When a lot of people think of the term facilities management strategies (FMS), they think of maintaining critical equipment and systems, like HVAC, plumbing, and electrical. They might also think of more day-to-day things, like janitorial services, landscaping, and Fred the friendly maintenance guy who’s always on hand to replace a flickering light bulb or fix a leaky sink.
But a true employee-centric facilities management strategy looks at how all of those tasks work together to create a safe and comfortable environment for employees. Where their happiness and well-being is directly tied to their performance and productivity.
Let’s take a look at the steps that go into developing an employee-centric facilities management strategy.
Step 1 – Assess The Current Condition Of Your Facilities
Conduct a full, top to bottom audit of your current facility condition. Use a comprehensive checklist with a scoring system to identify the condition of equipment, systems, workspaces, break spaces, and any other amenities. Identify how each contributes to your employees’ safety, comfort, and convenience.
Step 2 – Prioritize Your Goals
Having a clean, functional bathroom is priority one. But maybe your goal in the coming year is to remodel bathrooms using high-density polyethene to reduce moisture, mold, and odor. In the next phase, you want to add a lounge area and stock bathrooms with higher-quality toiletry items. In the meantime, you want to make upgrades to your facility to make it more energy-efficient, which will ultimately save you money and allow you to spend more on employee amenities. Like with any business objectives, you’ll have to prioritize these needs and wants and work them into your facility maintenance budget in the coming months and years.
Step 3 – Develop A Strategy
Identify key players and decision makers, and decide what projects you can handle internally, and what will need to be outsourced to specialty service providers. Also identify what metrics you plan to track to ensure your strategy is sound – saving money, time, or resources? Employee satisfaction? This phase is where it can really pay off if you take the time to explore different strategies. For example, implementing IoT HVAC or refrigeration sensors can allow you to practice condition-based money and save on regularly scheduled preventative maintenance. To go a step further, perhaps you explore outsourcing all of your facility maintenance to a single facilities management company in order to free up your internal team to focus on strategic planning.
Step 4 – Communicate & Implement The Strategy
Successful facilities management strategies engage employees at every point in the process. From surveys to see what employees want during the planning phase, to how they can help facilitate smooth remodels, and their feedback on the finished projects. When it’s time to implement your facilities management strategies, have a plan to effectively communicate with everyone involved and keep employees apprised of project updates.
Step 5 – Monitor & Tweak Your Strategy
Is your facilities management strategy working? By tracking the metrics you identified during the planning phase, you should be able to make data-driven decisions about whether to stay the course or tweak your strategy. Use employee surveys and feedback to measure success and ensure your strategy is meeting the goals you set.
Trillium Facility Solutions Helps You Develop & Implement An Employee-Centric FMS
Employees that are safe, comfortable, and happy are more productive and loyal to their employers. If you’re interested in exploring an innovative facilities management strategy, Trillium Facility Solutions can help. With a nationwide network of vetted service providers, and a 1 vendor, 1 call, 1 invoice business model, we can free up your time to focus on helping your company grow to new heights.
Get in touch with any of our amazing team members who are standing by ready to serve! Call (844) 344-3433 to learn more.
