I love connecting with my clients, says Bernie

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS AND THE ROLE YOU PLAY IN IT?

At LiveTiles we design workplace technology solution to boost internal communications, productivity, innovation and human connection. Millions of people use our technology every day to do their jobs in more enjoyable, creative and collaborative ways, including employees from well-known brands such as Pepsi and Virgin.

I am the Senior Vice President of Operations across Europe, the Middle East & Africa and responsible for day-to-day operations. My days are filled with activities such as hiring and nurturing talent at our main hub in Sligo and our other bases across Denmark and Switzerland, driving more efficient collaboration globally, maximising performance against targets and strengthening our relationships with customers and partners. A critical part of what we do is to work closely with and celebrate our customers, so we better understand and solve their employee engagement challenges. HAS THE PANDEMIC AFFECTED YOUR BUSINESS?

Hugely. 2020 was a lesson in crisis leadership for so many businesses around the world and ours was no different. Markets were in significant turmoil between February and April of last year, particularly. It was hugely unsettling when economies started to shut down and many businesses had to grapple with shifting entire operations to a ‘working from home’ model for the first time and experienced reduced or erased revenue streams overnight. Despite being in the tech arena, which has been one of the winners from this pandemic, our new business growth initially went into a holding pattern as companies put budgets on pause until they learned to operate in unchartered territories. It was an unsettling period for us, as we had just acquired two new companies in Europe and had an expanded payroll to absorb.

After the initial change management period, we started to move faster than ever and applied polish to a new offering that we knew would revolutionise all industries that needed to communicate with workers no matter their location, role or device. This was especially relevant for those who were deskless or working remotely, including employees working in essential retail outlets to frontline healthcare staff and teams providing customer service. We poured our heart and soul into helping our customers achieve results that exceeded all expectations around communicating in a pandemic and we are now winning larger global contracts as a result.

ANY PLANS YOU WOULD LIKE TO SHARE WITH US?

Our team in Sligo has doubled in size to almost 20 employees and we will continue to grow. We are excited about the future because we are well positioned to help shape the future of work and to support organisations who are moving to a more hybrid way of working – mixing between office, home or mobile staff. Our area of expertise, the digital workplace, is now a mainstream news story because it is impacting everyone and few want to return to the way things were. Organisations and businesses recognise that to thrive in the new world of work they need to prioritise the employee experience and elevate the voice of employees in their communications and culture.

This forms the foundation of our company values and expertise at LiveTiles and we are determined to play a leading role worldwide, and especially from Sligo.