Introduction

In organising this series of roundtables, we hoped to understand the specific ways businesses have been impacted as a whole, looking at the different departments and speaking with leaders from across industries.

For this report, we specifically spoke with Facilities Managers to find out how the changing role and function of the office has impacted them and their day-to-day function.

There have always been challenges with the office space. Facilities Managers as a community and businesses like Ricoh have been in discussion on this for a long time. The conversation has been accelerated by the current health, social and economic conditions, but there remains, and will always remain, a degree of uncertainty requiring businesses to be flexible or agile to address the fundamental issues. Topics such as ‘developing the purpose of the office’ or ‘ways to ensure the workplace is ready to adapt’ are crucial.

These very discussions are the key to unlocking an edge over competitors and to stimulating growth.

What was made apparent by all managers was the belief that there continues to be a real need for the office but that the office’s physical location has transformed into the new business hardware.

We found that everyone we spoke with has faced some challenges when working from home. Handling everything from unsuitable living spaces to a lack of access to necessary facilities.

Our conversations also revealed that Facilities Managers believe technology played a similar role in getting people back to the office, as it did in getting people to work from home.

Distilling the information, experience and knowledge gathered in the following report has been split into three key themes: “Challenges to Change”, “An Uncertain Future”, “Strategy vs Execution”.

We hope that this report will act as a guide to help businesses leaders to support FM teams across the UK in developing a robust office today to support workers in the future.

As such we have also collated a series of recommendations for CEOs and senior leaders to support facilities managers in leading change at work.