As buildings become smarter, other changes are taking place at the same time. One such change is with respect to the facility manager’s job, which is quickly expanding to encompass factors including employee satisfaction and retention.
No longer hidden away in the bowels of the buildings, invisible until something goes wrong, today’s FM is emerging as a company leader, responsible for interpreting the information and acting on it to the ultimate benefit of the business and all who work there.
Defining the FM’s Job
Global facilities expert Larry Morgan (seen on an NFMT video clip) is of the opinion that the No. 1 priority of facilities managers is “always going to be the health and safety of building occupants.”
That said, the overall function of facilities manager has long been changing and continues to evolve at a rapid pace.
In fact, the facilities management industry is one of the most rapidly growing, writes iOffice partner Elizabeth Dukes. It’s forecast to reach nearly $400 billion by 2017. And it’s today’s FMs who, “through the efficient management and modernization of an organization’s assets and procedures…make their company relevant in our ever-changing marketplace,” she says.
Even at the time of writing this article, the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) is conducting a survey asking facilities managers to define the skills and knowledge that make up their job. In IFMA’s last Global Job Task Analysis survey, it was found that there are “11 key competency areas shared by facility management professionals worldwide.” They are:
- Communication
- Emergency Preparedness and Business Continuity
- Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability
- Finance and Business
- Human Factors
- Leadership and Strategy
- Operations and Maintenance
- Project Management
- Quality
- Real Estate and Property Management
- Technology
The Push Toward Leadership
Consultant Michel Theriault of Strategic Advisor agrees. He writes in REMI, an online news network for the real estate management industry, that FMs need to “debunk the myth that they perform a necessary but non-critical role.” After all, facilities managers are in charge of a company’s real estate, which after its human resources represents its highest expense. And if the business owns rather than leases its property, the building is also a valuable asset.
“What’s more,” adds Theriault, “the facility manager has an impact on the productivity of an organization’s most important asset: its employees.”
He goes on to theorize that the better FMs and their teams are at doing their jobs, keeping facilities safe and healthy, the more invisible they become. Therefore, the onus is actually on the facilities managers themselves to make themselves seen by staff, colleagues and senior management as company leaders.
This means taking the initiative and advocating for changes that align with the organization’s corporate goals. An example given by Theriault deals with employee satisfaction. He says a facilities manager should “learn more about how space use affects worker productivity. Find out the latest space allocation and layout approaches used by leading companies. Research what facilities-related amenities leading organizations use to recruit and retain employees. Then share this information with the HR department.”
While employee satisfaction might seem subjective and hard to quantify, facility managers can actually track employee engagement. The team at ISS, one of the world’s leading facility services companies, recommends consistently monitoring the following service employee metrics to get a good picture of employee engagement:
- Churn rate (employee retention)
- Absenteeism (sick days)
- Educational / training days (on-site and off-site)
Megatrends to Watch
ISS also recommends that FM providers keep an eye on megatrends currently seen in the global facilities management and services industry that are expected to continue toward 2020.
One of these trends is with respect to demographics, with the “fourth-generation workplace” becoming increasing common. Because workers of different ages have different motivating factors, companies will have to work harder to attract and retain the very best. Facilities managers who “understand the motivational factors for each age cohort” will be in a good position to advocate for the installation of specific amenities and use of facility space that can in turn enhance employee satisfaction and possibly have a positive effect on employee retention.
A correlated trend is that of an increased focus on health and wellbeing, with buildings and connected landscaping designed to promote healthier employee lifestyles. According to ISS, there are two drivers to this trend:
1. The growth of the healthcare sector itself (“In Europe, over 30% of integrated FM revenue is generated by the healthcare sector.”) and
2. “The doubling of the prevalence of lifestyle-related diseases, like diabetes.”
Everyday Matters
But it’s also long-standing, everyday issues for which facilities managers provide leadership. Take the maintenance budget, for instance. The group at Facility Executive writes that repairs are often put off due to low priority, lack of staff or not enough money in the budget. As a pattern of deferring repairs emerges, so does the potential for major problems and ultimate cost of repair.
By obtaining construction cost data, FMs can plan ahead by making an accurate maintenance and repair budget that works, they write. Similarly, preventive maintenance can be pro-actively scheduled in and followed. Both measures help a business run smoothly, without interruption caused by inoperable machinery and without blowing a budget because of unexpected repair costs. Furthermore, the Facility Executive team writes: “Identifying and scheduling preventive maintenance for equipment can extend the expected operational life, which, in turn, makes for a better investment.”
Facilities managers are also demonstrating leadership by encouraging the installation of remote asset management, a trend that Automation World’s Editor-in-Chief David Greenfield says is accelerating.
Giving examples of how various systems have saved man hours and the number of maintenance resolution issues as well as support costs and downtime, Greenfield writes that remote asset management has “emerged as the most readily applicable Industrial Internet of Things implementation with a near-term quantifiable return on investment, remote asset management has been turning heads across industry this year.”
The Learning Curve
Of course, the data coming in from across an IoT-enabled facility — its sensors sending information from the HVAC, lighting and security systems, as well as myriad others — needs to be made sense of. And this is where FMs may need to educate themselves on how to use the data to best effect.
Naomi Millán, Senior Editor at Facilities Net, quotes Thomas Grimard, associate partner with Syska Hennessy Group, as saying: “You have all this information. In itself, it’s useless. But if it’s properly formatted and segmented, then it becomes very useful.”
Building and operations efficiency are the primary goals of building IoT, but it can also “help facility managers understand how facility occupants use a facility, [which] helps to illuminate the facility as an asset.”
The example given here by Millán is a transit facility. The information the building provides allows the facilities manager to ascertain both the areas in which people tend to meet and the flow of pedestrian traffic. That data is useful and actionable; with it, an FM can then ask, “What kind of retail spots can I charge more for because they generate more foot traffic, or where can I send my janitor using beacon technology because I know there was a spill?” says Herbert Els, VP of Building Technology Systems at WSP.
Staying Human
No matter how smart our buildings become and how data-driven the solutions, we still need to remember people are at the heart of the entire process.
At a November convention in London, Peter Cheese, CEO of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD), which had taken part in a study examining the changing workplace and how FM and HR professionals are adapting to it, pointed out the need for the human element to be considered: “Productivity is not just driven by economic factors.”
Echoing the megatrends noted by ISS, Cheese “contrasted the attitudes toward work between generations X and Y, and analysed the impact of agile working and the changing notions of loyalty toward employers.”
While acknowledging that social interaction was measurable, he rejects the notion of traditional models, saying that conversation should be used in place of the process. Cheese “concluded that the aim shouldn’t simply be to join the dots between HM, IT and FM. Instead, the objective should be to ‘put ‘the human’ into work, while recognising the changing nature of work, workforce and workplace.’”
Expanded Leadership Skills
It’s obvious that facilities managers have always had to wear many hats, and these days they need to put on a few more. While every FM must have leadership abilities among their skill set at the outset, leading a team to manage their facility successfully, the role of leader is expanding. Instead of being limited to an invisible group of building maintenance experts, facility managers may well have to become comfortable with much more visible roles of corporate leadership, working together with the company owners and top level management as well as with other departments.
Brushing up on some leadership skills, and developing those skills, may come in handy.
In a recent HBR article, strategy and management experts Paul Leinwand, Cesare Mainardi and Art Kleiner cited a survey of 700 executives to come up with five acts that help develop leadership. They are:
- “Commit to an identity.
- “Translate the strategic into the everyday.
- “Put your culture to work.
- “Cut costs to grow stronger.
- “Shape the future.”
Former U.S. Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates adds another point to that list: Transparency. In a Fast Company adaptation of his book, A Passion for Leadership, Gates writes that “too often, leaders don’t trouble to share — routinely — with their employees the reasons for various changes, the direction of the company, or its goals. They seldom even talk about the company culture.”
His experience of spending a professional lifetime in a secret world has led him to believe that what’s important is the authenticity of the leader’s voice, offering “a personal perspective” on the company’s strategy, changes, performance, development and future. This shared information, which of course includes the company culture, helps develop an understanding of the business and its goals and an enthusiasm for the work, at every level of employee.
Credits:
bella67Gerhard Bögner
Brian Loebig
Maurizio Cichero
