Elevating Operations: A Strategic Approach to Facilities Management Strategy

What is a Facilities Management Strategy?

Facility Maintenance Definition: Organizations utilize facility planning as a strategy to arrange their resources and physical spaces. It guarantees that workers have access to sufficient space and resources to carry out their jobs effectively and accomplish the company's objectives.

To implement strategic management of facilities, a company, and its facilities staff must shift their attention from short-term fixes to more long-term strategies and activities.

Rather than haphazardly assigning tools and workspace, this proactive method necessitates defining a plan for managing space and resources. To get insight into a space's use, it is common practice to gather statistics on occupancy and usage rates. 

The end purpose of facility planning is to make sure that businesses succeed by making sure that offices are good places to work.

The first step in facilities management strategy that really helps your company succeed is figuring out how your workplace contributes to the bigger picture. Additional reasons for implementing strategic facilities management might include:

• Making the switch to hybrid work
• Bringing in and keeping the best talent
• Promoting a more cooperative and trustworthy culture
• Using environmentally friendly procedures at work

What is Integrated Facilities Management?

A comprehensive strategy for overseeing a company's infrastructure and physical assets is known as integrated facilities management (IFM).

Planned maintenance and repairs, energy management, space utilization, health and safety compliance, and property and asset management are just a few of the facility services that are integrated by IFM.

Organizations can now centralize operations and monitor their Facilities management strategy data from anywhere thanks to cloud-based technologies like Facilio.

The end purpose of facility planning is to make sure that businesses succeed by making sure that offices are good places to work.

What is a Strategic Facility Plan (SFP)

The International Facility Management Association (IFMA) recommends that managers familiarize themselves with the following three things before putting together a thorough Strategic Facility Plan (SFP): 

• The organization's core values (or evolving values) and how facilities should reflect those values; 
• A thorough evaluation of the facility (including its location, capabilities, and condition); 
• And, lastly, a basic comprehension of how the organization's objectives could lead to expansion or contraction in terms of facilities.

Managers will be functioning as a "strategic" support system if they can verify each of these benchmarks with the relevant departments and figure out how to back their organization's facilities maintenance goals and objectives while implementing efficient day-to-day protocols. 

This synthesis of "current" and "future" enables all stakeholders to optimally deal with incoming changes.

Key Pillars of Effective Facility Management Strategy

When creating a facilities management strategy, the following should be prioritized: 

• People: how can you meet the demands of your workers in this space so that they can give their all at work? What do your employees anticipate from this area?
• ‍Technology: what are the necessary resources to improve efficiency, collect data for better-informed judgments, and organize the space?
• ‍Building and landscaping: how does the actual location appear and work, with regard to the meeting rooms and workstations included?
• ‍Methods and procedures: how might one go about implementing facilities management strategy in an organization to properly distribute space and resources?

Why is Facilities Management Strategy So Important?

In virtually every aspect of your company, including marketing, financial planning, product/service development, recruiting, etc., you exhibit a high level of strategic thinking.

Then why not turn your workplace into something you can track, evaluate, and get additional benefits from?

A facilities management strategy should be implemented by businesses for many reasons, particularly when new methods of working become the norm. 

Hybrid work, for instance, can be accommodated by these groups. Utilizing appropriate facilities management strategies is essential for effectively overseeing on-site collaborative work. All it takes is the correct equipment to keep track of workers' whereabouts and when they clock in. 

1. Boosting Your Workplace ROI

Renting or buying office space isn't inexpensive.

You want your investment to be worthwhile, especially in the hybrid workplace when fewer workers are physically present at the office on a daily basis.

A facilities management strategy can be beneficial.

One strategy to make your day-to-day work more relevant to your long-term objectives is to connect your workplace design and use it to a specific company goal or goals. What changes must be made in your workplace to improve the bottom line?

2. Improve Workforce Productivity

When your facilities assist or hinder the efficiency of your workforce, it's easy to see how they contribute to your bottom line.

Keep in mind that the term "facilities" encompasses a wide range of components, such as thermostats, light switches, cleaning supplies, the reception desk, property upkeep, electrical testing, and much more.

Workers won't be as productive if they're either too hot or too cold. Warm workplaces are especially bad for productivity, which drops 2-4% for every degree Celsius over 27 degrees. 

Negligible electrical testing can result in serious consequences, including decreased productivity and trust in the area, when gadgets malfunction or become unsafe to use. 

Facilities management strategies, on the other hand, allow you to stay ahead of these problems by ensuring that your employees have the resources they need to thrive.

3. Talent Acquisition

Attracting top talent doesn't need a ping-pong table or a slide in your workplace! Still, it must serve their purposes, be comfortable for them, and respect their beliefs and demands.

The pursuit of more diversity, equality, and inclusion makes this a priority. For some new workers, it's important to provide separate, private spaces where they can get some work done. 

To further promote a flat organizational structure, you can opt for a more casual, open-plan layout for your workplace. Office planning and facilities management are complementary processes; thus, you should first determine your facilities maintenance goals and objectives for the Employee Experience before developing a plan.

One other thing you can do to draw in new employees is to run your workplace sustainably.

After all, if given the chance to work for a more environmentally conscious company, 28% of US workers would think about leaving their present positions. Do you provide your facilities manager room to grow into a sustainable and strategic leader?

Of course, your company's flexibility to accommodate remote workers is a major selling point when it comes to attracting top talent. What the epidemic has shown us is that remote work is a huge selling feature, and companies should get on the bandwagon if they don't want to miss out.

How Do You Implement a Strategic Facility Management Plan?

Strategize your facilities management approach. It's a five-step process that takes into account all the people who have a stake in your office, their needs, and how your space can support your facilities maintenance goals and objectives

• Understand. Just think about where you are right now and where you want to be tomorrow.

The first thing to do when adopting strategic facilities management is to make a plan for how you will achieve your goals.

But just as crucial is figuring out how much money you have to put into the change, who has to be on board, and how long the process should take.

• ‍Analyze. Your facilities management strategy requires an approach to implementation.

Utilize the wide variety of analytical tools and methodologies at your disposal to develop a plan for your operation. If you want to know how to contribute and what may go wrong with your strategy, a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis is a good place to start.

Including it in your strategy meetings and brainstorming sessions should make it easy to choose the next steps for the plan.

• ‍Plan. Building an executable road plan requires using what you've learned in the previous two phases.

Outline the modifications you are making and the reasoning behind them in your plan.

After that, simplydocument the measures you will take to bring the project to fruition. Establish a timeline, define goals, and delegate responsibilities as necessary to ensure the strategy is carried out most efficiently. Think of it as a long-term plan that outlines how you will satisfy the requirements of the business.

• ‍Act. Everything is set in motion after you have presented the facilities management strategy and roadmap to top stakeholders and clarified the vision for them.

Just remember to highlight the advantages we discussed before to make your case more persuasive. But the hard work hasn't come to an end yet.

• ‍Measure. In the long run, how can you tell whether your strategy for managing facilities is paying off?

What measures and benchmarks should be established to track the ongoing impact? Your facilities maintenance goals and objectives will dictate the metrics you use, but they will likely contain financial, cultural, and productivity-related data.

In the long run, the goal of strategic facilities management is to support your company's pursuit of excellence.

What are Your Typical Facility Management's Objectives?

There are a lot of moving parts in the management of facilities, but one of the most important is making sure the people who live or work in the building are safe, comfortable, and satisfied. All sorts of facilities can benefit from meeting the objectives set forth by facility management to achieve these facilities maintenance goals and objectives.

Communication with Stakeholders and Occupants

Managing a property effectively requires constant two-way contact with the building's tenants and other interested parties. Talking to them about their thoughts on the facility and getting their advice on how to make it safer and more comfortable is a great way to get to know them better.

Provide a Safe and Healthy Environment

We can save a lot of lives if we can identify potential hazards to people's health and figure out how to fix or eliminate them.

Because they are a necessary component of any structure, let's take restrooms as an example.

They can be made to feel as comfortable as possible throughout every visit by keeping them clean, smelling good, and providing enough amenities.

Be Mindful of Deficiencies

Over time, some issues might compromise a building's utility systems if not addressed. Inspections performed on a regular basis could reveal construction flaws and prevent more serious issues down the road. Performing these standard inspections every three to six months is the responsibility of the facility manager.

Improve and Endorse Energy Efficiency

It is possible to save money by making the building more energy efficient. The management can find out how much money is being wasted on water, gas, and electricity by reviewing the building's costs for these three things. 

Reduce and avoid more energy waste by investing in energy-saving equipment including energy-efficient light bulbs, upgrading current equipment, and closing up pipe leaks.

Business Continuity Planning

Running some facilities is dependent on machinery that is in good working order. An organization's critical assets and the risks that they face are detailed in a business continuity plan, which functions similarly to a backup plan. 

In addition to that, the facilities management strategy outlines the potential impact on company operations in the event that the asset were to cease working.

If a company or institution has done its homework and has a solid strategy in place, it can keep running even if something unforeseen happens.

Building the Right Tech Stack To Support FM Initiatives with Xenia!

If you're using FM, your CMMS should make it easy to consolidate all facility management tasks.

You can't call it a comprehensive or integrated approach to facility management (FM) if your CMMS just supports asset management and proactive maintenance and suppliers and inventories need their software that won't interact with your CMMS.

The amount of human labor required to consolidate data across sheets or convert it into forms that the CMMS can read would still be twice as much for your teams. 

The results that FM guarantees would be difficult to get due to the delays, mistakes, and bottlenecks that would ensue.  

Thus, for an O&M ecosystem to be fully integrated, your CMMS should be thorough, adaptable, and user-friendly enough to link with all your current systems.

The following aspects and capabilities should be considered when evaluating CMMS software to implement your FM vision:

• Management of assets: Keep tabs on things like where assets are, what they're up to, and any warranty information with ease.
• ‍Maintenance management: involves scheduling and tracking maintenance jobs, work orders, labor hours, and materials utilized.
• ‍Work order management: create, assign, and monitor the progress, priority, and budget of all open work orders.
• ‍Inventory management: includes keeping tabs on stock levels, where they are stored, and when they are due to expire.
• ‍Reporting and analytics: Use data analysis and report generation to improve decision-making. Learn more about energy use, asset condition, and maintenance expenses.
• ‍Collaboration: Coordinate closely with relevant parties across the company, including engineers, managers, and technicians.
• ‍Optimization of assets: Identifying areas for improvement and making suggestions to optimize performance.
• ‍Predictive maintenance: involves analyzing past data and current asset conditions to determine the likelihood of maintenance needs.

With a focus on facility maintenance, Xenia's Connected CMMS allows for intelligent and real-time operations and maintenance through the use of modular solutions for managing facility conditions, assets, inventory, inspections, work orders, services, workplaces, and vendors.

With so many options, how does Xenia's Connected CMMS stand out from the competition?

By integrating people, procedures, and systems, Xenia's Connected CMMS allows you to manage operations on a portfolio scale from a single location with its multi-location capabilities. 

Next Steps 

To ensure your company's success, facility planning is essential.

Before diving into a facilities management plan, consider the needs of your team members to enable peak performance. Guaranteeing the effective execution of your facilities management strategy requires the right technology and an employee-centric approach.

Successful businesses optimize their workplaces by setting measurable objectives, assessing their current state, staying abreast of emerging workplace trends, and implementing technological solutions. 

These steps naturally lead to increased productivity and efficiency. By taking these actions, your company can prepare for the future of work, characterized by more sustainable and adaptable environments desired by employees.

Interested in implementing these changes in your workplace? Optimize your office space and enhance staff satisfaction with Xenia. 

Try our software for free now!