Putting our people first

Buro Happold’s Chief People Officer Misti Melville on how we’re strengthening our practice with a talent-centric recruitment and retainment strategy.

Valuing our people

What’s unique about working for Buro Happold is our commitment to being both client and talent centric. We have strong beliefs that everyone can make a positive difference in the world – on their projects, for their clients and for themselves. Our people care about the legacy of our work and the impact it has on our planet and our communities. This is embedded in our culture and values.

The Buro Happold values underpin the growth of our practice. Our business model is democratic. It’s built upon on a combination of regional empowerment and global connectivity, embracing shared knowledge and collective communication between our leaders and our people.

At Buro Happold, fostering an inclusive, equitable and diverse business is at the centre of everything we do.

Misti Melville, Chief People Officer, Buro Happold

My focus as Chief People Officer is on improving business performance through the growth and development of our people. Unleashing the potential of our highly talented teams is our priority. Engaging and retaining talent as well as driving a culture of shared learning and collaboration are the areas where my team and I add value to the business. Currently, we are focusing on bringing in senior leaders to drive this change through regional empowerment across our sectors, disciplines and specialisms.

The challenge for our teams is to find the balance between engaging and empowering their teams whilst also bringing in new talent to achieve a symbiosis between our talent attraction strategy and our talent retention strategy. In my role, I aim to guide the business to ensure that we achieve  a balance between the two.

I don’t think there’s ever been more of a focus on talent than right now. It’s the number one issue not only for our industry but across all sectors. We know that it’s the differentiation of how we approach talent that will give us the edge.

I believe that we need to lead and engage our teams with a similar approach to how we nurture client relationships. This will ensure that we deliver their drivers, needs and ambitions, and we are placing real emphasis on developing team leaders to drive this agenda.

Our differentiation

Buro Happold is founded on our great people, which is what makes our firm so special. As we’re not a behemoth company, so we can be more agile and nimble in comparison to many of our competitors. Therefore, our people can make a bigger impact within their sector or specialism, particularly within our environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) agenda.

We don’t just pay lip service to our ESG agenda and policies. Our global leadership and HR teams are working on ESG-centric policies to ensure that we instigate positive change within the built environment. Taking collective climate action and setting sustainability objectives applies to all areas of our business – in our operations, on our projects and in our individual career plan objectives (My CPO).

My CPO encourages our employees to set personal annual targets not only related to their role but to the impact they can make on the environment and/or equity for all. We want our people, policies and practices to be influenced from the ground up, not the top down.

Fostering a culture of equity and inclusivity

We are continuing to improve our organisation by embracing mutual responsibility and reflecting the varied cultures of the communities and clients we serve. Global connectivity and knowledge sharing are the foundation of a strong business model.

We encourage multiple forums to capture the voice of our people, particularly around equity, diversity and inclusion. Our computational collectives drive digital excellence, while innovation labs and other programmes develop skills in building trusted adviser relationships with clients.

Our equity initiatives have evolved by using many different channels to hear what people across the firm have to contribute. By amplifying employee voices, we are driving positive change within our ESG strategy.

We know we have a lot more to achieve but we’re on the right path to becoming an even more inclusive and diverse organisation. The results of our 2021 Culture Survey indicate that Buro Happold fosters a culture of inclusivity and that our people feel a strong sense of community within their teams.

It’s significant that 98% of our employees believe they have a responsibility to help nurture this culture. We want everyone to have a place where they belong, a voice that’s heard and the opportunity to thrive at work. Our global HR team help drive this cultural evolution in partnership with our leaders and employee representatives. We believe that allyship is key to our success and longevity as a business.

I’m very proud that my team is so passionate about employee engagement and empowerment. They encourage open dialogue, raise awareness, nurture an inclusive environment and provide many learning and developmental opportunities to help people understand their role in fostering a diverse and inclusive environment.

Regional empowerment, global connectivity and business growth

Our growth strategy around client and talent centricity aims to build relationships of trust with our clients, collaborators and our people. Not only is this about safeguarding business resilience and providing a healthy return on our investment, but it’s also about providing continuous learning and career opportunities for our people.

For over 40 years we have built a world-class reputation for delivering innovative and value-led engineering solutions. However, that doesn’t mean we’re resting on our laurels. We care deeply about the ongoing improvements to the quality and legacy of our work.

It’s not a one size fits all approach at Buro Happold. We understand that all our offices have an individual identity. People need a sense of belonging to their team as well as regional autonomy. Our focus is also on the benefits of our people being joined up globally around clients’ needs, areas of expertise (our disciplines), and our deep sector knowledge.

Buro Happold is continuing to grow around the world. I believe it’s an exciting time for people to be part of this growth. Consultancy, advisory and technology are important areas for this growth alongside continuing to offer design excellence and innovation.

Misti Melville, Chief People Officer, Buro Happold

I believe that our people are our most precious resource. Their engagement is the key to driving trusted client relationships. What’s different about Buro Happold is that we celebrate the people behind the projects.

Our recent Culture Survey revealed that 95% of our employees felt pride working for Buro Happold. However, they’re also hungry to upskill, gain new expertise, learn about different cultures, achieve diversity of thinking and relish new ways of working.

Our recent acquisitions of brightspot, Paladino, Vanguardia Ltd, and its subsidiary Crowd Dynamics International, help us achieve this as they share this set of values. These companies continue to have their own identity, but they add to our rich culture by being part of Buro Happold. Our aim is to partner and collaborate with them – we believe that we’ll learn as much from them as they will from us.

Flexible career paths

 As a result of the increased digitisation of our industry, we provide continuous on the job career and development opportunities for our people. We offer a more agile career path with global and multidisciplinary service offerings.

My career advice for everyone is to broaden your ideas on what’s possible and be open to opportunities along the way, especially those that take you out of your comfort zone or help you develop a global mindset. Now that we’re moving away from more traditional or rigid career path trajectories, embracing diversity of thinking and experience will make us more resilient.

This philosophy also helps to push the boundaries and encourage people to be less risk adverse with their careers. Increased digitisation means that we must continue to evolve our careers with client-centricity playing a key part. This requires a proactive and multifaceted approach to client relationships.

Part of our differentiation as a firm will be in the identification of non-technical skills that are also required on projects. By taking a more holistic approach to our projects we can provide advice or consultancy that’s valuable to our clients based on experience that goes beyond technical qualifications.

Misti Melville, Chief People Officer, Buro Happold

Wellbeing and resilience – the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic

From the beginning of this unprecedented global pandemic, we have put our people’s wellbeing first. Company-wide collaboration and responsiveness through continuous monitoring and communications via multiple channels has meant that we’ve been resilient as a business.

It’s testament to the efforts from every person in the firm that we achieved this resilience. The result from our Culture Survey indicate that 96% of our people feel that Buro Happold responded well to the Covid-19 pandemic.

What the pandemic has shown us is that some of the fears we had around physical team supervision, control of work and presenteeism were unfounded. Of course, we are still finding our way through Covid-19 and are continuing to adapt our business operations and organisational design.

We are adapting not just from a Covid-19 perspective, but in terms of how people want to manage the future of their working relationships, with both clients and colleagues. Covid-19 has accelerated the flexible work practices that were already in operation. Through our internal surveys, feedback and other forums, we know that our people want increased flexibility in terms of where they work, how they work and the times they work.

We’ve learnt that our teams work very effectively without having to see each other face-to-face every day, and indeed not reside in the same location. Yet, the majority of our people also want the face-to-face social interaction, mentoring and career development that comes from being in an office environment. However, I know that people won’t want to go back to one strict model of working.

No one person is the same – everyone has different needs and views on what their working pattern should be dependent on their individual role and circumstances. The sweet spot is finding a balance between what works for the individual, what works collectively for the team and what works for our clients.

Our flexible hybrid working model has been made possible through the utilisation of technology. Fortunately, we’ve proved that we’re a highly digital workforce, particularly in the way we collaborate internally and with our clients.

The momentous efforts from our people and leaders throughout our global practice, our superb team of HR professionals, the reliable systems and technology, and the strong support from our IT team has helped us through the pandemic. This increased digitalisation has bolstered our collective working practices to enable us to seamlessly operate and effectively serve our clients and communities.

Of course, it’s a real work in progress as we continue to develop our agile working practices. I want to see how we can personalise the approach as much as possible in order to provide opportunities that cater for both the individual and our teams. Whilst each of country that we work in operates different tax and legal systems, I have no doubt that people want a new working paradigm. We have the expertise within Buro Happold to drive this change.  

Despite all the challenges over the last 18 months, our business has remained resilient. We continue to put our people first, striving for a sustainable and equitable environment for all. Our people are overwhelmingly proud to work at Buro Happold (95% say so in our 2021 Culture Survey) as am I. I know that we have the right foundations in place to grow from strength to strength.