I think. I came up through engineering again, being the only woman. I don't went into technology to get massively male dominated and I didn't read. I guess I got blinkers on. It was working for me. You know I was doing well, I was getting the projects that I wanted, I was getting the promotions. You know I'd had my kids. I'd sort of sailed through that bit really and I'd avoided all of these groups that talked about. I didn't want to be sort of ghettoized as a woman and whatever and I'd avoided joining all of these groups. I'd done the absolute bare minimum.
Speaker 2:And then I suddenly am on the, the exec board of the company, and the board is giving us grief over we're not doing enough around D&I and they want to start with gender and I'm the only woman on the on the exec board and everyone's looking around saying who's going to do this then and I start finally think. I start off thinking I don't want it to be me and then I kind of think, oh, my God, if one of them does it, it's going to be dreadful, it's going to be embarrassing, and I'm going to have to pretend I'm not. You know, I'm going to pretend I'm on board with it, and that was my motivation for going. Oh, I'm going to say I can't do it. And I then kind of and it was a real epiphany for me because I kind of thought, right, if I'm going to do this, I want to really do this. I don't just want a group that chats about it. And so, if we're going to do it, we're going to really move the dial, we're going to set some goals. We're going to set proper, measurable goals like we would on any other business objective and therefore any data. And so I buried myself and there were some really dreadful moments for me. So I hadn't realized at that point.
Speaker 2:This was when the 30% club was really just taking off around getting women onto boards. But I was looking the layer below that, the executive layer, and it was 9%. In the footsie it was 9% of executives are female. I can't be right, you know, dig down again. You know it's right. And it hasn't moved for, you know, 10 years by then. And then I think that must be a UK thing. So I look in other countries states, again 9%. Look everywhere else, you know, nobody's exceeding double figures.
Speaker 2:I then start looking at government and I start looking at the NHS, and I start looking at the army and I start and I think charities, surely charities have got it right? Absolutely not at that exact layer. And actually, you know, I think one of the problems with the 30% club is it it gave an alternative to hitting that exact layer so people could actually opt out a bit earlier and become a non exec and miss those sort of vital years as an exec and therefore, horrifically, that number still hasn't changed. I mean, I think we were celebrating this week because we got the 10 CEO on the FTSE 100 again. We'd gone down to nine, we're back at 10 and we're kind of celebrating, hey, we've got 10 out of 100. I mean how can we defend that after all this time? It's terrible. So it's a sweet really isn't it?
Speaker 1:It is, of course, it's great.
Speaker 2:One more is great, but 10 out of 100, it's really shocking.
Speaker 2:So that was kind of one of my big moments of realizing if we're gonna do this, you've got to do it properly, and that means you've got to treat it like all of your other business objectives. It can't be I do P&L during the day, I do growth and cash and whatever, and then on the side of my desk I do something freely around DNI. So I think gender was my sort of first foray into this, and I think what I've then realized is that the things that apply to gender to gender absolutely apply in space, to other aspects of diversity. And then it makes you reflect on your own progression as well, and at that time I was struggling. I was the only woman on that team and I was struggling. I was struggling to get my voice heard, and it was that classic I would say something and nobody would pick up on it, and then five minutes later when the guys around the table would say the same thing you know it's slightly different words and everyone. It's a great idea.
Speaker 1:Amazing idea, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's much bigger. What am I doing? What am I doing? And I think that was so. That was a very sort of formative couple of years for me, really working there and my analogy and I'm sorry this is a bit again, this comes from the.
Speaker 2:My favorite sport is skiing. I love skiing. I went as a kid. I've been all the way. It was one of the things my dad never got a chance to do and he really wanted us to do it, so he sent me on school ski trips or whatever.
Speaker 2:And on a lovely sunny day I am a brilliant skier and I know I am I can ski down anything and the winds in my face and I absolutely love it. But on a whiter out, you know, when it's snowy and you can't see them on the foot in front of you, I don't in my head, I don't think, oh, it's the conditions, I think it's me and I doubt myself and I doubt my ability. Well, I know I'm the same person on the sunny day, on the whiter out day, but it's that environment that I turn back on myself and I criticize myself. And that's what I was finding in the workplace is. The workplace is sort of designed to be a sunny, lovely day for some people and it's designed to be a whiter out for others. And that's got nothing to do with the different abilities of those two people, it's just about the context in which they're, in which they're operating.
Speaker 2:So what I'm trying you know, what I am now trying to do through my role here at ISS is make sure that it's a sunny day for everybody, whatever that means for them, you know. And then it's up to them, you know, then they've got to take it forward and it's. It is their ability and their commitment and their drive and their passion and whatever. But that's what we need to do is make it a sunny day. The conditions be the same for everybody.
Speaker 1:That's a great analogy. I've articulated that really well, in particular with equity.
Speaker 2:ultimately, yeah, absolutely, but I think it is that bit that you throw it back on yourself. You know it's. I never, ever blame the weather. I always blame the oh God, I've got myself a fitter If I've lost that half a stone before I came on the holiday, or you know, you blame yourself, and I was finding that. And I'm sitting in this meeting, nobody's listening to me and I'm not thinking there's something wrong with this environment. I'm thinking there's something wrong with me and unfortunately, I think that's how you know. That's how this works, isn't it? It's people internalize it.
Speaker 2:And actually, what we need to do is just create an environment where you never have that dark voice in your head that's saying it's you.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I think it's also a huge benefit having a peer network. Absolutely, yeah, in particular other brilliant CEOs, other brilliant leaders who are there to be able to share the journey. And you know it can be you know, as you've described so articulately really lonely and isolating place the higher you go in the corporate hierarchy, not only the low and the low of diversity, and diversity in all of its different guises, but also it's a lonely place. Yes.
Speaker 2:And it is. And you know, you and I have had some challenging, great challenging conversations, and that's what you need and also some reassuring ones as well. And what I'm loving with what you're doing, with getting us all together, and it's a self-selecting team to a degree, isn't it? Because it's people who are passionate about this, about the value of inclusion and equity. So I've had some great conversations that you know, and from really different sectors, but coming together on this one topic where there is a lot of intersectionality between what a bank does, what a retailer does and what somebody in a services organisation like ourselves does as well.
Speaker 2:So I think it's really good from that, just having people who are going through the same things that you are and taking away that feeling of it's just me, I'm alone, but also just really practical stuff as well. You know, there are two or three things I picked up that day. My team always hate me going out to things like that because I come back going, oh and we could do this and we could do this, you know. But I think there are three very, very practical things that I picked up on immediately. So it's both the more ephemeral bit and the very, very tangible practical bit.
Speaker 1:I have to ask the question if you don't mind. We've talked about the roots becoming a CEO, the profound impact that family and those around you have had on your drive to getting to where you are. Is there anyone that you would say has almost been an activist in your life, personally and or professionally? That's shone a light during those dark times, Because there are ups and downs, in particular in roles like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so actually the person I rarely mention is my husband actually, and I probably should mention him because we got together when we were 19. So just before we went to university, and we'd been together all the way through. And from Dave Dot, he always, we always agreed we would have two careers. We wouldn't have a lead career and a secondary career, we would have two careers, and he has protected my ability to do that probably more strongly than anyone else, and we're at slightly different stages now. He would like to retire and I can never see myself really retiring, so we're at a slightly different phase at the moment, but he has always been the person who's helped me think things through, remove the obstacles, and for that I'm very, very, very grateful. I probably don't term often enough, but I am very, very grateful. He's been my enabler because we've not had that.
Speaker 2:I read articles about other chores chores at home, separately shared out or whatever. We do different things, but we certainly do our fair shareage. He never bought into this. He was babysitting the kids as a favor to me. He was parenting, he was co-parenting and he did his fair share of the pickups and the drop offs and all of that and he wanted to, and I think his relationship with our children is so much better for that. So I think there's been some upsides to him. I do think there's been some downsides to him as well, though I do think it was a taboo. He went up through the, he was in the consulting, he went up through the big five route and he was. He did get his partner, but in the route to that, suddenly saying I'm really sorry my kids have been sitting there for school sick and I need to leave this meeting now had a bigger impact on him than it did on me, surprisingly. And the comments would be can't your wife do that In the morning? So I thought my wife's quite busy, actually, so right, so him. And then in the work environment, I'm a bit the same with mentors. Really it's arms and legs of people, it's not one person. But there are things I've learned. You know, I think quite early on realised that no one is perfect. But actually if you can learn one aspect that somebody does really really well and learn from that and then turn to a different person for a different aspect.
Speaker 2:But the bit I would go back to is I went to the start-up and we grew very rapidly. It was a really fun time. We were doubling in size every year In the lead up to Year 2K. We were a tech company. We were doing really, really well and at the height of the boom we got bought by a much more sort of long established great reputation with the city company run primarily by women. So the most of the exec board was female. The chief exec was most of the. In fact it was almost the reverse of a lot of companies. The HR director was male and pretty much the rest of the exec team were female. So really inspirational bunch of women and I learned again different things from each of them. But the chief exec there was absolutely phenomenal and she was definitely a big part of forming me, I guess, into being a leader.
Speaker 2:She was also very early on to this whole thing about can you make activism work as a commercial lever. So she invested very, very early into India. So this was when the IT world really moved offshore to India and she bought an Indian company and nobody knew what the hell she was doing and what she was doing it for. So that in itself was fairly groundbreaking. But also she invested in a charity that was helping to educate girls in India. And again, this is 30 years ago now, so this is way before anybody else was doing it, poor thing. And she built it into contracts, so with customers, that if, for every 10,000 pounds you spend with us or whatever, we'll fund one girl through school in India and we can get you to meet them. We can fly you out to India, we can show you our facility, we'll take you to school, we'll get to meet the children that you're investing in, and so it's a really early lesson in the fact that this can be commercialized.
Speaker 2:And what's your phrase? That you can do good by Do well by doing good, do well by doing good. It was a really very early example for me of how you do that, but she was a learning curve for me in so many different ways. She was very, very tough, so she had a thing around if you're 5% over your forecast, it's as bad as if you're under because you're still out of control. So she really taught me how to run a P&L properly and you fall back on it all the time.
Speaker 2:She was a great one, for her praise was you were desperate for a praise because it came out so little, but when it did. Oh my God, was it absolutely on the mark and did it mean a lot to you. But she was also, I remember, my second child. I was pregnant and I'd told I didn't work directly for her, I worked for somebody else. I told him very early on and he had told her this was before I told my parents, just because I've not seen them. I was telling them person. And I walk into a big conference 250 people and she's on a balcony up above me and she shouts let's brilliant.
Speaker 2:And of course, everyone turns around and then I'm kind of having to tell 250 people that I've never been baby before. So her whole thing about the bringing a person to work again was a. But she was also the one who told me I came back after two weeks holiday with said children and was feeling a bit grumpy because I was leaving them behind for the first time in two weeks. And she walked in and she said what on earth is up with you? And I said, well, I'm missing the kids. You know, I've had two weeks with them. And she said you'd make a terrible full-time model. Don't even think about it. She was right. She was absolutely right. So she was a fantastic role model. And actually that company and have you ever met Dame Stephanie Shirley? I haven't, so you should. So again, she's on the Diary of a CELIO podcast. You should listen to this really great podcast. But, dame Stephanie, so the company I worked for, she founded. She'd retired by the time I went to work there.
Speaker 2:But she if you ever want to be blown away by somebody she came across on the Kinder Transports in the start of the Second World War, her and her sister. So her parents put them on the train, sent them over here. So she grew up, she wanted to be a fantastic mathematician and she went to work for one of the big tech companies at the time and then when she had a baby it was almost she was literally given a sort of P45, of course, you want to, you won't want to work anymore. Well, you get, you know, there you go. So she started her own tech company in the in the 50s I think. It was aimed at getting women back into the workplace, so it was all based on working come home.
Speaker 2:So at the time it was punch cards, programming computers through punch cards. So she'd distribute the punch cards out to her programmers wherever they lived and they'd do this and they would do things like they programmed Concorde. I mean, they weren't doing sort of sideline things, they were doing like real time computing on amazing things. And then she built up this massive, massive empire and then she gave up quite early on to become a full time philanthropist and her story is amazing. She is the first person to actively be delisted from the times rich list because she's given so much money away by now. And that is you know, and so you should. And again, I've met her a couple of times at various events. But again, and that was the ethos of this company, and again it goes back to that tone at the top and you know that was the company that she founded Absolutely, absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1:Absolutely phenomenal. And there's your absolutely phenomenal yourself. Honestly, on a good day maybe. The work that you do makes a difference to so many people. It really, really does, and I can't tell you how fulfilling it is just spending this time with you and hearing the candid honesty, the ups, the downs, the. You know the root to success and what that means ultimately.
Speaker 2:I think you know, talk about it. It's all come together with this job at ISS and I think it's because here this is absolutely our core business. You know we employ 30,000 people in the UK, we employ 350,000 across the world and because of the nature of what we do, a lot of the time the job they get with us is the job an individual gets with us, is the difference from living a life in poverty to that first step on something that can become. You know, it can become a job and then it can become a career if that's what the individual wants and that is so powerful. But also, you know, we employ so 350,000 people across the world. I think even in the UK we're up to something like 170 languages spoken. We've got people from all sorts of educational backgrounds. We've got people from all sorts of culture, race, ethnicity. We embrace people with all sorts of different abilities as well.
Speaker 2:And it is the first time I feel like I came home when I joined here, because it is so important to us in everything that we do. And again, it is that whole thing about what do we need to do to create an environment where you can thrive and we can give you, and our strap line is this place to be you. But one of our core values is giving people what they need to become who they want to be. And that might be that you're very happy doing what you're doing and we just need to make sure we pay you correctly and we keep you safe, and that's lovely. But it can also be that you want to do that bit more. And if me telling my story helps one of those people to think actually that could be me or something like that could be me, then it's worth it.
Speaker 1:So final question, before I do my best to summarize which already I'm thinking how do I summarize all of the learning lessons from our conversation today? But what would you say is your secret to success?
Speaker 2:Oh wow. I think and again it goes back to this whole thing about realising what your superpowers are I, for a long time now, have fallen out with the way we define leadership. I don't think the way the Western world particularly defines leadership is the right model. I think it favours a certain type of leadership which actually is very disempowering to people beneath you know. So it's the big egos who think they know the answers, and I think I very quickly realised that I couldn't be, that it just didn't sit comfortably with me.
Speaker 2:It didn't meet my dad's test of can you look yourself in the mirror and what I realised was that what I've got is different but it's just as good, because I think my and actually what's interesting now? There's all this talk now about authentic leadership and I read it and I think that's what I've been doing. You know it's about creating the environment that other people can thrive. So I think my superpower is that I'm not, fortunately wasn't formed in that mould of the leadership role model that's been in fashion, I would say probably for the last couple of hundred years. I think I somebody once said to me the problem is you're a 21st century leader, but most of the world's stuck in the 20th century and I kind of feel that I'm coming an age of age now where that's really relevant.
Speaker 1:Well, I completely agree, obviously.
Speaker 1:But I think that it's a really pertinent point the sharing of the story and also the creation of that safe space, because ultimately, that leadership and that honesty and vulnerability, almost it starts at the top and it trickles down Yep Dairy very quickly when it is at the top, first and foremost and coming back a little to something you'd mentioned around your husband and that you decided very early on that you would both have your careers takes me to thinking about me and my husband.
Speaker 1:When he took a couple of weeks off and perhaps hopefully his company is not watching that, you know, the culture was so that he felt he needed to go back after a couple of weeks. He felt he needed to go back because he didn't want to be overlooked. So, whether you have policies and procedures and everything like that in place, versus also the hearts, the minds, the story telling you know you have the data, etc. There's multiple different pieces that are required in order for that to really translate into the roots and the branches of the organization, which is what you do so very well is creating that safe space. Because even if you have some of these pieces in place and the culture is so that people don't feel that or it might be looked down upon or frowned upon. They're there to take that time, then it will never stick.
Speaker 2:And my favorite quote on gender balance is one of the suffragettes and it's we have to free the women so they can free the other 50% of the world, the men. And I do think that's a big thing for us if we can make, if we can make and men in our organizations feel just as comfortable about taking paternity leave which the take-up slots are still terrible. Shared parental leave is still terrible if we can make everyone feel as comfortable, that's when I think we'll hit a real breakthrough, a real breakthrough point, and it really it hurts me that your husband still feels like that at the end of two weeks. He's starting to worry again. You know, again it's we've not made enough progress, therefore, have we? But?
Speaker 1:but you know that's that's why we're having this conversation, absolutely, but then it's also the automotive arena and that is exactly why you know what you've done on this journey is so tremendous and you've got to keep out that because it can be an interesting job at the time you know sharing, but ultimately what you do is making a huge impact, and I, for one, am incredibly grateful to have had you join us today, because there's been so many things that have been learned.
Speaker 2:Well, I really enjoyed it love you so much.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much Lo.