Our occupiers

To ensure we are focused on supporting their needs, we believe that working in partnership with a selected group of service partners provides value for money services for our occupiers. To ensure we achieve this, we engage exclusively with selected portfolio-wide contractors who hold an appropriate SSiP accreditation, agree clear Service Level Agreements and Key Performance Indicators as part of the contract procurement process and ensure economies of scale are achieved where appropriate.

As we manage all aspects of our property portfolio in-house, we work closely with our service partners to ensure that they understand our occupiers’ needs. We also enter into three year contracts to help foster a collaborative environment where our service partners invest in the building through their staff by building strong relationships with our occupiers and our on-site staff.

Holding quarterly meetings to review performance, feedback is sought from our Occupier Services Managers and together we are able to consider evolving best practice. Through this collaborative approach we provide an ever-improving service to our occupiers.

Within our managed portfolio, we look after more than 350 occupiers across 47 buildings. Our occupiers are hugely diverse, from Fortune Global 500 companies to sole traders, working across a variety of business sectors. Consequently, at the onset of the pandemic we moved swiftly to producing a practical and usable guide to what we have implemented at our buildings to ensure they remain safe and available for use. Furthermore, after implementing the necessary measures to ensure that our occupier's wellbeing was central to our efforts, we openly shared the playbook with our peers in the industry to help them in their efforts to ensure they are also providing safe and efficient workplaces to their occupiers.

We are committed to ensuring we keep our occupiers, employees, service partners, guests and visitors safe during the pandemic, and have created a playbook to correspond with government guidance as originally outlined by the government in May 2020 and updated as we enter the second lockdown phase.

To that end, we have developed our “Return to the Workplace” playbook to illustrate the measures we have implemented across our portfolio to facilitate safe use of the portfolio at this time. Within it, we outline the operational changes to the building’s common areas required to facilitate adherence to social distancing guidelines and to provide all parties with sufficient information to prepare  colleagues for the changes to the building in advance of a gradual return to the workplace.

Through consultation with our in-house technical services, Health & Safety and senior management teams, we outline the various revised operating protocols for access and egress and safe circulation through the building, deliveries and courier plans, cleaning regimes, M&E services and visitor booking systems that will help ensure a safe working environment for your staff.

Whilst it is uncertain if the current lockdown will be extended, and as we continue to operate within government guidelines, we produced this document to assist our Occupiers identify the duties and responsibilities inherent on all of us to ensure we continue to work safely and in partnership. We have included template risk assessments for occupiers’ use in the appendices.

As more guidance is provided, this document will continue to evolve as we collectively seek to navigate our way through the current circumstances. Whilst we are all eager to return to a semblance of normality, it is crucial that health and safety compliance remains the guiding principle for us all.

We consider that a close working relationship with our occupiers is vital to our mutual success. As a result, we take full responsibility for maintaining the positive relationships we have with our occupiers and manage all aspects of our property portfolio. As part of this process, our Portfolio Managers formally meet every occupier twice yearly and a member of our Executive Committee meets with our top 20 occupiers annually. The ongoing conversations we have with our occupiers enables us to understand what they want to achieve from their space and shapes how we deliver it.

When our occupiers need us, we make sure we are there for them. That’s why we run a dedicated helpdesk and hold regular Occupier meetings to receive feedback and solve any issues.

We have a dedicated GPE Occupier Services Manager allocated to each Occupier, ensuring a human face is available at all times.

In addition, we produce bespoke guides for each building, which provide information on such issues as:

• M&E services
• Access and Security
• Fire, Emergency and Health & Safety procedures
• Occupiers’ Responsibilities
• Insurance
• Guidance, policies and procedures regarding building works
• Environmental Management

We also offer a dedicated web portal to help occupiers with the day-to-day running of their premises. The portal enables us to communicate effectively with our Occupiers about the building’s services, the regular occupier meetings, service charges, any planned maintenance work and primary GPE contacts for the building.

In a highly competitive marketplace where customer experience is a key differentiator, our Occupier & Property Services team has radically improved our occupier engagement through partnering with Smart Spaces by connecting our entire portfolio through an award winning app, named sesame™, which dependent on the building, provides our occupiers with the ability to access the building using their smart-phone rather than plastic cards, to control their own lighting and air conditioning systems and a dedicated lifestyle manager available to them on a 24/7 basis providing a suite of exclusive offers ranging from restaurant bookings to an art advisory consultant. Creating community engagement and providing high levels of customer service is essential in today’s climate as we seek to maximise occupier satisfaction.

Implementation of the app has enabled us to engage directly with our occupiers to provide concierge services across the portfolio, real-time train and tube departure boards, to promote health and wellness initiatives through a number of on-site activities, to advocate sustainability and to provide access to over 245 e-magazines and newspapers, publications, including e-books, games & podcasts, to facilitate B2B opportunities within the diverse business sectors and to create a community of approximately 20,000 users.

To demonstrate the diverse scope of available services and offers available to our present and future occupiers as well as the the agent representative community more effectively, we created a short film to show the service and functionality we can provide to our occupiers as part of the GPE family.