The Significance of Facility Management Challenges
Facility management challenges have far-reaching consequence for businesses. Bad visitor management, inefficient operations and time-consuming processes are by no means invisible to clients. Every in-office experience, from how staff secure a parking space to how long it takes to find a free desk, makes an impact. This presents an amazing opportunity to explore positive facility management practices and technological solutions, especially as they become a game changer for employee wellbeing and retention. In the interest of keeping your team happy, upgrading your company culture and modernising your space to improve efficiency, you need a lasting solution.
Growing Facility Management Challenges
A facility manager’s role has expanded in recent years from simple maintenance of an organisation, and it’s equipment, to a profession dedicated to supporting people and optimising operations. The biggest giveaway is that facility managers aren’t all called facility managers, even though they are responsible for aspects of the job including planning, evaluating and maintaining building systems.
The world’s largest and most widely recognized association for facility management professionals, the IFMA highlights the reach this role has, highlighting how Facility managers have a variety of different titles and career paths.
Facility Management is an organizational function which integrates people, place and process within the built environment with the purpose of improving the quality of life of people and the productivity of the core business. – IFMA
Overcoming Facility Management Challenges
Keeping costs down
A main Facility Management challenge is keeping costs low. A large amount of resources is required to run and maintain a well-structured organisation. Unfortunately, inefficient utilization of these resources results in expensive upkeep and unexpected emergency repairs. With costs across the second half of 2021 seeing a significant increase in wholesale energy prices across the EU, problems can seem out of the control of facility managers. However, the EU Commission highlights how investing in energy efficiency is the most cost-effective way to save energy and reduce energy bills for public authorities, citizens and businesses.
A great way to overcome rising costs of facility management is through a technological solution to facility savings. With the use of facility management software, businesses can get real overviews of usage across their space. This allows facility managers to concentrate more on preventative measures and less on ineffective maintenance operations, which will ultimately lead to cheaper costs. Utilization data can be expressed in macro or micro terms. One thing is for sure, tracking this data is increasinly important with CBRE reporting utilization as the top occupancy metric tracked by clients with 74% using it to inform scenario development or plan solutions.
Another great way to overcome the high costs of facility management is through space utilisation. Workero offer heatmap technology, helping you identity hot and cold spots within your office space. Not only is this a perfect way to find opportunities to monetize your empty space, but helps you gain a precise overview of your facility for targetted cleaning purposes and more.
Centralising your operations
Another facility management challenge is centralising your operations. This problem is bigger than you think. A facility manager’s efficiency can be especially effected by managing multiple buildings, offices or spaces. This results in a growing array of platforms added to their arsenal of tools, resulting in high time consumption. Consolidating your operations means having a facility software solution that enables flow. Based on research by The Harvard Business Review, up to five working weeks, or 9% of annual work time can be lost to app hopping.
Facility management software that integrates with frequently used programmes and apps like BambooHR, Slack, Outlook and Gmail have real value. At Workero, we offer exactly that. An integrated software solution to both hybrid work and facility management, allowing true integration from parking management systems to desk booking without the wasted time.
Effectively managing visitors within your facility
Facility Management challenges don’t stop at centralising operations. Streamlined visitor management has increasingly become an important part of a one-stop facility solution. Everything from corporate offices to coworking space providers need a way to manage their guests professionally, effectively and quickly.
Standardising the visitor experience helps businesses unburden resources, unlocking time for other tasks. Seamless and automated visitor management is a great way to start creating a stellar tenant experience from entry to exit.
Health and Safety
Classic facility management challenges surrounding health and safety involved resolving problems with ageing equipment, ensuring fire hazards, first aid provisions and muster points. The focus changed dramatically during Covid-19, with the need for adequate spacing of employees and ventilation prioritised. Staggered employee attendance in-office and an overview of this process became sought after.
The challenges for facility managers regarding health and safety have evolved. An efficient return to the office is still an important consideration, especially amongst government agencies who are still working from home. For employees with respiratory issues, CO2 monitoring in the office is hugely valuable for ensuring adequate working conditions.
Workero’s desk and meeting room booking make it simple for teams to organise themselves in their pre-pandemic departments, with the ability to locate team members and book next to them.
Security
Having a well functioning security policy is an essential aspect of ensuring professional facility management. You must safeguard your facilities and your assets in addition to protecting your staff and guests. Being aware of everyone on site is the first step to making meaningful change.
Desk booking software that highlights where employees are working from, combined with parking and visitor management, gives facility managers a real overview of personnel on site. But provisions around security should extend to being able to adequately communicate to your team across an entire building.
Community spaces be that virtual or physical allow the relaying of important information. With Workero, you can contact your team through push notifications, relaying important announcements or information instantly. This helps businesses keep their employees, tenants and renters informed while providing a space for employees to promote activities or actions.
Unlocking insights and data for your facility
Businesses that haven’t implemented a facility management software solution face significantly more challenges. This is because facility managers with the right tools can unlock important data, insights and statistics about more than just space usage. CO2 levels, energy reporting, square metre cost and much more are now on offer.
Struggling with data gathering, space optimization, and monitoring usage in a structural way across your organisation? Now might be the time to give our team a call to discuss leveraging technology to overcome these issues. Tailor-made dashboards and reporting from Workero means truly knowing your space, and staying informed with important changes in usage.
Tackling sustainability within your facility
Now that you have the ability to gain insights and reports on your facility, you can meaningfully tackle growing facility management challenges around sustainability. Use customised reports and data collected from your space to generate sustainability analytics for ESG or SDG reporting.
Energy use is an important aspect of this facility problem, especially since 2022 with gas prices reaching a peak of €346 per MWh in August 2022. Accessing invaluable actionable data ensures you have the ability to track progress on your sustainability efforts, especially if you have just updated your assets to increase energy-efficiency. Moreover, cost saving initiatives can be tracked, offering opportunities for further energy cost saving.
Ensuring longevity
A widely underreported facility management challenge is longevity. Many systems can offer solutions, but not many grow alongside you as your business needs change. Having a facility management software solution prepares you and your organisation for future challenges. As Covid-19 has shown, business is unpredictable. Here at Workero, we continually update our technology with new features to keep your space relevant and ready for what may come. As a customised solution, we tackle each and every facility challenge uniquely.
Fostering flexibility in your facility management!
Facility Managers have a dilemma as a result of hybrid working. The way we use offices and workspaces nowadays has changed significantly. Due to this, facility managers monitor more than just cost control & maintenance. Building occupancy, space utilization, and cleaning methods are now important to measure value. Flexible working needs to expand, however this requires adequate desk and meeting room bookings alongside adequate overviews of usage and a company culture to match.
Fortunately, these facility management challenges are easily tackled with the help of technological solutions. Facility managers around the world are already managing personnel on-site, monitor desk and meeting room reservations, and implement necessary rules and segmentation with Workero’s Workplace Management Software. Your staff benefit hugely from flexibility, so start giving them the freedom to book their own spaces as part of your hybrid work policy.
Facility management software gives companies and businesses invaluable tools to improve space utilisation, sustainability and company culture. Start solving your facility management with 1to1 help from Workero’s Workplace Specialists.
