Noel McNulty, Global Real Estate and Workplace Director at Twilio, brings learnings from hospitality to facilities and workplace experience in the tech and legal sectors. He explains how a "know your customer" mindset drives effective workplace design with personalized experiences. Noel discusses evolving from traditional facilities to values-driven workplace experience. After pandemic-based adaptions, he shares the emerging signals and realizations of the shift to flexible, remote-first work. Noel endorses curated events and environments to foster connection, engagement, and wellbeing to enhance productive, distributed work.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

[1:30] Noel moves from Ireland to the US, starting in hospitality before moving to facilities management.

[3:09] Noel uses hospitality skills in facilities work, focusing customer service and operational efficiency.

[4:28] Working on a large office restack, Noel is exposed to design, construction, and project management.

[6:04] Getting to know each customer personally is essential to deliver effective workplace solutions.

[10:41] Noel adopts Maya Angelou's insight that people remember how you made them feel.

[13:14] Tech companies embrace high visibility events and high-touch workplace experiences.

[16:23] Conservative sectors, such as law firms, foster very different workplaces to tech companies.

[18:15] The pandemic halts a major growth period, forcing an immediate shift to remote working.

[19:24] Downtime is used to catch back up, building playbooks and operational structure.

[20:41] Phased office returns have strict safety measures, understanding psychological issues.

[22:38] Leaders discover remote work productivity, adding asynchronous learning practices.

[24:25] Pandemic-based work shifts lead to rethinking space use and global workplace strategy.

[25:03] Twilio commits to remote-first for talent and customers, learning from new habits.

[26:36] Using regular employee surveys to inform and guide culture and strategy.

[27:51] Workplace experience is decisions are grounded by core values and principles.

[29:22] "Open Work" is launched as a framework for distributed teams to thrive.

[30:36] Effective workplace experience focuses on understanding customers and data, and cultivating curiosity.

[31:24] Why empathy, self-awareness, and understanding needs are essential to inform workplace strategies.

[31:45] Noel's coaching benefits his leadership, self-awareness, and support of everyone's well-being.

[33:39] Noel recommends how reframing questions can unlock new perspectives.

[35:11] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: To improve workplace experience, first, everyone gets to contribute as all their experiences matter. Secondly, get external inputs—there's a broad community all working on the same issues. Lastly, have fun with it.

RESOURCES

Noel McNulty on LinkedIn

Twilio

QUOTES

"At the core of all of it, I think it's knowing your customer… that means actually getting to know them as a person, not just about the work they do."

"You can curate a more unified experience, but there's still personalization involved. It's about balancing both."

"Workplace experience is about how a company's values show up in the environment and how that reflects in how people are treated."

"Even as we've moved into this remote-first world, it's really about allowing people to be seen and heard."

"It wasn't just because they were a lawyer they got special attention—everybody got that attention, from secretaries to administrative staff."

"'Open Work' is our philosophy for how we allow our employees to thrive in a remote-first environment."

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