On Standards

But often, it is in times of crisis that true progress can be achieved. It took a devastating world war for the nations of Europe to realize that integration, interdependence and cooperation will lead to a synergetic relationship, ensuring economic stability and peace and eventually leading to the creation of the European Union in 1992 through the Maastricht treaty.

How does this apply to FM?

Before COVID-19, FM was not without its own challenges. FM is a thankless task. People take the built environment and its related services for granted. More often than not, FMs only hear complaints from facility users when something is not working as it should.

FMs are the invisible heroes ensuring a productive, clean and secure working environment for all. Unfortunately, FM is commoditized, leaving many demand organizations struggling to understand its strategic importance.

With tens of thousands of empty offices around the world, many workers who are now forced to work from home will have gained an increased appreciation for working in an office environment -- great indoor air quality, daily cleaned desks and trash removal, ergonomic chairs and desktops. These services are not guaranteed for professionals working at home.

One could argue the COVID-19 crisis is an opportunity for FMs to rebrand themselves from a commoditized cost-center to an essential, strategic business function worthy of C-suite influence. Utilizing this momentum will, however, require adaptive strategic planning, with varying challenges for the short-, medium- and long-term.

Short-term: Plan the pathway to recovery

With government mandates continuously updated to reflect the latest scientific measurements, many FMs will find themselves faced within a turbulent and rapidly changing external environment. Furthermore, as this landscape evolves and the financial consequences of the lockdown are evaluated within businesses, many are forced to rebalance expense patterns, core business models and staffing requirements.

With some countries either implementing or planning re-opening procedures, in the short-term, FMs will play a key role in providing guidance to their demand organizations on the re-entry process into their facilities.

ISO 41001 is the international standard for the management system applicable to FM. The process in ISO 41001 is understanding the demand organization’s requirements. With these requirements having changed drastically by the COVID-19 crisis, it is essential for FMs to step back from tactical firefighting – and instead approach their demand organizations from a strategic perspective to shape a systematic management strategy. This strategy can, in turn, be related to the external environment of the organization and translated into tactical FM policies.

Figure 1 - Process approach methodology for ISO 41001 Facility management – Management systems – Requirement with guidance for use

 

The “Plan-Do-Check-Act” (PDCA) process approach sits at the center of the model (Figure 1), guiding FMs from plan creation; through to implementation; to monitoring performance and adapting where required. In the short-term of this crisis, ISO 41001 guides facility managers to focus on the planning phase: understanding the requirements from the demand organization and understanding the challenges in the external environment to plan accordingly.

The beauty of the process approach mentioned above is its ability to be implemented in a wide-ranging, global set of FM organizations. One, however, can easily imagine that the challenges posed by the coronavirus vary greatly between organizations. For example, a fast-food franchise in the United Kingdom might be concerned with the implications of social distancing restrictions on guests visiting its restaurant. At the same time, a food delivery business in Germany might have concerns about distributing government-mandated personal protective equipment to its remote workforce.

The questions are vast, and given the unprecedented circumstances, there are few, if any off-the-shelf manuscripts to follow. Therefore, IFMA set up a rapid response team (RRT), comprised of an international group of FM professionals, who were consequently faced with the challenge of providing guidance to facility managers working in such a broad scope of circumstances.

In response to this challenge, the team created a strategic matrix of topics for FMs to consider when planning for re-entry and mapped these issues across the PDCA cycle and the foundational dimensions of FM: People, place and process.

Click the framework above to download with additional information from IFMA’s Knowledge Library.

Medium-term: FM becomes the other front line

Once plans are established and lockdown measures are released, ISO 41001 guides FMs to move from the Plan to the Do phase. During this phase, the plans created will be implemented. After the medical workers, FMs are ensuring safe places for the workforce, collectively impacting millions of facility users. As essential partners to determining and implementing a safe return to work conditions, FMs have become the “other” front line.

The IFMA RRT framework is intended to be a tool to guide FMs through a structured thought process that considers which are the right questions to ask, identifies the best resources and integrates the re-open plan with the demand organization’s leadership and stakeholder requirements (top management, human resources, IT, health and safety, risk management, etc.).

One key competency that allows FMs to implement their strategy and plans at this stage is leadership. Harvard Business School recently noted in a webinar on Coronavirus Crisis Management for Leaders:

“Business leadership as a resource for society: A reservoir of creativity, ingenuity, imagination, invention, problem-solving…This is what you do every day - only now it is: More valuable than ever; more urgent than ever.”

ISO 41001 also sees leadership as one of the key pillars required for an effective FM organization. Some of the aspects the document illustrates on how top management in FM organizations ensure leadership, applicable to the pandemic are:

• ensuring that the FM policy and FM objectives are established and are compatible with the strategic direction of the demand organization;

• ensuring the integration and support of the FM system requirements into the organization’s business processes;

• promoting continual improvement in innovation, communications, morale, cross-functional integration, the support of the organization’s objectives and responsible management

Once plans are executed, it is crucial for FMs to move on to the Check phase, prompting questions, such as: Did the plans and strategies work? Is the organization still ensuring building compliance? What are the long-term effects on employee well-being? Are there ways to adapt and improve?

Long-term: Opportunity for strategic FM

This crisis is an era-defining event that will leave a lasting impression on society, local communities and organizations. Now more than ever will employees appreciate the services provided by FM, especially if short- and medium-term plans and strategies are successfully implemented. ISO 41001 series guides us to now act: taking actions to continually improve process performance.

Perhaps this is the opportunity to start adding strategic value to your organization by implementing ISO 41001. Stan Mitchell, chair of the ISO TC 267 committee on FM said:

“Those that implement the standard will already have ‘ensured that their management system manages risk (5.1); planned for the prevention, reduction of undesired effects (6.1); addressed risks and how they can and how these risks can change with time (6.1a); identified who will be responsible (6.2); undertaken internal and external communication associated with the risks (7.4); considered continual improvement opportunities…of controls responding to external events (9.3f).’ Whilst nothing, as we know, is foolproof , the odds are they will have been better prepared than most!”

Meanwhile, it can also be argued that the future is uncertain. Organizations are being challenged to rethink their workspace and real-estate policies. Some employees have found that working from home in this digital age works better than working in a busy open-plan office.

FMs have collaborated with IT professionals for years to utilize modern technologies to allow employees to work more flexibly. Adaption of truly flexible working has, thus far, however, been low, with only 9 percent of employers offering fully flexible working to their employees in 2019. The COVID-19 crisis offers an opportunity to change the level of adoption. Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, for example, announced that the company would allow its employees to work from home forever.

For many, the office environment offers a collaborative and creative space that allows building users to interact and connect in ways to which online conferencing simply cannot compare. As demand organizations and building users find a new norm for work, the future work week might indeed become more flexible – for example, working two days in the office to collaborate with colleagues, working two days from home to concentrate on a project, and working one day at a favorite coffeehouse for creative inspiration.

As organizations find an equilibrium to the new way of working, it drives FM into a new age filled with innovations in hybrid workspaces, digitally equipped conference rooms, physical office spaces that promote social interactions and catalyze innovation, all while ensuring employee well-being, productivity and safety. Perhaps in this future, business leaders and building occupants will find a new appreciation for strategic FM.