By Graham Jervis
Edition 2 – February 2013 Pages 24-28
Tags: brand • customer experience • engagement • hotel • service
Facilities management (FM) has long recognised that its role involved addressing the needs of physical assets, technology and people. The relative importance of these three, however, has changed over time as the increasing technology content of buildings and regulations have introduced greater focus on assets and technology. Now, the emphasis for FMs needs to be more concerned with people and in assisting in the cultural changes that accompany a more mobile, sustainable future.
In 2008 The Chartered Management Institute said: “Tomorrow‘s workforce will be increasingly individualistic, older, more mobile, more international and ethnically varied and, in the cases of skilled employees, far more demanding of their employers. Tomorrow‘s managers will have the unenviable task of trying to harness these forces of change rather than being overwhelmed by them. Such a task will require them to be flexible and creative.”
In the same year, at a EuroFM Futures workshop in Zurich, the changes facing FM were summarised in this diagram (right) which illustrates the forces that are changing the characteristic of the workplace. Increasing need to accommodate the environmental concerns over sustainability is a long term trend that will affect all businesses and will not allow an organisation to ignore changes it has to make in its operations and investments.
Another major force at work in the short and medium term is cost reduction to survive the current economic problems that beset the developed world. Many would contend that in order to achieve both, in the medium and long term, we shall require significant cultural changes; changes in the way in which we view the use of space and how we shift from today’s adherence to standardised processes and central control to a more localised active involvement of people and their self-determination.
These are significant changes which shift the focus from physical asset management to design, development, provision and maintenance of workplaces that encourage and support peoples’ productivity in all the types of work they do.
However, asset maintenance and provision of building-based services remain, making the job of the FM very demanding and probably too wide to do alone. The collaboration of other service functions (HR, IT, procurement, legal, etc.) and the business itself is, and will be, the foundation for the management of workplaces.
It is with this diversity of management responsibilities that I see a need to bring the existing core capabilities of FM, recognised by BIFM, IFMA and others, together with the best practices which we in AWA have developed with clients. The issues of an agile working world can then be brought into a single management model. The model I chose was influenced by an early IT service management framework developed by CCTA and which I felt may assist in dialogues with IT, by providing some common language.
Before going through our approach to best practice workplace management, let me answer the question: “What is workplace management?”
I would contend that the only asset that an organisation really has is its people. Management of the workplace is about providing environments that allow people to work at their best. In other words, physical assets and services are enablers and it is the responsibility of FM, IT and other service functions to provide these at an economic price. Workplace management is totally about designing and consistently delivering effective and economical workplace experiences to everyone, whenever and wherever they work and under any business condition. All the capabilities in the model enable this.
The model
Let me take you through an overview of the model so that you can get a flavour of what is covered and how it responds to the demands of the future. It consists of 10 capabilities, see below.
Strategic Management involves the creation, championing and leadership of the workplace strategic plan which needs the involvement of the C-suite executive, CRE/FM, HR and IT functions and their support and endorsement of the corporate vision and goals that the plan is based upon.
The workplace manager will need to have much closer access to high level business plans and have an understanding of the direction and scale of the future headcount, type of work and locations. The strategic plan should support the image that the organisation wishes to project into its markets but also embrace the experience of the workplace that is consistent with that image. It is time that such an executive was located on the same floor as the C-suite executive rather than next to the plant room. It implies great changes for CRE/FM executives and for some it will be well out of their current comfort zone. For others, the changes are already taking place where C-suite executives have recognised the importance of supporting the changing ways in which their people work.
The Client Relationship role is vital in the future, given that the workplace manager will have to develop a closely involved role with business units. In my view, business units should be charged directly for the resources that they consume, and they in turn will seek continual better value for money and demand better understanding of their evolving needs.
These management demands will require internal enhancements in the skills and nature of the future workplace management teams and add to traditional technical based skills. Re-training in, or acquisition of, the new skills of consultancy, data analysis, social network analysis, business analysis and behavioural analysis will be necessary.
Nothing embodies the role of a manager more than his/her ability to manage the performance of his/her organisation and people. Good Performance Management skills can inspire and encourage collaboration; poor skills can lead to confusion, demotivation and wasted effort. All managers should be passionate about building great performance management capabilities in their organisation. Identifying what to measure, and getting others to agree, are the bases for great performance management.
As the Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, said: “If you don’t measure the right thing, you don’t do the right thing.”…