In recent years, the many cogs and factions that make up the facility management industry have begun to coalesce around the term “workplace.” The modern workplace has now moved beyond a one-size-fits-all space to a fluid concept that recognises different work styles and needs of occupants thus providing customized solutions and ease to work efficiently.
In the era of digital natives, co-working and 24x7 open workplaces have become an integral driver of user productivity and experience. Keeping employees comfortable, safe, and satisfied at all levels and managing the work places efficiently has become a key driver of facility management.
Now a days, most organizations function collaboratively, and one employee’s work depends on other employees’ efforts. Thus, even seemingly small disruptions in the workflow have a significant cumulative effect on the total outcome of the task. Many workplaces are beginning to address this need with employee experience apps that allow people to stay connected to their workplace and find people, reserve spaces, request service and receive mail or visitors. Beyond the traditional metrics, such as cost per square meter and square meter per employee, companies have begun to use employee productivity, engagement and retention to measure the effectiveness of a facility; where the responsibility of a Facility Manager becomes crucial.
To keep up with this paradigm shift, facility management has been forced to shift its focus from buildings to the occupiers and from process centric to experience centric. As this function evolves from an asset or building centred activity to one that focuses on end-users and outcomes, the existing facility management practices lapse into obsolescence.
Today, it’s not only workplace maintenance & risk mitigation that make facility management important in an organization. The genesis of new trend is multi-dimensional, which is shaped by social, economic and technological factors; but a dominant driver has undoubtedly been a greater understanding around the impact, working environments have on broader business performance. In last few decades, facility management has morphed from a mere provider of services to a key cog in the business growth engine.
In order to meet new expectations, facility manager needs an insight-driven, occupier-centric model, one that is fully automated, connected and intelligent. With the innovations like smart technology, including context-aware electronic devices that monitor and analyse their surroundings to perform autonomic actions by connecting to other devices; an Integrated Work Place Management System, facility managers can dramatically ease the lives of their occupants by making their buildings and the technology in them more accessible. Additionally, smart technology’s ability to sense, monitor and adapt to the surrounding environment, it offers unparalleled ease of use to Facility Managers and occupiers in meeting the needs of the new generation workforce and workplaces.
Given the promise of providing a more productive, safe, comfortable and efficient workplace, Facility Managers cannot afford to ignore technology breakthroughs which are impacting the Facility Management business environment.
