Workplace Services Lead at WPP in Chicago, IL

Purpose of Role:

Serve as WPP's senior Workplace Services representative across an assigned portfolio, with overall responsibility for stakeholder relationships, workplace outcomes, financial stewardship and alignment with WPP & REWS standards, providing client-side operational governance.

Translate business priorities into workplace requirements and ensure outsourced service providers deliver against WPP standards, financial objectives and contractual commitments.

Individual Accountabilities:

• WPP Stakeholder & Business Partnership: Serve as the primary REWS relationship lead for assigned businesses and senior stakeholders, translating business priorities and employee needs into workplace requirements and outcomes.
• Workplace Strategy & Experience: Ensure workplace services, space and experience align with WPP strategy, utilization objectives, employee needs and global standards. Oversee space planning activities and portfolio optimization initiatives to support effective workplace outcomes.
• Financial Stewardship: Work with Finance stakeholders to prepare annual budgets and quarterly forecasts for the assigned portfolio, monitoring variances and savings opportunities. Challenge service-provider proposals and ensure spend aligns with approved WPP priorities.
• Service Provider Governance: Hold outsourced providers accountable for contractual commitments, SLAs/KPIs, financial targets and service outcomes. Challenge performance gaps and ensure corrective action is taken by provider leadership.
• Risk & Operational Governance: Ensure assigned properties comply with WPP and REWS risk, governance and operational excellence standards. Lead the identification, oversight, management and escalation of material resilience and service risks and incidents, ensuring appropriate governance, incident management and timely resolution across the assigned portfolio.
• HSSE & Business Continuity Compliance: Compliance with WPP & REWS Health, Safety, Security and Environmental policies and Business Continuity certification process, and other operational standards, partnering with relevant WPP functions and service providers as required.
• Performance & Insights: Use service-provider reporting, workplace data and stakeholder feedback to assess performance, identify continuous improvement opportunities and inform WPP decision-making.

Role Boundary:

The assigned portfolio may comprise a mix of campus and non-campus locations, requiring the AWSL to apply a flexible and adaptive approach to oversight, governance and stakeholder engagement in line with the evolving REWS operating model.

This is a WPP client-side leadership and governance role.

Day-to-day operational delivery and the direction, supervision and management of service-provider personnel remain the responsibility of the applicable service provider.

Onsite/In office role at one the larger campus locations within respective region.

Competencies, Knowledge and Experience:

Competencies:

• Strategic Service Provider Relationship: Proven ability to build and maintain strong, collaborative relationships with suppliers.
• Stakeholder Leadership and Business Partnership: Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to build strong relationships with stakeholders and understand their needs.
• Commercial and Contract Governance: Understand contractual commitments, SLAs/KPIs and commercial models to govern provider performance, contract compliance and support WPP decision-making.
• Leadership: Ability to lead through influence, establish clear client expectations to include stakeholder needs and hold service-provider leadership accountable for agreed outcomes.
• Digital Dexterity: Ability to leverage workplace data, reporting and technology apply critical thinking to evaluate performance, inform decisions and challenge service-provider outcomes and provide accurate data to the central REWS team as required
• Collaboration: Excellent ability to work collaboratively with internal teams, service providers, and stakeholders to achieve common goals.
• Change Management: Lead WPP stakeholder engagement and business adoption associated with workplace change, partnering with service providers and REWS teams on implementation.
• Strategic Business Acumen: Understanding of the business context and how workplace services contribute to overall organizational goals.
• Responsible Procurement: Partner effectively with WPP Procurement to support responsible and sustainable supplier governance.
• Continuous Improvement: Ability to identify opportunities to improve workplace performance through data innovation and best practice.
• Adaptability and Continuous Learning: Commitment to continuous learning, professional development and the adoption of industry best practices to support the evolving REWS operating model.

Key Shared Accountabilities:

• Working with Global REWS Coe teams to implement global standards and initiatives.
• Collaborating with ET to ensure seamless technology integration in the workplace.
• Partnering with HR to support employee well-being and engagement programs.
• Working with Security to ensure a safe and secure environment.
• Working with Procurement to ensure any changes or new contracts are routed through to this team.

Key Interfaces:

• Regional Director REWS (Reporting Line)
• Regional Procurement
• Regional PMO
• Outsourced FM Provider Leadership
• Food & Beverage Providers
• Global REWS COE Team
• ET Department
• People Department
• Business Unit Leaders
• Employees
• Landlords
• Sub-Contractors

Key Metrics and Targets:

Financial Performance: Performance against approved budgets and savings/value commitments.

• Service Provider Performance: Performance against agreed contractual SLAs/KPIs.
• Stakeholder Experience: Business and employee satisfaction with workplace services.
• Portfolio Effectiveness: Space utilization and alignment with WPP workplace objectives.
• Governance & Risk: Effective oversight and escalation of material operational , resilience and service risks.
• HSSE & Business Continuity Compliance: Compliance with WPP and REWS Health, Safety, Security & Environmental (HSSE) standards, Business Continuity Planning (BCP) requirements and associated certification processes across the assigned portfolio.
• Sustainability: Performance against agreed WPP and REWS sustainability targets across the assigned portfolio, including energy consumption and other applicable environmental commitments.

Critical Knowledge & Experience:

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence stakeholders, build trusted relationships and drive alignment across a complex environment.
• 5–7+ years in corporate workplace, CRE, workplace experience or outsourced-service governance, preferably within a complex global organization.
• Bachelor's degree in Facilities Management, Business Administration, or a related field. Relevant professional certifications in workplace, facilities management, corporate real estate or related disciplines are desirable.
• Demonstrated experience operating as an intelligent client within an outsourced FM environment and holding strategic service partners accountable for performance.
• Strong financial and commercial acumen, with experience of budget development and forecasting and governing complex service-provider relationships through budgets, contracts, SLAs/KPIs and performance frameworks.
• Understanding of workplace management systems, reporting and data analytics, with the ability to interpret outputs and use insights to support decision-making, performance management and service-provider governance.
• In-depth knowledge of HSSE regulations and best practices
• Strong understanding of workplace strategy, space planning principles and portfolio optimization practices.
• Experience leading complex workplace, transformation or change initiatives across multiple locations and stakeholder groups.
• Knowledge of sustainability principles and practices.

Who you are:

You're open: We are inclusive and collaborative; we encourage the free exchange of ideas; we respect and celebrate diverse views. We are open-minded: to new ideas, new partnerships, new ways of working.

You're optimistic: We believe in the power of creativity, technology and talent to create brighter futures or our people, our clients and our communities. We approach all that we do with conviction: to try the new and to seek the unexpected.

You're extraordinary: We are stronger together: through collaboration we achieve the amazing. We are creative leaders and pioneers of our industry; we provide extraordinary every day.

What we'll give you:

Passionate, inspired people – We aim to create a culture in which people can do extraordinary work

Scale and opportunity – We offer the opportunity to create, influence and complete projects at a scale that is unparalleled in the industry.

Challenging and stimulating work – Unique work and the opportunity to join a group of creative problem solvers. Are you up for the challenge?

#LI-Hybrid