Transforming Work with Sophie Wade 151: Noel McNulty - Curating Workplace Experience to Support Flexible, Distributed Work
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
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.”