Diversity of thought

F&RM caught up with Sarah Dixon from Johnson Controls at London Build 2022 to talk about leadership, people, and culture in the fire and construction sector.

The ‘unsung heroes’ of the fire industry are its products, but the vital role that employees play behind the scenes and the impact their ideas will have on fire safety in buildings should not be neglected as Sarah Dixon outlines.

F&RM: One of the messages you gave in your talk at London Build was that people are just as important as products in the fire industry, so what can companies do to help bolster the role of the employee in providing high-quality fire safety?

Sarah Dixon: It’s all about empowering employees, but I do think some businesses support and engage with their employees better than others. Across both the fire sector and the construction world, we see different management styles. On the one hand, you’ve got the top-down, performance delivery approach, and then you’ve got the more diverse businesses that really encourage their employees to stand up and who empower them to make the right decisions.

In the alpha-dominated culture model, it’s all about performance and the bottom line and we saw this exemplified in the race to the bottom. Part of business is absolutely about performance and driving revenue to make sure there is still a business there in 10 years’ time. But the pressure to deliver you see in those businesses can make people take shortcuts if they feel they can’t speak up when they see a problem.

As part of the Fire Protection Association's continuing commitment to increase fire safety awareness across the built environment, a number of informative feature articles are available to read on our website.?You can read the full article here.