Peter Ankerstjerne is Chief Strategy Officer at Planon and the Chairman of the Board of the International Facility Management Association (IFMA). Planon is the leading global provider of innovative real estate and facility management software, proven best practices, and professional services that support building owners, occupiers, and service providers.
Before joining Planon, Peter was the Global Lead of Facility Management and Experience Services at JLL, the Head of Facility Management and Workplace Experience for PxWe at WeWork, and the Group Chief Marketing Officer at ISS A/S. For over 27 years, Peter has sharpened his expertise in leadership, team management, inclusion, and marketing.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Peter Ankerstjerne shares how the pandemic has affected Denmark and their approach to managing the population’s vaccination and health
- Peter recalls his past experience and the lessons he learned at ISS, WeWork, and JLL
- Why is WeWork strategically placed to solve the hybrid work-from-home format?
- Increasing the level of flexibility in the workplace to meet the new market
- How will hotels and resorts break into the co-working market?
- Peter shares how Planon uses data to analyze and assess how companies can allocate their space for increased productivity
- How can you increase workplace flexibility with data and AI?
- What can businesses learn from hotel and resort management by increasing the value proposition of coming to work?
- Peter describes his role at Planon and the future of sustainable companies
- Why companies need an AWS system to measure their environmental impact
- Peter and Greg talk about how to make a career in facility management
In this episode…
Facility Management is a $1.1 trillion industry and growing. More than ever, companies have started to take an interest in how they can improve workplace interaction and productivity.
Among the many things 2020 has taught us, one of the most valuable lessons we’ve learned is that the hybrid work-from-home model is effective for productivity—and creating a sustainable workspace is critical to the current population. Peter Ankerstjerne, Chief Strategic Officer of Planon, knows the importance of creating a co-working environment and just how companies can use data to put their offices to better use.
In this week’s episode of Watching Paint Dry, host Greg Owens is joined by Peter Ankerstjerne, Chief Strategic Officer of Planon, and Chairman of the Board of IFMA. They discuss the future of remote work, how data can help businesses become sustainable, and why the workplace will become an even bigger social hub in the next ten years. Peter shares why co-working spaces are needed more than ever during the pandemic and the unique opportunity hotels and resorts have to step into the co-working industry.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Peter Ankerstjerne on LinkedIn
- Planon
- International Facility Management Association (IFMA)
- WeWork
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry Podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of 1000s of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:32
Hello, everyone, this is another episode of Watching Paint Dry Podcast. We are into the first week of February, time is flying by fast. We’re still here in Northern California. And what’s really nice California has like opened up more of our restaurants and hair salons and nail salons. So that’s a that’s really good news and really good for those companies. So I’m hoping everybody out there is doing well. This Watching Paint Dry Podcast is sponsored by my company McCarthy Painting. And we do interior and exterior painting throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, and for commercial type work. And what we’ve been focusing on here a lot on this podcast is talking to facilities managers and property owners and business owners throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond and just kind of gathering information and learning about the industry as a whole. And it’s been lots of fun. My company McCarthy Painting has painted many, many projects throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. We just did a whole bunch of work discovery Bay Museum, we just did a really beautiful job on a bank, Chase Bank. We’ve done work for Google, Autodesk. And many, many more, you can find out more information by going to info@McCarthy painting.com, and I’m super excited to have Peter Ankerstjerne on the call today from Denmark, all the way over from Denmark. And we get to have this kind of conversation. I haven’t been to Denmark, and I’m hoping to learn a little bit about Denmark as we go. It’s I think the fourth international person, we also have Katrina Stevenson on the call. And she works for McCarthy Painting, and sometimes she chimed in to welcome Peter,
Peter Ankerstjerne 2:19
thank you Greg. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be on your show here.
Greg Owens 2:22
Yeah. And how I mean, I’d like to just start with, like, how things are going for you there in Denmark, like what’s the word on the ground in this global pandemic there?
Peter Ankerstjerne 2:35
I think I mean, it’s such a small country. I mean, you can fit the entire nation of Denmark, you know, in, you know, probably in the pocket in the San Francisco Bay Area somewhere. But so we only like a little short of 6 million people here. So I think we’re doing reasonably well, to be honest, we are still in a kind of a lockdown at the moment. And and we have been hit also severely. But But I think comparatively, I think we’re doing we’re doing okay, there’s only only a couple of 1000 people who have died in Denmark, that’s still way too many. But still, I think again, relatively speaking, it’s it’s the numbers are okay. And and we are good we are, we have actually been really good in the country to distribute the vaccine now. So we already have a fairly large proportion of the population. The elderly people first, of course, have been vaccinated, and it’s being rolled out as soon as we can get the vaccine from the producers. It hits it simply hits the ground, running and goes into the people who need sets. So and it’s a very digitized society we have here. So so it’s actually very easy to get the vaccines out and get people registered and everything like that. So it seems to go quite well. And we do expect the entire country to to be vaccinated, and you have that flock immunity by June already. So that’s that’s
Greg Owens 4:00
that that is amazing. Because I all I hear is like how California keeps dropping the ball, just California, not the rest of the country is the country’s another whole problem. But, you know, I think there’s something like 40 million people in California. So no bureaucracy, a little bit bigger than
Peter Ankerstjerne 4:18
it’s easier to manage a small country like Denmark. That’s, that’s for sure.
Greg Owens 4:22
I would, I would, I would hope so. And think so. And you and your family, how are things in that regard?
Peter Ankerstjerne 4:27
Very well. We haven’t been hit. So we are very fortunate and blessed that we haven’t been influenced at all so far. Knock on wood, by by by COVID-19.
Greg Owens 4:38
Right? Neither I think only one person in my column has gotten it. And that was somebody in the office and she was the most careful of all of us, right? Like, man, we’re all doing our part. And we’re all he was like really staying away from everybody. Really, really, you know, on top of the big way, and Nemesis So, I want to ask a question because I’ve been following. And you guys are right close to Sweden. Yeah, no, we’re talking about facilities boundaries. But I have to ask this question about what, because I’ve read a lot of things from our country about Sweden, what’s your view of what they’ve been doing? And you know, how they’ve been handling this pandemic? Well, it’s
Peter Ankerstjerne 5:22
certainly had a different strategy than that my country and I and I guess the rest of Europe, and probably even both of the worlds but but I think I mean, in all respect, again, it’s Sweden, it’s only 8 million, 9 million people, and also a very disciplined country and a little more liberal in certain ways. So they do have a belief that people can take care of themselves. And if the government tells them what they expect people to do, then, you know, they do it. And that actually works well for the Swedes. So I think the numbers are quite a bit higher than what we’ve seen in Denmark and Norway, the neighboring countries and Finland also. But But I think, I’m sure they have their reasons to do that. But but but I think they’ve been at the second wave, I think they’ve probably handled the second wave better than they did the first way. So I think that probably learned from some of that,
Greg Owens 6:14
right? I think so too. From what I read. Katrina, do you have a question? I
Katrina Stevenson 6:18
- For those who don’t know, what is Sweden doing differently than Denmark and America?
Peter Ankerstjerne 6:25
Sweden never went into lockdown. So so they kept stores and hairdressers and nail salons and everything, you know, offices completely open, the government will come up with some warnings and some recommendations on how to behave. And people will generally follow that as other countries were
Katrina Stevenson 6:45
present for yourself, basically. Yeah, yeah.
Greg Owens 6:48
Yeah. And for the most part, I think this from what I’ve read, the Swedes also were abiding by the rules and not going into the office and not going out as much or congregating as other wouldn’t have the same heavy handedness and wearing masks.
Peter Ankerstjerne 7:02
Yeah. And they didn’t know it was passed by law. Right? No, no. So even if the country they make these emergency laws,
Greg Owens 7:11
yeah. And the reason I was asking that, because because a lot of times when I read the articles, they compare Sweden to Denmark, and they compare Sweden to Norway, you know, because you guys are up there had endorsed the super, like something I don’t trust the news sources sometimes, right? You read these articles, and they’re in so many ways. So it’s hard to, it’s hard to get I like hearing what boots on the ground is like, so? Yeah. Peter, tell me a bit about yourself. I mean, you you’re just leave your you’re just starting a new job at Planon? Yeah,
Peter Ankerstjerne 7:44
yeah, that’s correct. And just started this week. So
Greg Owens 7:47
you’re just getting go? regard and Planon is a software company in town for about what you what you’re learning and what it is and that kind of thing.
Peter Ankerstjerne 7:57
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a little bit about my background, I spent 25 years with the same company, and I joined them straight out of university. So in 94, I joined a company called ISS, which is a big Danish multinational company, 500,000 employees and 72 countries or something like that, providing all all services that you will find in an FM type of contract cleaning, catering security, property services, technical services, front of house and all that stuff. And I worked with them for 25 years. And I left ISS in 2019. To join WeWork, and I probably, I probably joined we weren’t getting Time To be honest, because even though it’s a it’s a fascinating company, and and, and I’m still a big fan of WeWork, and I was recruited by Adam Newman, but Adam Newman was sort of kicked out of the company in September. And then, you know, he was the CEO. Yeah. And one of the founders of WeWork, very great visionary guy. And I think he’s in Mill Valley. I think it does. Yeah, I think he has a house and I probably he probably has a couple of houses, to be honest. Now after the WeWork. Yeah. pay out.
Greg Owens 9:10
Katrina and I live in Noe Valley, and I’ve gotten to visit where WeWork in Mill Valley has like a secret secret room, where you can go in and go through a, you know, a secret passageway to get into it. And it’s filled with vinyl records. And it was his his collection.
Peter Ankerstjerne 9:26
Oh, cool. Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, yeah. So no, but Adam left. WeWork in September of 19. I joined in April 19. And then then the company was sold to SoftBank and the business I was sitting in powered by it was called Power BI we was closed down and then I left the company in March and then joined JLL directly after WeWork, so unfortunately, I didn’t spend a lot of time JLL I spend a little less than a year, which is a great company. I really loved working for JLL, but I got an opportunity to join or Planon and Planon his sudden, AWS a provider, it’s called integrated workplace management system. And it’s it provides the platform, then you run all your facilities and real estate on. So. And I do believe that, that this is a really interesting market. Because after especially after COVID-19, the workplace is going to be digitized. And these types of technologies are going to be absolutely critical in order to run an effective workplace for the future.
Greg Owens 10:31
Katrina had a question about WeWork with one of her favorite companies.
Katrina Stevenson 10:36
That was so well said about, you know, US transitioning into using the software. But actually, the same thing happened to me with WeWork I
Peter Ankerstjerne 10:45
got Oh, okay.
Katrina Stevenson 10:46
Well, I had gotten a free subscription for three months, right in like, the end of February last year, and I was waiting to use it. I was so excited. And then the COVID. Hit Yeah,
Peter Ankerstjerne 10:59
yeah. And they’ve had a I mean, they’ve had a rough time, with COVID. Without a doubt. I mean, it was rough for them going through a failed IPO and taken over by SoftBank and downsizing the company and getting out of the the leases that they were that they were in. But but with COVID, it was like a double whammy. That’s all I hit them. Right. So so that has been tough. But But again, it’s a great concept, great workplaces, so I’m sure they’ll survive. And once they are, I think they’re ideally positioned for the future, because I think the world is going into these types of flexible workplaces. So So I think, you know, they’ll, they’ll have a good time coming up, if they just can wait it out and get to the other side of COVID. Like anybody else, I suppose.
Greg Owens 11:43
Yeah. And maybe even I have some friends that work for WeWork and talking with them. And they were high up in we were in talking to him about their strategy made total sense to me because some of their WeWork spaces were like these tiny little conference rooms, Bubbles, right? I think there’s a possibility as we end COVID A slowly going back to the office, people are gonna want someplace to go work that’s like a bubble, clean atmosphere. And I’m sure they’re looking at like all the technology that they can to sort of keep people safe in those buildings, right. And so I think that they’re interestingly positioned in that way of doing that kind of stuff. And I’m sure SoftBank is dumping a lot of money into research.
Peter Ankerstjerne 12:22
I’m sure they are. But no, but I agree with you. I think that’s part of it. But another part of it is, I think, what we’ll see is that, you know, the portfolio, especially of large companies are going to shrink. But if we made a survey, we called the experts assessments, where we asked some, some thought leaders and industry experts about how they saw the whole return to the office post COVID-19. And the consensus was really that it probably about a little more than a third of the workforce is going to stay away from the office two days or more per week, which means that you know, you’re only you’re sort of stuck with 60 65% of the workforce was going to get into the office, which means that you can actually get rid of a lot of your square feet of space. And you’re going to turn it into a completely different workplace environment, where it’s more what we call the hub and helping club model where you come in, you know, for a day to do work. But when you get into the workplace, it’s a much more social event, because you want to meet your boss, you want to meet your peers, colleagues, you know, you want to have social engagements, because you can’t get that at home. But people are still gonna work from home to a very large extent also after COVID-19 boy that that makes a lot of sense to me from what I’m seeing with the tech companies in
Greg Owens 13:36
the Bay Area is exactly that. It also makes me think of like, that means if you’re only coming into the office two to three days a week, you could live way further out in the suburbs, which also has been true for us in this pandemic is I’m up. I’m up here in the Lake Tahoe region right now. And, and the real estate up here has gone gangbusters because of all the tech kids coming up here and just buying houses and being up in the mountains and you know, not having to worry about going to work. And going into.
Peter Ankerstjerne 14:03
And I think also talking about we work I think what we’re also seeing, I think we’re seeing that in some of the big metropolitan areas like New York, San Francisco, but also London, Paris, Berlin, in Europe is we are seeing that some of these co working facilities are moving out into the suburbs, they’re becoming smaller, and they’re becoming more local, because you can you can get rid of the commute entirely. And I think one of the good things that come out of COVID-19 situation is that people have realized that you can actually work effectively from home, it’s not as social and you don’t want to be at home, you’re stuck at home the entire time. You want to have that flexibility. But if you can take away the commute, of going to work, you know, every morning and every afternoon when you’re going back from work again. That’s pretty valuable because that’s time you typically get for yourself, right? It probably a lot of companies are getting part of that time as well. But nevertheless, I mean, if you can take that away, I was commuting about an hour to and from work, you know, every morning and every afternoon. That’s two hours a day at my disposal, if now I take and I don’t take my car anymore, because I work from a local co working facility, which I take my bicycle, and it’s literally five minutes on bicycle to that space, which is just fantastic. It’s just amazing. So imagine what it does for the environment and what it does for the time that I free up to do other things. Right. So I think that’s also something that’s going to be part of the equation about the whole attractiveness of going to work and also moving some of the workplaces into flexible offices, that’s going to be away from the city core, and it’s going to be into the suburbs much more. Right. Right. Katrina,
Greg Owens 15:35
do you have a question in there? Oh, no, I
Katrina Stevenson 15:38
did not. But I just keep thinking about WeWork and how much of a great idea that it could be. And my commute is only 10 minutes to and from. So I don’t have that. I love working at the office and seeing people first. And that’s how I work the best. It’s different for everyone.
Peter Ankerstjerne 15:56
It is. And that’s the key. I think that’s absolutely key, that level of flexibility and individuality that we have around our workplace and our work style and that work style. It’s not even, you know, you cannot put a mark and you and say, Okay, I want to work from the office book, you can and that’s your preference. But it probably changes day to day based on what you’re working on what kind of projects you’re involved in and stuff. Because sometimes you may just want to have a couple of hours or maybe a day where you say, Hey, I’m going to do some concentrated work, I have some hard deadlines, I’m not going to meet anybody, maybe you’re better off sitting in a secluded place somewhere at work, maybe even at home, or maybe, you know, sometimes you just want to meet people. And it’s completely the opposite. Right? So I think it’s gone. And I think we’ll see the workplace have to change and to be much more accommodating of the different work styles we have as individuals, both as part of our personality, but also at a given point in our work that either requires that we do more social project, collaborative work, or more more secluded work where we have, we can stay at home or in another place. So and I think that’s going to be the challenge because the by and large, the workplaces are not set up that kind of work style at this point in time. So that’s gonna require a lot of change for a lot of corporations out there, right.
Greg Owens 17:11
I know for myself, like I struggle with working at home, because I’ll work I’ll be like, Oh, I why I’m doing this, I should do some, you know, handiwork around the house, I should fix this, I should meet with the plumber, you know, and interrupts my day. And what used to be great for me in work was like, I’d go to cafes, right. And I’d set up at a cafe for a few hours. And for some reason, that just kept me super focused. And then they took that away from me, even the outside staff weren’t allowed to do outside dining at all. So they took all the chairs away. So then I’m like, sort of lost for a little while until I could find my way again.
Peter Ankerstjerne 17:46
Yeah, no, but I think you’re right. And I don’t like working from home either. First of all, I have four kids, and there seems to be one kid out of the house all the time.
Greg Owens 17:56
And secondly, I know you’re home. So they come in, like you might tell them like Do Not Disturb but there you can hear them outside your door and you’re like,
Peter Ankerstjerne 18:07
exactly. And then, you know, my other problem is that every hour when I need a break, I go to the fridge. And even though I know that there’s nothing in there that’s of interest, I do that anyway. And you get like 89 steps during the day and you go back and find the fridge into your desk and it’s like it’s for me it’s terrible. I definitely also come to the office
Greg Owens 18:28
in Katrina seem to me with this too is like I’ll wander as we’re on these zoom calls, I’ll wander from like one room to another to another back to the other. It’s like what am I What am I What am I hoping to change in environment will be better it’s like oh, I have a ski least a person up here that ski leases from me and she’s an executive of a company and we were talking the other day at the slopes there’s no no work place and so we work at the steep slopes where you can rent the rooms right small little rooms where you can actually get some work done and then get a few runs and come back get a few more a little bit of work where it would be super valuable. Right like you know, another at some resorts but not this one that we’re going to now and that would be it would be good to see more of that kind of thing like moving that satellite those satellite offices out to the suburbs in places where you can actually get you can go somewhere and yeah,