48. The CEO Magazine - January 2016 theceomagazine.com

In The OfficeEXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

Serving Up

ExcellenceWith a global reach and a personal local touch, ISS knows that customer service is the key to success.

Images courtesy of ISS Facility Services

With a history dating back more than 110 years to Copenhagen,

Denmark, ISS is a facility services company with a presence in more than 50 countries and employs more than 500,000 people worldwide. ISS Pacific is the Australian and New Zealand branch of the global giant, which provides facility management, cleaning, catering, maintenance, security, and support services to a range of industries across the country. The Pacific branch of ISS entered the market in 2002, and has grown substantially in the last 14 years to become one of the largest facility services companies in the country. ISS Pacific employs more than 14,000 Australian and

New Zealand workers, and has revenues close to $900 million.

Almost five years ago, Dane Hudson became the CEO of the ISS Pacific region. Originally a chemical engineer, he also has an MBA from Columbia University in New York, and participated in the Stanford University Executive Program. Early in Dane’s career, prominent Australian businessman Richard Pratt took an interest in him, and put him in charge, at a young age, of a $5 million branch of Visy Industries. From there, it was onwards and upwards for Dane who worked in consulting for six years before moving to Yum Brands and the retail food industry. “These initial jobs put me in good stead when I look back at my career, because I was fortunate

to have had experience in a number of different industries,” Dane says.

After working in different roles for Yum Brands in Australia, Dane was offered the opportunity to move abroad, which he says was a key point in his development as a leader. “I went to South Africa, where I was the CEO of the KFC business with revenues of around US$500 million,” Dane explains. “It was a unique experience with a broad range of challenges and issues—plus, it was where I really learnt to be an independent and self-sufficient leader.”

After South Africa, Dane and his family moved to Texas so he could become Chief Finance, Procurement and Facilities Officer of Yum Brands

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International, the global owner of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. Ultimately, he decided to leave Yum after 12 years because he wanted his children to finish school in Australia, so he took up a role as CEO of a wine company, Australian Vintage Limited. After almost five years in the wine industry, he moved to his current role at ISS.

As CEO of ISS Pacific, Dane says it is his job to ensure the company stays true to its vision. “Our vision is to be the world’s greatest service organisation, and I think it’s really important to dissect that,” Dane says. “We are not saying we want to be the best facility management company, or the best cleaning company, or the best integrated service provider—we want to be seen and respected for our customer service. When you look at organisations like Singapore Airlines, or the Four Seasons Hotels, they have the same assets as their competitors, yet they are recognised for their customer service—and that’s the way we want people to think about us. We want people to think about our customer service and that all the services we provide are really just a prerequisite. There is always a compliance component but, in reality, the value we are adding for the client is customer service.

“Our ISS global customer value proposition most clearly defines what we are offering: that is, Service Performance Facilitating Our Customer’s Purpose Through People Empowerment.”

This focus on customer service means that the people at ISS are the key to its success. Dane comments that the ISS team are the company’s only asset, and it is the employees that set ISS apart from its competitors. “Our people are our only asset. Over 95 per cent of the work we do is through our people, not subcontractors.

That way, we can recruit and induct them, give them appropriate training, and establish our unique culture.” Because of the importance of people to ISS, there is a tremendous focus on staff training and development.

“I am extremely passionate about people development,” Dane says. “I believe that every person in the organisation has the right to expect ISS to help them reach their full potential. If they just want to remain in a functional role, that’s fine; but if they want the chance to be the CEO, we want to be giving training that lifts them up the ladder. That’s something I’m extremely passionate about, because, if we can achieve that, then our people will be different to our competitors, and they will then provide the customer service that our clients expect. I’m influenced by my background in fast-food. When you look at fast-food companies, I think they are the best in the world in providing integrated long-term training and development.”

A key part of the journey for Dane over the last 36 months has been getting the company to move beyond the basic skills training that staff need to do the job, and into a space that provides more leadership training. “So, we have leadership mastery groups, key account management training, and we’re now rolling out an excellent

training program for every supervisor in our business. Additionally, we have a global program, called ‘service with a human touch’, which is being rolled out to every person in the business,” Dane explains. “It’s all about explaining to people what customer service really is, because there are a lot of people who don’t necessarily understand how it relates to their role. Our learning management system was launched early this year, and it’s now becoming institutionalised in the business—previously, we required people to step forward and ask for the training, or for their managers to introduce them to it. We’ve now been able to systematise it, and you can lock and load on the compliance training—but you can also then identify the appropriate people for leadership development.”

For this all to work, it takes a large commitment from Dane on a number of fronts. He understands that, in his position, he needs be a role model for potential future leaders in ISS. “It’s really important to realise that, as a CEO, you have immense positional power, and what you say and do can easily be exaggerated. You should never underestimate your leadership shadow.

“It’s critical that the leaders in the business act as role models. That’s one thing I have always tried to

“I am extremely passionate about people development. I believe that every person in the organisation has the right to expect ISS to help them reach their full potential.” - Dane Hudson

“Kronos is proud to be part of ISS’s transformation, expanding its capabilities to provide global self-delivery of integrated facilities services. Under Dane’s leadership, his team live their vision, continuously developing their own capabilities and proudly adding value to their clients.”- Peter Harte, Managing Director, Kronos ANZ

Managing tomorrow’s workforce, today.

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theceomagazine.com The CEO Magazine - January 2016 53.

reinforce with my team, because I look back at my career when I looked at leaders in the business and thought, ‘Could I grow up and be like them? Are they an appropriate role model for me in terms of being a leader?’.”

Another major focus for ISS is innovation. In the last few years, Dane has ramped up the attention of the business to innovation by ensuring every ISS employee is encouraged to think about it. As with his focus on development, Dane doesn’t want only the high-level executives focusing on new ideas; he encourages everyone in the business to look to the future.

“Our values are honesty, entrepreneurship, responsibility, and quality—and innovation is obviously very closely connected to entrepreneurship. We spend a lot of time talking about innovation in our leadership team meetings, my newsletters, and in other company and customer communications.”

Taking it up a level, ISS Pacific assembled a group of volunteers two years ago called The Innovators. “They are not senior-level managers, but rather a wide range of about 10 different people who are passionate about innovation; and they actively seek out innovation from all areas of the company,” explains Dane. “Their key roles are to identify innovations that are scalable, and finding a means to take those ideas and scale them across the business. They have been a really powerful team over the last couple of years and, off the back of that, we created a full time role in innovation. That person is now Head of Innovation for ISS Pacific.”

Once the identified innovations have been considered, they need to be put into action. To implement a number of them, Dane worked closely with suppliers and partners to improve processes in the company and increase growth. “We have really strong partners—such as Bunzl, Kronos and Diversey—and they

have been critical to our progress and innovation. Bunzl, particularly, have been very useful in helping ‘de-complexify’ our business. For example, we initially had over 50 different distributors across Australia; now we have one. So, they’ve reduced the administration in terms of billing, and they are a really good partner.”

Dane was also instrumental in launching the Kronos time and attendance rostering system a few years ago. “That’s provided us tremendous insight; we can now manage our business and labour on a day-to-day basis, which we struggled to do beforehand. It’s a substantial investment, but we are very satisfied with the impact it’s having on our business. Diversey is a global partner with ISS, and they are a strong partner for us here in Australia as well. There is a wide range of services where they really add value: not just with cleaning, but also with equipment.”

For now, Dane’s focus is on ensuring that ISS Pacific has the best staff in the country, and that his team uses their full potential by developing their skills. This is, he believes, the key to providing the best customer service and continuing the growth of ISS in the market. “We have had three strong years of record sales, margin improvements, and increases in engagement scores with customers and employees. Our strategy is to continue to develop the team as we have been doing, while continuing to work with customers so that they truly value the services we provide.”

“We have had three strong years of record sales, margin improvements, and increases in engagement scores with customers and employees.” - Dane Hudson

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