
Welcome to this the first in a series of 12 posts on the world of Workplace and Facilities Management. As a consultant and coach in this sphere, I want the series to provide you with an understanding of the key role the Workplace plays in the enablement of core business for any organisation.
But here we are in the era of the Coronavirus and in South Africa, we are now in a state of National Disaster and lockdown. The need to comply with social distancing has led us to associate the idea of physical closeness with contracting the virus and potentially facing our mortality. Understandably, the anxiety that we feel as a nation around human contact has increased to a fever pitch.
But this will pass and we need to look to a future that has to be different from the one that got us to this reality.
We are now in a period of a large global experiment concerning how effective working from home can be and how necessary offices actually are. As Workplace and Facilities Managers we need to be realistic in that it has always been the case that…
Organisations don’t really want facilities they want a productive workforce… and we need to be able to accommodate and support that.
So what will it feel like to return to the Workplace and social closeness? As social creatures, human beings long for interaction but will this be overshadowed by the fear of germs and viruses? The modern Workplace and the advent of activity-based working with its collaboration spaces, hot-desking, shared work booths as well as gatherings around the water cooler and casual collisions with colleagues may trigger social anxiety in what seems to have become a world of invisible threats.
Will the new Workplace be the antithesis of what we had envisaged as being an hospitality like environment to one that is to be designed like a hospital.
We need to take time to deeply examine the way in which we need to change, not only the physical environment of the Workplace but how we interact in order for people to feel safe to return.
As we enter this new VUCA world of work, I thought it was the right time to look back at an important series of ‘white books’ published by ISS in which they set out a vision for facilities management in 2020. You can download all the white books here.
A Perspective Shift
We are now two decades into the millennium. The global Coronavirus pandemic has accelerated our dependency on computers and technology. Just imagine what would have happened to the global economy had COVID-19 happened just 10 years ago?
We are also increasingly a world at war and still addicted to fossil fuels. We are in an era of accelerated global competition with an increased but as yet in-adequate focus on sustainability. The advent of technology is changing how organisations plan for, and develop their workplaces.
Individually mobile devices are overtaking the laptop and PC as our primary technology interface. One of the biggest issues facing organisations is the global war for talent. And yet all of this has been overtaken In a matter of months by the coronavirus.
In The Need for Innovation-a Perspective Shift I wrote that disruptive innovation needs three conditions to be present.
- There needs to be a shortage or starvation of resources;
- Increasing pressure on delivery and performance;
- A perspective shift in how we look at innovation
1. Evolution or Revolution?
Implications for Facilities and Workplace Management (F&WM)
- F&WM providers need to develop flexible service blueprints that create better relationships with customers. We need to evolve from considering the workspace as a built environment asset to the Workplace as a core enabler of Business
- F&WM providers need to ensure that the Workplace continues to remain aligned with the core organisations’ strategy. Service-centric approaches need to be offered that reflect the brand, and culture at the right price point
- As F&WM providers we cannot assume that what is intuitively obvious to us is equally obvious to the Customer. We must help management understand the connection between the Workplace and performance
- F&WM providers are in the ideal position to develop stronger relationships with HR and IT. We need to assess if the current workspace is having detrimental effects on worker productivity and satisfaction and identify potential workplace reconfiguration opportunities. See Chief Workplace Officer – a Promotion for Facility Managers?
- F&WM providers should expand the use of contingency and scenario planning to justify space allocations. This would allow for a quicker response to changing needs.
- F&WM providers need to understand that FM services are intangible and the need to engage with their customers to ensure that Workplace strategies remain in-line.
2. Technology Accelerates Collaboration and Change
Implications for Facilities and Workplace Management (F&WM)
- FM providers need to develop an active approach and methodology for collecting data and conducting analysis to become the trusted advisor to their client organisations.
- FM providers need to work with customers to examine how the introduction of new technologies will affect the Workplace and service offerings
- FM needs to develop collaborative and transparent business processes and practices that use and display accurate and current information via common terminology. This includes the development and collection of relevant workplace productivity measures to ensure that the Workplace is operating as effectively as possible
- FM, marketing, HR, and IT units need to identify ways to create seamless organisations that provide similar Workplace experiences, virtually and physically
- FM and corporate IT providers will be challenged to develop robust security solutions for the future office
- The challenge for FM providers will be to identify their role in the collection, management and analysis of data.
- FM needs to lead the efforts that promote productivity and efficiency in the future workspace
- FM providers need to be attuned to workers’ needs and organisational requirements for strategic agility and flexibility.
3. Smart Cities
Implications for Facilities and Workplace Management (F&WM)
- Integrate geographic information systems, as well as building information systems, into their Workplace management systems and in the selection of new workspaces
- Improve product development processes by providing a combination of lean transformation and skilled teams
- Manage an increasingly distributed footprint of commercial, industrial, campus, suburban, and residential spaces
- Ensure that each location or workspace is effective and efficient – even those that are not in the central office workspace. This will include the management of:
- Environmental systems’ complexity and their interactions
- Business risks while implementing new tools and processes
- Workspaces, whether onsite or at a third space, can and are working together
- Forming, reconfigure and dissolve networked teams on an as-needed basis
- Workspaces and global projects virtually through cloud technologies
- Sustainability programs that utilise collaborative consumption systems.
4. The Polarisation of Workplace Amenities
Implications for Facilities and Workplace Management (F&WM)
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FM providers must create and maintain the workspace as a critical element in helping employees feel engaged at work by providing more differentiated service offerings
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FM providers need to identify the correct balance between standardisation and individualisation in the Workplace
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Moving from purely B2B to more B2C type of relations – the facility as a hub where employees can get personalised services.
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Workplace and FM providers need to balance the amenities they offer with the organisations’ strategic ambitions and culture.
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A balance will have to be struck between the quantity (m2 per employee) and the quality of the Workplace experience
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The polarisation of work and workplaces will polarise the FM market. Market-leading companies will be able to use the Workplace as a strategic asset in attracting the best, most talented workers they can. Others will have to develop creative solutions to offer the best amenities they can at reduced costs
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Companies and their FM providers need to think of new ways to empower employees to influence the design of their Workplaces
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The FM industry needs to engage with architects, office designers and the construction industry to a much higher degree to ensure that office designs enable flexible and productive workspaces that are easy to maintain
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Companies will increasingly make use of distributed office and work environments to reduce travel costs.
5. Workforce Diversity
Implications for Facilities and Workplace Management (F&WM)
- FM providers need to transform and diversify to better serve their core organisations’ needs. The changing social composition of workforce will transform the FM industry as well. 9 Simple Steps to Workplace Diversity
- More diverse FM providers could help clients attract, retain and motivate a more diverse employee base in core organisations. The 4 Unique Benefits of Diversity in Outsourcing
- Workplace strategists and FM providers can help core organisations differentiate themselves from their competitors via their office amenities
- FM providers can do this for global organisations by helping create, adapt and implement Workplace strategies to different local needs and cultural requirements.
- FM providers need to move from being purely focused on business-to-business solutions towards a business-to-consumer relationship, where the facility can act as a hub where employees can get services (laundry etc.)
- FM providers will be faced with competing priorities from below – workers demanding customised and personalised solutions – and from above – CEOs demanding standardised solutions to reduce costs.
6. Focus on Employee Health and Well-being
Implications for Facilities and Workplace Management (F&WM)
- FM providers should change their focus towards providing hospitality services to take care of their clients’ individual workforce needs
- FM providers need to convey to customer CEOs the importance of investing in the Workplace as well as in the building space
- FM providers need to develop personalised communication with end-users
- FM providers will increasingly have to balance
- demands for controlling/cutting costs coming from management with
- ensuring the productivity and wellbeing of office workers
- FM providers should make sure that cost-cutting does not lead to a significant decline in worker productivity
- FM providers could develop workplace healthcare concepts as a product line
- FM providers should develop services that set up workspaces in private spaces or in fixed third workspaces
- FM providers will have to assess whether
- it is cost-effective to provide amenities that improve employee wellbeing themselves,
- if they should collaboratively source these services with nearby companies, or
- if they should arrange service arrangements with other providers.
7. Workspace Personalisation
Implications for Facilities and Workplace Management (F&WM)
- personalising the physical workplace environment is the fundamental tension for FM providers: they have to create greater Workplace efficiency (cut costs) to satisfy senior managers without damaging what makes an effective workspace – happy and engaged employees.
- FM and corporate IT providers need to find ways to collaborate and develop mutually supportive Workplace strategies to avoid eventual conflicts.
- FM and corporate IT providers will be challenged to deliver robust security solutions for the future office
- FM providers should invest in understanding the people and their needs at the Workplace, including developing methodologies and key performance indicators for ongoing data collection, to be able to advise CEOs as to why one Workplace solution is better than another
- FM providers need to “do more for people and do less for buildings”
- FM providers should work with peripheral manufacturers and office furniture designers to remove typical office headaches.
- Theme 8: Sustainability and the Workplace of the future
8. Sustainability and the Workplace of the Future
Sustainability is a growing requirement from businesses and government. The need for reducing the environmental footprint of offices is a recognised opportunity for FM providers to introduce new Workplace strategies. To reduce the environmental footprint of the Workplace of the future, FM providers will have to look beyond the confines of their organisation.
Implications for Facilities and Workplace Management (F&WM)
- FM providers will have to analyse sustainability challenges and consequences on supply and value chains, as well as on building design, management and maintenance
- FM providers will have to conduct systemic design, including employing building information modelling (BIM) techniques
- FM providers should use information from BIM to improve building designs and inputs to their models by analysing how people actually move through and use workspaces
- FM providers should assess sustainability challenges according to regional conditions and challenges
- FM providers should look beyond the confines of the core organisation and see how employees and other companies, including competitors, could help develop sustainable workplace solutions.
- Conclusion
Love the article… could we establish a forum center with SA workplace data ?