Head of Facilities & Workplace Recruitment for Sarasin & Partners

Background

Sarasin & Partners is a £17bn global thematic investment manager, part of the Bank J. Safra Sarasin Group, managing assets for private clients, charities and institutions. Its approach is relationship-led, and the quality of its environment is part of the brand.

After more than 20 years at Juxon House, the firm had outgrown its London office and moved its headquarters to 50 George Street in Marylebone in early 2026. The building is newly refurbished Grade A space of around 33,000 sq ft, with a further 6,900 sq ft of outdoor space, and Sarasin is its sole occupier. It asked Maxwell Stephens to find a Head of Facilities & Workplace to take ownership of the building and set the standard for how it runs.

The Challenge

The building was designed around client experience: a top-floor client lounge and events space with a roof terrace, high-specification meeting suites, a private kitchen with an on-site chef, and amenities closer to five-star hospitality than a conventional office. The role had to match it.

On paper this looked like a Facilities Manager vacancy. In practice it was a workplace and client experience appointment. The postholder would run a single-site headquarters end to end: planned preventative maintenance, compliance, health and safety, budgets, and energy and carbon reporting in line with the building's BREEAM Excellent credentials. They would also oversee front of house, meeting rooms and events, and the catering operation, and lead the existing Facilities Officer and front of house team.

There was a reset to deliver as well. Some third-party service contracts, across cleaning, security, M&E and catering, were underperforming, and the new Head would need to raise standards and KPIs while keeping suppliers on side. The role also carried regular contact with senior leadership, including the CEO, so discretion and presence mattered as much as technical competence.

Candidates who combine that mix are rare. Strong facilities managers often lack hospitality polish and a client-facing manner, while strong hospitality professionals often lack building services and compliance depth. The people who have both are usually settled in good roles and are not looking.

Our Approach

• We toured 50 George Street and met the client before settling the brief, so we understood the standard the role was being asked to meet.
• We reframed the role as workplace and client experience-led rather than traditional facilities management, and agreed that a targeted, headhunting-led search would reach the right people better than a broad market sweep.
• We mapped the places this combination is found: private wealth and investment management, five-star hospitality moving into corporate environments, and premium professional services with a strong front-of-house focus.
• We proposed that, alongside candidates within the agreed range, the client also see one or two profiles from higher-calibre backgrounds, so they could benchmark what the market offers.
• We approached candidates directly, including people not actively looking, and screened them against the brief: building operations and compliance, improving underperforming suppliers, oversight of catering and hospitality, and credibility at senior level.
• We interviewed 65 candidates and presented a shortlist of six. That quickly narrowed to two, and the client made an appointment within four weeks.
• We ran the process on an exclusive basis and managed it through interview and offer.

The Outcome

The search was run exclusively for Sarasin & Partners. From 65 interviews we presented six candidates, the field fell quickly to two, and an appointment was made over a four-week period. The appointee has started at the firm's Marylebone headquarters.

"I can honestly say that we ended up with the best candidate in the end."
Matthew Hicks, Sarasin & Partners

Why This Search Worked

The brief was reshaped early. Treating the vacancy as a facilities hire would have produced a shortlist of capable building managers who were not right for a client-facing, hospitality-led office. Treating it as a workplace and client experience hire put the right backgrounds in front of the client from the start.

Exclusivity made the headhunting approach possible. The strongest candidates for a role like this are rarely on the market, and a direct, confidential conversation is often the only way to reach them.

If you are hiring a head of facilities or workplace for a client-facing, hospitality-led office, talk to Maxwell Stephens about how we would run the search.