The days of an empirical approach to Facility Management (FM) activities are long gone. Numerous training courses, including those offered by IFMA and other regional organisations, have been providing a solid foundation for specialists in this field for many years.
Like other sectors, FM is adapting to the many technological and technical revolutions as well as to new working and organisational methods.
However, one point remains central to FM activities: the human factor, the ins, and outs of which can be quite adventurous…
The Anglo-Saxons are leaders in this field and the main ‘taboos’ have long since fallen away. The systematic outsourcing of FM to service providers is a good example. However, the main difficulty is not in outsourcing part of one’s FM activities to a third party, but rather in the mindset in which it is done.
Far too many managers seek to optimise FM costs by outsourcing or reducing services according to the mechanics learned at management school. However, and this is where the problem lies, a large part of the quality of FM activities is directly linked to… human relations!
The most beautiful theory collapses when the executors and their internal correspondents are not able to get along, to agree or, even better, to value each other.
It is obvious that Facility Management is a business like any other and service providers, whether internal or external, are looking for productivity and even profit. But FM interactions and activities are so intertwined in the company that without smooth and constructive human relations, the end customer, i.e., you and me, will never be satisfied.
It is true that entering an FM contract with talk of ‘partnership’ may seem illusory or naive, but most supplier-customer relationships have several levels: top management, leadership, and execution.
While relationships at the senior management level are often courteous, operational management has other challenges: balancing quality, volume, and cost. Without a good dose of empathy and a sense of human relations, a clash is guaranteed, as the objectives are often opposed. As for the execution, it is often a question of executors and clients knowing each other personally and acting with humanity.
The great theories therefore often fade away before the human reality and the capacities of everyone to carry out a task daily. It is not doing an activity correctly once that is difficult but repeating it over a long period of time with the same quality and rigour.
In the end, it is therefore the human element that will decide on the quality of a service in most cases. This is what ultimately makes the beauty of the FM sector, which must remain a quality human adventure.
Have a good week, good thoughts, and good reading.