The Role of Facilities

Designing smart and safe workspaces

LEADING CHANGE AT WORK:

The role of FM in driving the digital workplace

SME Executive Summary

A Word From Our Moderator

Executive Summary From Peter Brogan (IWFM)

Introduction

Challenges to Change

An Uncertain Future

Strategy Versus Execution

Conclusion & Recommendations

SME Executive Summary

By Rachel Stokes, Chief Financial Officer, Ricoh UK

It is globally acknowledged that the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic will be felt for years to come and economic recovery is a key challenge facing all world leaders.

The wake of this disruption also bubbles around British businesses. The experience of 2020 has placed a more distinct focus on corporate resilience for boards and executives across the country.

With recovery high on the agenda, recent research from McKinsey suggests that boards, especially those that were quickest to adapt to the crisis, are now shifting focus to specific risks, organisational and cultural issues. Due to the rise in further external challenges, such as supply chain disruptions, staff shortages and inflation, all aspects of business strategy are being evaluated to drive optimum productivity in such a key moment of recovery.

Over the last 18 months, we recognise that Facilities Managers (FM) have been at the coalface of key business and workplace challenges. Whilst the onset of the pandemic changed the way we need to work, the experience has now transformed the way we want to work.

Our research conducted during our first return to the office (October 2020) found nearly 1/3 of managers are concerned that their workplace is no longer fit for purpose. FM has embraced this new challenge, but has battled against changing government guidelines and rolling lockdowns.

As society stabilises, we wanted to get a better understanding from the FM industry on the next challenges for businesses and the office. More importantly, what Facilities Managers need from senior leaders and the CEO, is to support addressing these challenges and enhancing business productivity and growth.

This report comes following our key industry Facilities Managers roundtable.

In partnership with The Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management (IWFM) , we have conducted a definitive discussion of how we can lead change at work.

This report will provide recommendations to support the progression of this discussion into action.

Rachel Stokes,
CFO, Ricoh UK

Section 2: An Uncertain Future

THE DEFINING PURPOSE OF SPACE

While conscious that many businesses are still in a limbo between remote and in-office work, the Facilities Managers we spoke with agreed on the need for the working space. From their point of view, many employees had encountered challenges while working remotely, from unsuitable living spaces to a lack of supportive and adequate facilities.

David Isteed, Group Head of Property at Amey Group Services, claimed: "There are many people who are struggling with their wellbeing. There's a significant number of people who are wanting to come back into the office environment, and we've allowed them that option".

It’s up to the Facilities Managers to lead and make the value and purpose of the office space clear to all those who prefer working remotely. For every employee who feels distracted in their living room, there is another who feels distracted on the office floor. Peter Brogan, Head of Research and Insight at IWFM, explained:

"In this home environment, you've got more power of choice. I think when we're looking at workplaces, it's that flexible workspace should offer exactly that, giving people options for different workspaces within the same workplace. And I think that's going to be important in the future in terms of reimagining the workplace itself. But also, the purpose of why people need to come to the office. I think that's going to be the biggest barrier for some people returning to the offices. Why am I here?"

Peter Brogan, Head of Research and Insight at IWFM

The office's space should, therefore, be reshaped and remodelled to enhance its new purpose and this may differ from business to business. However, it’s key that alongside this remodelling, employees need to be re-educated on the office's purpose and understand how it has evolved for the better.

Section 1: Challenges to Change

The past two years have seen a phenomenal amount of change take place in an incredibly short period. Despite this, or perhaps even because of it, Facilities Managers are faced with many challenges. From employee buy-in, to cultural blocks and the role of tech.

Facilities Managers are managing multiple tasks, regardless of industry. The nuts and bolts of running an office are changing, meaning there is a huge shift in the way FMs need to operate. Despite this blanket observation found in our roundtable, it was clear that this momentous task has many challenges associated with it, and most of them are internal.

MANAGING UP

During the roundtable, it was clear that while Facilities Managers are doing the best they can to support the return to the office, in some instances, attendees indicated that a lack of support or buy-in from senior leaders was acting as a barrier to success. In all cases, Facilities Managers called for open, honest, and frank discussions to be held with senior leaders and other managers across departments to develop a plan that garners the level of support needed to ensure success.

EMPLOYEE BUY-IN

Once senior leaders openly support plans and fully understand the context of the office, the next step to remodelling was indicated to be ‘employee buy-in’.

According to one roundtable participant,
“our managers are very on board with desk booking, both the need for it, and the benefits that it brings, however, we’re having to constantly push that ethos to our employees and reiterate what’s in it for them. Because why? from their perspective.”

Essentially, with the purpose of an office that has drastically shifted over the past two years, employees need to be educated or even re-educated on what an office is, how it can and should be used, and the practices in place to keep them safe.

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.

A Word from our Moderator Paul Mason

The famous British economist Ronald Coase once asked the heretical question – why do we need companies at all? Why can't a bunch of independent suppliers achieve through the marketplace what a firm achieves, with its organisations, rituals and loyalties?

The standard answer in economics is that there are synergies and spillovers from spontaneous collaboration, which only happen inside the firm and not in a marketplace. And that some things only work at scale.

My most acute observation during the Facilities Management roundtable, is that businesses and employees alike are now being posed with an equally large question – what is the purpose of the office? None of our respondents think the office as an institution is over.

In fact, conversations across all key persona groups confirmed otherwise. But we are clearly facing a new economic challenge to the purpose of the modern office: what synergies does it actually create; how much collaboration does it actually facilitate; ultimately how much value does it add.

These questions have pushed their way from the periphery, to the centre of management discussions and is resulting in a seismic shift in the expectation of Facilities Managers.

Paul Mason,
Journalist, writer and film-maker

Executive Summary From Peter Brogan (IWFM)

It’s safe to say that the lens has been pointed at our industry. Where the Facilities Management contribution has previously been overlooked, the events of the last 18 months have highlighted the importance of our role. Hybrid working isn’t necessarily new.

Our industry has been innovating and discussing its progress and opportunities for many years. But the pandemic provided a catalytic moment to bring the reality to life for almost all British businesses.

The impact of this has been varied, many businesses – particularly those who had existing remote and flexible working policies – have thrived in this new environment. But many have not and are still coming to grips with how to adapt business culture and space to meet new expectations from employees.

All businesses have been facing issues around culture and trust. The way organisations operate, and the requirements of these new operating frameworks are placing strain on areas such as skills and employee retention.

These human business challenges are being pointed at facilities managers as we look to evolve the role of the office in today’s world of work.

This roundtable provided the opportunity to discuss the barriers to this necessary change and provide clear recommendations to our senior industry leaders on what FM needs to support the design of the modern office.

Peter Brogan
Head Of Research and Insight
IWFM

THE INTERSECTION OF SPACE AND TECHNOLOGY

The implementation of technology and its related training, play a fundamental role in supporting the hybrid model. Businesses will need to employ technology to support the new physical office in the same way they supported the remote one. Tools such as mirroring and casting technology, as well as adequate training could lead to more effective in-person and online meetings.

Replacing touchpoints with facial recognition and practical devices such as no-touch sanitisers can make workers feel safer and more at ease, making the return less traumatic. However, the critical issue in this session was the lack of clear direction from managers and a scarce interest in finding new and more comfortable solutions.

For example, one roundtable participant underlined this saying: "Our managers are very on board with desk booking, both the need for it and the benefits that it brings, however, we're having to constantly push that ethos to our employees and reiterate what's in it for them."

But what if you've employed technology and worked to highlight how the office has changed to your employees, but still there is a hesitancy to return and inhabit a physical space once again? Then perhaps, the heart of the issue is a cultural one? This is certainly what attendees at our session indicated.

They believed that the cultural problem often sits at the heart of the office issue, and it's the ultimate responsibility of the CEO to rectify it. But to fix the issue, businesses need to be able to quantify what productivity is and accurately measure it. To develop an office structure that works for your business, you must first establish what a successful productive "office" means to you.

For the past 18 months, to quantify productivity, we referred to work hours, and it's ultimately very hard to measure the hours of home workers as quantity, in this sense, does not mean quality in terms of output. In this regard, several attendees agreed on the fact that productivity is important but comes with the caveat that it's only valuable "as long as we can prove output. Are the outputs going to be measured effectively if people aren't feeling productive in their space?".

David Isteed, Amey Group Services, outlined how a good CEO must ask “what’s the right thing for our people? What makes them the most productive and maximises their wellbeing?” With all FM’s on the roundtable agreeing that the focus on people won’t go away and that we must lead from a head and heart perspective.

OVERCOMING FEAR

Two of the biggest challenges facing Facility Management when preparing a return to the office strategy are fear and hesitancy.

Although life can sometimes feel more normal than it has been in a long time, it would be remiss to assume that all people feel this way. Many are still fearful, and their hesitancy isn’t necessarily towards the new working arrangements, it’s sometimes their safety in the new environment.

This is where technology will play a vital role in easing concern, from facial recognition replacing touch entry points to desk booking systems allowing safe hot-spotting to function. Technology has the power to create a space that allows for this new operation.

As the roundtable revealed, we should look at the office as a new type of hardware instead of where hardware lives. Essentially, we need to start looking at users, rather than desks and ensure that the new environments we create cater to the needs of all post-pandemic employees.

Section 3: Strategy Versus Execution

For Facilities Managers, environmental unpredictability, and the fear of wasting economic resources are perhaps the biggest challenges. Over the past 18 months, many offices have been remodelled, refreshed, and renewed, making them more innovative and suited to the new digitalisation of communication systems. But the fear is to go down a route that ends up being wrong or that all their efforts are in vain.

For example, one roundtable participant underlined: "our people are having to use a QR code when they check into the office. And it's the practical elements you don't think about, when someone's there that you've not seen for nearly two years, you're more interested in talking to them, in the human aspects, rather than focusing on the QR code process".

“I've been fighting for agile and flexible environments for the past 20 years, I feel I've got the mix that works, so I don't want people to come in and drift back to where they were 18 months ago. The company is now promoting agile working covering where and when we work and I don’t want the system to fail”. David Isteed, Amey Group Services

“The unpredictability of the environments we’re working in is the biggest challenge, whether in the office or warehouse. The skills gap in HGV and engineering and other areas, for example, are concerning and create vulnerability in organisations’ ability to recover, grow and adapt." stated a roundtable participant from the technology industry.

Businesses need to develop a strategy they can execute and that can be adapted quickly. All FMs on the roundtable agreed that flexibility was vital and tapping into what your employees’ needs and expectations are a way to direct focus at the heart of the issue and develop tangible solutions.

Conclusion & Recommendations

1. Leadership: Taking an active approach

As with any moment of rapid change, understanding how things work, or don’t work, is crucial to the success of a business strategy. Employees are demanding more from the spaces they work in, and it is up to businesses to provide clear feedback loops from both the employees and their managers to understand these needs. Crucially, Facilities Managers need to actively lead the discussion on the best viable solutions to addressing challenges in the modern working environment.

2. Analysis: Using data to inform decisions

Integrating smart technology can be an effective way of tackling a number of challenges discussed in the session but more importantly, using the data collected from this technology to inform future choices is a shortcut to better outcomes. Taking learnings from the data and then driving this through to action might see your business take a new and successful direction.

3. Understanding: Using culture to lead change

One of the key areas of alignment, not only for FMs but across our roundtable mix, was the need for clear direction by way of business mandates, policy and ongoing governance. As with any great period of change, it is crucial to robustly deliver and communicate on your strategies. Leading in this way will provide clarity and buy-in across all levels of your organisation. It will also provide mile markers of success and highlight areas in which you may need to pivot.

As we continue to move into this new era of work, it is necessary to lead change. We hope these recommendations provide insight to what is needed to future proof the facilities management function. For more information or to talk to a member of our team on how Ricoh can help you in your journey please visit ricoh.co.uk.