A Bird in the Hand

The beginning of April saw three major events in the facilities management calendar, all taking place in the same week. Time-pressed facilities professionals can find it hard to get out to events; attending three simultaneously is impossible.

Yet delegates at The FM & Property Event, Th!nkFM, and the annual Facilities Management Legal Update were able to follow goings-on at the other events in real time, while others kept up to speed with all three without even leaving the office. All they needed was internet access and a Twitter account.

Martin Pickard, managing director of The FM Guru Consultancy, was one. “I was chairing the workplace law conference and tweeting what people were saying and also reading the tweets from ThinkFM,” he says. “After the events we looked at the statistics and there were 150 people at the conference but 4,000 people had read the tweets. It really changes the face of conferences and the way we do things. It’s super-powerful.”

These few days provided a snapshot of the potential of Twitter to bring together those in the FM community, initially in a virtual setting but also by enabling people to build professional relationships in the real world.

“You could see relationships being established during the Th!nkFM conference which otherwise wouldn’t have happened,” says Neil Usher, general manager of group property at Rio Tinto. “I met about half a dozen people in the one day I was there who I wouldn’t have come into contact with without Twitter.”

Hatching a plan

Usher first started using Twitter around nine months ago, when he found himself in a social media caf as part of a project researching how we may all end up working in the future. For him, the ability to make contacts beyond the industry is one of the main benefits. “A proportion of the HR community seems to use Twitter and being able to find out what they are thinking is tremendously useful,” he says. “You just wouldn’t have access to that using traditional means or even the internet.”

Nigel Oseland, owner of Workplace Unlimited and chair of the Workplace Consulting Organisation, became a convert to Twitter at a conference. “I discovered that some of the audience at a conference I organised were tweeting on what I was saying, by using a common hash tag,” he recalls. “I accused them of passing notes around the classroom but joined them anyway. The beauty of Twitter is the connections to people on the periphery of our industry, and I am interested in possible paradigm shifts in thinking that can only come from an extended network.”

Another oft-cited benefit of having an effective Twitter network is the easy access it provides to research and comment through links to websites, reports and blogs from industry figures. “It provides access in real time to constant updates about topical issues, whether from suppliers, consultants or contractors, about everything from paper towels to building infrastructure engineering,” says Adrian McNeece, founder of workplace advisory firm McNeece Consulting. “Any FM who is tapped into the right network of suppliers and consultants will have regular responses to any queries they may have.”

Iain Murray is group strategy director at Europa Support Services and joined Twitter as a means of extending the reach of a regular blog he wrote in his former role as chair of the British Institute of Facilities Management. “I’m trying to make myself be perceived as an expert so anyone involved in FM would naturally go to me and look at my business,” he says. “I’m very consciously using this as a business tool.”

The idea of being able to extend her own brand was also the motivation behind Helen Versloot, former group facilities manager at Orchard & Shipman, signing up after being made redundant at the end of 2010. “I’m a fledgling Twitterer and I’m still finding my way around it,” she admits. “For me it has quite a clearly defined purpose, which is to raise my profile within the industry and to develop my own personal knowledge in different areas. It’s a much more effective way of targeting people or accessing information from the right audience.”

A bird’s eye view

Pickard, meanwhile, puts forward another reason why FM practitioners should have at least some form of presence on Twitter. “If they’re not, not only are they missing a trick from a business perspective but they’re also running a risk of brand damage,” he warns. “They should be on there, if only to monitor what their staff — their cleaners, security guards and kitchen staff — are saying about them that their customers could end up reading.”

Currently, however, there are relatively few practitioners actively using Twitter. “Some of the highest profile people in the industry are on Twitter but I see very few people who work in in-house roles,” says Liz Kentish, director of Liz Kentish Coaching and chair of Women in FM. “I could probably name about two or three. I’d like to see more on there, purely to share some of their successes and frustrations.”

One of the main obstacles to the further spread of Twitter could be companies’ concerns over their ability to police what their staff are saying, with some even going so far as to ban the use of social media altogether. “This is a big problem; there was one individual I suggested follow me on Twitter and it was literally not possible for him to do so,” says McNeece. “There needs to be a rethink in organisations about the benefits of increasing their communication with the outside world, whether it’s clients or suppliers, and developing policies around that.”

Others are simply baffled by the whole concept of Twitter and have neither the time nor inclination to work out how to use it. Amanda Collins, director of Disco Fridays, has trained many professionals in the use of Twitter for business purposes but admits FM professionals have been “slow on the uptake”. “It is a new way of marketing, promoting, networking and growing your business, but if you don’t know how to use it correctly then it is hard to know where and how to start,” she says.

Then there’s the potential for unwanted contact from potential suppliers; something Usher admits can be offputting. “You always get followed by some salespeople,” he says. “You have to manage your account and block those you don’t want following you.”

“It’s the same in the real world; you dismiss the rubbish,” adds McNeece. “You have to treat it like a cocktail party or works do; talk to as many people as you can and if it’s not of interest you move on. It’s about being able to communicate effectively with each other and that is facilitated more so by Twitter than any other community today because it’s so immediate.”

Flocking together

As more people from all industries start using Twitter for business purposes, the pressure on those within FM who continue to resist will increase. In the longer term, there is even the possibility that it could be used as a communication hub where messages can quickly and easily be sent out to select groups of internal customers, suppliers or wider communities.

“It does have the potential to be more widely received than traditional communications such as internal mail or newsletters,” says Dayon Haynes, company director and digital coach at Haynes Facilities Management. “Many employees will log on to social media sites on a daily basis — whether for work or personal use — so if their homepages and user profiles are set up in the right way, the first thing they will see could be company tweets.”

There is evidence that some more forward-thinking organisations are already starting to think along these lines. Pickard, for instance, gives the example of one organisation which makes every employee follow a health and safety manager in a closed group.

“In the event of an evacuation or another safety issue he can tweet instantly and they would all receive it on their phones,” he says. “That’s brilliant, and remember that this thing is free. There aren’t many things you get for free these days.”

Occupier perspective

Neil Usher, general manager of group property at Rio Tinto, believes Twitter can be a valuable resource for corporate facilities managers who follow the right people.

“You can gain access to an enormous amount of constantly evolving and developing research, perspectives and content, all in one stream,” he says. “Those you follow will take you to their contacts, and your field of vision will continue to expand.”

Professionals can use hash tags to follow events they are unable to attend and even influence the debate from their home or office, he adds.

Usher admits it can take time to master the basics but believes the investment will more than pay off. “You will create value for yourself, contribute to the development of the profession and benefit your employer by becoming more enlightened and aware of what else is happening around you,” he says.