Aug 14, 2025
Noel McNulty, Global Real Estate and Workplace Director at Twilio, brings learnings from hospitality to facilities and workplace experience in the tech and legal sectors. He explains how a “know your customer” mindset drives effective workplace design with personalized experiences. Noel discusses evolving from traditional facilities to values-driven workplace experience. After pandemic-based adaptions, he shares the emerging signals and realizations of the shift to flexible, remote-first work. Noel endorses curated events and environments to foster connection, engagement, and wellbeing to enhance productive, distributed work.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
[1:30] Noel
moves from Ireland to the US, starting in hospitality before moving
to facilities management.
[3:09] Noel
uses hospitality skills in facilities work, focusing customer
service and operational efficiency.
[4:28] Working
on a large office restack, Noel is exposed to design, construction,
and project management.
[6:04] Getting
to know each customer personally is essential to deliver effective
workplace solutions.
[10:41] Noel
adopts Maya Angelou’s insight that people remember how you made
them feel.
[13:14] Tech
companies embrace high visibility events and high-touch workplace
experiences.
[16:23]
Conservative sectors, such as law firms, foster very different
workplaces to tech companies.
[18:15] The
pandemic halts a major growth period, forcing an immediate shift to
remote working.
[19:24]
Downtime is used to catch back up, building playbooks and
operational structure.
[20:41] Phased
office returns have strict safety measures, understanding
psychological issues.
[22:38]
Leaders discover remote work productivity, adding asynchronous
learning practices.
[24:25]
Pandemic-based work shifts lead to rethinking space use and global
workplace strategy.
[25:03] Twilio
commits to remote-first for talent and customers, learning from new
habits.
[26:36] Using
regular employee surveys to inform and guide culture and
strategy.
[27:51]
Workplace experience is decisions are grounded by core values and
principles.
[29:22] “Open
Work” is launched as a framework for distributed teams to
thrive.
[30:36]
Effective workplace experience focuses on understanding customers
and data, and cultivating curiosity.
[31:24] Why
empathy, self-awareness, and understanding needs are essential to
inform workplace strategies.
[31:45] Noel's
coaching benefits his leadership, self-awareness, and support of
everyone's well-being.
[33:39] Noel
recommends how reframing questions can unlock new
perspectives.
[35:11] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: To improve workplace experience, first, everyone gets to contribute as all their experiences matter. Secondly, get external inputs—there’s a broad community all working on the same issues. Lastly, have fun with it.
RESOURCES
QUOTES
“At the core of all of it, I think it's knowing your customer… that means actually getting to know them as a person, not just about the work they do.”
“You can curate a more unified experience, but there’s still personalization involved. It’s about balancing both.”
“Workplace experience is about how a company’s values show up in the environment and how that reflects in how people are treated.”
“Even as we’ve moved into this remote-first world, it’s really about allowing people to be seen and heard.”
“It wasn’t just because they were a lawyer they got special attention—everybody got that attention, from secretaries to administrative staff.”
“'Open Work' is our philosophy for how we allow our employees to thrive in a remote-first environment.”