Assignment Task
Interview with Emma Hines from Tarmac
Michael: Well, I would like to thank you very much for welcoming us to the Headquarters of Tarmac in Solihull on behalf of Coventry University and the Chartered Management Institute and in taking part in this very exciting project which we are doing which is going to be taken by all our postgraduate students in the future.
Could you start by telling us a bit about who you are, what you do and what the company does?
Emma: Of course. So, we are really excited to be involved in this opportunity. I am the senior manager for sustainable construction at Tarmac UK, I work as part of the sustainability team which look after sustainability and environment for the whole of the internal and external facing part of the Tarmac UK business.
Tarmac is producing building and construction materials, and we also offer a contracting service as well. What I mean by that is we produce things like cement, lime and powders, aggregates, asphalt, concrete building products and the contracting services that go along with actually servicing that market, also placing materials, so when you see contracting out on the road placing asphalt, lot of the time that will be Tarmac groups who are doing that.
Michael: Right, that’s great. As you know the students are interested in management, leadership and that’s what they are studying. In those terms, what do you feel that your company does well?
Emma: So, we’ve got about a 150 years’ experience, and I would say, definitely experience, and be able to adapt to the way the market changes and understand how the market is going to change. We’ve got a strong track of investment in the UK and a very national coverage. But there is another side to the business, that people might not recognise when we talk strengths and that’s, we’ve got about 7,000 employees and it’s a very diverse workplace that we have and we see that as a very big benefit for the business. It’s getting lots of people, different ideas and everyone being able to speak up, actually have an opinion and idea to help us to generate new ways of doing things in Tarmac.
Michael: You have an assisted by which
Emma: Yes, we tend to work on a feedback service, we plan to do employee surveys in the future, but we have a very strong social kind of communities, so we use Google communities and social networks and Twitter and all this sort of things as well. Plus, we have a monthly talking point sessions, so employees are able to hear what is going on in the business but then also able to feedback. We have what we call connect forums which actually have to represent the employees. But it’s a very, very open business and, you know, the door is always open. We can have in anyone who got a new idea and is always encouraged on people. Because this is nothing bad to the person that actually does the job. Being able to think of a better way of improving that.
Michael: One of the things that study in the course is the management of change, and are there areas for development, things perhaps in the company that you want to develop and at that point you ask people to change?
Emma: Yes, so the construction industry in the UK is very traditional. However, we have seen a lot of change within the business. So for example, last year, we were acquired by a company called CRH a global and construction materials company and so we’ve gone from being a 7,000 employee business to being part of a 93,000 employee business, over 37 countries. And the change involved… and feeling that you are part of a bigger company and a bigger environment is a challenge, I think. And it’s getting people to understand also how we can connect with all those other businesses within the CRH network.
Michael: Do you have any sort of methods by which you might do the communication?
Emma: Yeah, so we get a monthly newsletter from CRH and we are just starting to see the launch of internet, so the people can actually communicate with other people, global networks have been created, and even just a global kind of who is who and who does what in each business. Things like that that might sound quite simple but actually put us together, helps to create those networks of people.
Michael: In a bit more locally, in terms of leadership, I know you are a leader in your position, can you talk a little bit about the way that leadership is done here, maybe, how the accountability works, how the communication changes the work?
Emma: Yeah, so in terms of leadership, leadership is something Tarmac takes incredibly seriously, in terms of our formal training and development process. We have what we call, a leadership academy, so we actually run sessions internally and also externally with universities. And all of our senior management and the line managers go through a leadership academy process so that they learn how to adapt, how to change and how to support people, and all the people report to them within the business.
In terms of communication, as always saying earlier, we use things, obviously there is the old fashion stuff, be emails and all things like that, but we also use an internet, we have a kind of an online, we call it a VOT, but it’s like an online network, we share our storage and via that, and also through all other sorts of social media, ways of sharing information. That’s something that the business has adapted and changed to quite quickly over the last few years, because social media really has taken over as a way of actually communicating internally as well as externally.
Michael: That’s great. There must be sort of external influences, things that change, opportunities, threats that you’ll know about. Is there a particular vision that you have about taking this all, taking a different approach?
Emma: Yeah, sure. We have a vision and CRH our parent company has a vision to be the leading global materials company in the world. And associated with that, we need to understand how we’re going to adapt in the future. So we look at things like building information modelling, and that kind of digital transformation area, modern methods of construction, things such as circular economy and resource efficiency and new materials, as well is something that we are very interested in. And then the topic which we want the students to actually look at is around the topic of future of cities and how cities are going to look like in the future.
Michael: That’s great. Let’s get on with that. I mean that’s a very exciting topic for them, so please tell us all about it.
Emma: Sure, so in terms of future cities, really the challenge of building the future cities starts today, started yesterday, it’s an evolving thing. Tarmac wants to know what the future city will look like, how it’s going to feel like, how people are going to use that city, what they are going to need out of the city. How should Tarmac adapt to that, as well. And also, you know, which is going to be our future protofron, how we are going change our business and transform, to be able to provide, and also operate in that future city model. So to set some complex context, there are a kind of 64% large UK cities in the UK, they make up around 9% of land’s mass, but actually account for around 54% of our population, so again you start thinking well that’s where people are moving into and more continue to do that. 58% of jobs are based in cities, 60% of the UK’s growth value added is based in cities, and it’s only going to increase, those figures is all predicted to be increased, so we are really interested in that look, that feel, the function, how things are going to change, how we’ll need to operate with all those kind of global mega trends of growing population, the need for resources and materials. All these kind of factors are going to how we all are going to effectively operate in the future.
Michael: Right, that’s an incredibly interesting subject. In terms of the company, this is not what Tarmac is famous for and presumably that means that there is quite a lot of people within Tarmac who are going to need to look at things a bit differently, I think it would be very interesting to know how you might approach that team that change-of-thought process.
Emma: Sure. And it is really down to thinking about leadership and thinking about the future and being far more long-term and strategic in the way we think about our business. A lot of people look at Tarmac and think it’s just a company that makes asphalt for roads or we just dig materials out of the ground. We had times in the last few years that talked about us as being in the sunset [old and declining] industry, that’s certainly something that we do not want to be and do not believe that Tarmac would be in the sunset industry. And that’s what has triggered that thought process, ok, how do we convert that, how do we think about that and how do we adapt to make sure we are a sustainable business. And you know… adapting internally as well as externally.
Michael: It also represents a level of risk.
Emma: Yes, it does.
Michael: From your point of view, you sound excited about it. There are a lot of other people might see it as increasing their uncertainty, in a position, and therefore how they take it onboard, is difficult.
Emma: Sure, yeah, I mean, I would agree with you. In terms of construction processes in the UK, they haven’t changed very much in the last 50 or so years. But actually, the internal focus of that business, in a way, how internally it has changed through the use of data and use of different devices and social media, and all these other things. We are adapting in a very modern business internally. If people look out with me and think we are an old fashion business, so internally, we use to change and internally we use to be able to adapt our processes and do things differently so we can service that customers in a right way.
A lot of people wouldn’t think about the fact that we transport huge volumes of materials in the road every day, so actually we’ve got transport experts. We manage land and look after land for very long periods of time horizons and pieces of land 50, 100, 200 years old, so we’ve got guys that are actually qualified in land and natural resources, they know how to restore land, we’ve got ecologists, and geologists and there is always other areas and parts of the business that people wouldn’t necessarily see. But in their own right they all used to look in how to adapt and update us.
Michael: Sure, yeah. I mean the… One particular interesting aspect is the communication aspect because Tarmac is ideally is a global brand, it’s a name known to certainly everybody in this country, which is a strong brand, and you want to take it to somewhere new. If you want to… I’m hesitating because I’m asking something here… perhaps in 5 years’ time, what would you like the perception of Tarmac to be in people’s mind?
Emma: For us, it is all about being the leading solution provider, being able to help our customers to adapt and change to the way businesses run, also the way that construction adapts and changes. We believe that sustainability is going to be huge drive in that and the need for green buildings and better buildings, resource efficient buildings, are all levers [something you use to try to persuade someone to do what you want or to get the result you want] that can help our customers to actually meet these future requirements.
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