Head of Property and Workplace Services

Taylor Wessing

Taylor Wessing is a global law firm that serves the world's most innovative people and businesses. Deeply embedded within our sectors, we work closely together with our clients to crack complex problems, enabling ideas and aspirations to thrive. Together we challenge expectation and create extraordinary results. By shaping the conversation in our sectors, we enable our clients to unlock growth, protect innovation and accelerate ambition. 

With 1200+ lawyers, 300+ partners, 28 offices and 17 jurisdictions we are looking to expand our Workplace Services  team, with the addition of a Head of Property and Workplace Services.

The opportunity for you

We're looking for an experienced Head of Property & Workplace Services to help deliver our real estate strategy and a seamless operational service providing a premium client experience across all our locations.

The individual will have strategic and operational responsibility for the Taylor Wessing UK, Ireland & Middle East (UKIME) property portfolio, including real estate strategy & project management, operational management and service delivery, procurement, budget & supplier management, business continuity planning, health & safety and sustainability.

Key responsibilities

The Head of Property & Workplace Services role & responsibilities include:

Property projects

• Influencing the Taylor Wessing real estate strategy & optimising our property portfolio, including developing business cases for new locations, leading on lease & dilapidations negotiations and overseeing the design and fit-out of new and existing locations.
• Supporting the final stages of an exciting workplace change programme which has involved moving into an interim home for a 2-year period whilst overseeing the complete refurb of our London HQ, 5 New Street Square.
• Driving progress across all RIBA project stages including workplace strategy & design, construction, fit-out and operational readiness for new and existing locations.
• Ensuring a focus at all times on ensuring a great experience for our people who should feel delighted with their workplace, able to maintain high levels of productivity and benefiting from the social interaction, networking and development opportunities that the office facilitates.
• Overseeing property project management, financial management and carbon emissions management and optimising the productivity & satisfaction of our people through any workplace change.
• Providing project support to our international offices as required, including: Dublin, Dubai & San Francisco.

Leadership

• Lead and develop a multi-site, multi-functional team, providing a vision for the team, with clearly articulated priorities aligned to the firm's strategy - enabling high performance, supporting individuals to develop and deliver on their potential, and enabling strong collaboration and co-ordination within TW.
• Develop excellent working relationships within the firm, building a strong TW network within Business Services and across the Practice Areas, forming strong partnerships, delivering on our aspirations of client service excellence.
• Embrace a client-led focus and continually strive to deliver client service excellence, reinforced through proactive effective communications and engagement with stakeholders.
• Engage actively externally to understand evolving industry & market best practice and how innovations such as GenAI can enhance our delivery of a digitally-led, high quality and efficient working environment and advocate for a positive culture of continuous improvement across all our offices.
• A strategic thinker who also enjoys being hands on. Ability to communicate and work with people at all levels from board level Partner to contract cleaner.

Supplier Partnerships

• Building strong relationships with specialist 3rd party suppliers, (such as advisory agents, architects, workplace strategy & design consultants, sustainability, health & safety and MEP consultants), to ensure we deliver technical excellence and good value across our property portfolio.
• Overseeing the supplier procurement process to ensure strong supplier partnerships with our workplace services suppliers, landlords & tenants.
• Building strong relationships with all workplace services suppliers to deliver a first-class client experience across all our locations and a seamless experience for our people, including catering & hospitality, travel booking & cost and carbon emissions management, reception services and switchboard.

Workplace Services

• Overseeing the day-to-day facilities management & maintenance for London HQ, Liverpool & Cambridge alongside overseeing the outsourced facilities management for Dublin.
• Driving an absolute focus on client service excellence across workplace services delivering high levels of workplace satisfaction and great feedback from our clients.

Workplace Sustainability

• Achieving & maintaining ISO standards for each office, delivering on our environmental sustainability commitments. 
• Delivering robust carbon emissions data management capability to track and deliver our sustainability targets. Actively contribute to our delivery of near term Science based targets, enabling reductions in our carbon footprint in relation to scope 1,2 & 3 and actively supporting TW's commitments through to the 1.5 Legal Charter.

Workplace Health and Safety

• Developing our Health & Safety policies and processes to reflect a high-performance and people-led culture, ensuring both effective oversight but also proactive day-to-day engagement and execution (e.g., workstation and health and safety assessments).  
• Ensuring that the health & safety of our people, our suppliers and our clients are at the heart of everything we do.

Performance Management

• Working closely with Finance and Risk teams, overseeing Property & Workplace Services related procurement, risk management and financial management, including planning & budget management, recharge mechanisms, cost control, service charge management and any serviced office finance control and verification.
• Developing Workplace Services data governance and document management, including accountability, process flows and approvals - improving data quality, frequency and relevance to enable effective data-driven decision making. 
• Producing effective management information & performance reporting, including cost and carbon emissions reporting, sub tenant recharge management, business rates and insurance validation, challenge and reporting, health & safety, office attendance, space utilisation, workplace analysis, trend reporting & benchmarking.
• Influencing decision making by producing data-driven analytics input for investment decisions and project status reporting.
• Overseeing Property & Workplace Services supplier contract management, including financial analysis & compliance, the preparation of quotations/tenders, writing tender specifications, contract schedules service level agreements, analysis of supplier bids and award of contracts, performance benchmarking and regular supplier performance reviews.
• Monitoring contractual payments to suppliers / sub-contractors and ensuring payments are accurate and timely and in accordance with the agreed contract terms.
• Supporting the development and deployment of Supply Chain policies and processes, and ensure they are followed, with particular reference to ethical standards.
• Creating and managing Property and asset data registers to audit and inform contract, maintenance and project decisions.
• Overseeing Property & Workplace Services systems and ensuring effective deployment of any new digitally led capability to enhance workplace operations.

Benefits

Here are a select few benefits that Taylor Wessing offer; 

• Hybrid working (Offering the opportunity to work remotely, while maintaining a social boundary by working from our award-winning offices for 3 days a week) 
• Holiday (Our basic annual holiday entitlement starts at 25 days, with a further discretionary day of paid leave in December. You may also purchase up to five extra days each year (pro rata). 
• Enhanced Maternity and Paternity leave (After one-year service, you are entitled to up to 26 weeks leave full pay if you or your partner give birth or adopt a child). 

Along with these there are many more benefits we offer, with the addition of a comprehensive flexible benefits package available. 

Our culture

Nurturing a diverse, inclusive culture allows all of our talent to flourish, sparks creativity and powers innovation.  We continue to build a team that exemplifies inclusivity and reflects the firm's core values: creative, excellence, integrity, responsible, respect and team.  We value and celebrate the differences in who we are, what we have experienced and how we think, so all candidates will be treated fairly regardless of age, caring responsibilities, disability, gender identity, marital status, neurodiversity, pregnancy, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation and socio-economic background.

The way we work

At Taylor Wessing, we never settle for average. We're creative thinkers, problem solvers and continuous learners who excel at what we do and believe our best work is still ahead of us. We are a firm that's large enough for you to achieve your ambitions, but connected enough to be a true community.  

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