The idea of outsourcing aspects, or even the entirety, of FM services is well established in both the private and public sectors.
The logic is sound; services can often be delivered for less than it would cost in-house, and outsourced organisations take over the associated hassle around hiring and training staff, including coping with the high levels of turnover that are often associated with the sector.
Yet even those who are firm advocates of outsourcing would probably admit to a few nagging doubts, and chief among them would whether any external provider — and particularly the staff on the ground — can really feel the same sense of ‘ownership’ and direct responsibility for the delivery of services to their colleagues that should, in theory at least, be achieved with an in-house team.
Steve Vincent-Marshall, director of facilities at Barton Peveril College in Eastleigh, Hampshire, took the decision to bring back a cleaning contract in-house around six years ago when its existing provider went out of business, and immediately saw a significant improvement in both the standards of service and the enthusiasm of the same staff who previously worked for the external contractor.
“They wore college polo shirts and we gave them all brand new equipment, and all of a sudden the cleaning standard increased like you wouldn’t believe,” he says. “It was purely down to people having their own areas, feeling part of the college, being involved in all of the social side and just taking ownership.”
TUPE-ing in
The staff were brought across under a TUPE arrangement, and received a small increase in the hourly rate as well as new equipment, but Vincent-Marshall believes just as much of the extra productivity is down to the little things that come with employing people directly.
“All cleaning staff are invited to come to staff meetings, and they all get Christmas cards from the principal,” he says.
Other categories have also been brought back in-house, including security, catering, grounds maintenance, minor building works and decoration. “Outsourcing works for some, but in-house just works better for us,” says Vincent-Marshall.
Neil Edmond is operations director at BT Facilities Services (BTFS), the new in-house FM team for BT, which brought staff in-house after taking over service provider Monteray. He believes the move helped him to create a more engaging proposition for staff, including paying the UK living wage rather than the national minimum wage.
“We were at a point where we couldn’t quite see what value we were getting from the management fee and felt we would rather reinvest that back into the people who were working for the organisation,” he says.
Other factors have also helped to develop a stronger sense of employee loyalty and ownership, too, including being able to offer staff some of the benefits that come with working for a larger business.
“There are aspects of being an employee in an in-house team which give me advantages over being an outsourced team in a client office,” he says.
“The obvious ones in BT would be being able to give broadband for £1, access to BT Sports and options to buy into a BT ShareSave scheme. I’m not going to deny that as we stand today — especially with the fortunes of BT quite resurgent — it is something that people feel pretty good about.”
Specialist attributes
There are times when having such a degree of ownership — or specialist attributes — is not just desirable, but essential. Ian Flockhart, a partner at construction consultancy Pellings, gives the example of two clients where a genuine empathy in customer-facing roles was essential.
“We had a group of schools being built under PFI,” he says. “They wanted to retain the soft services side because they had special needs children so the staff within the reception had to relate to them. With a contractor you probably wouldn’t get that as much. Another organisation was the National Trust, which preferred to do the meet-and-greet customer services side in-house because they knew their business, buildings and properties better than an external contractor would.”
But this is not to say that it is impossible to get the same sense of ownership even when those delivering services work for an outside organisation.
Martin Pickard, managing director of FM Guru, uses the football analogy of playing for club and country.
“I don’t think there’s necessarily a conflict of interests if you’re working for an outsourced service provider; it doesn’t mean you can’t be committed to, or care about, the interests of the occupying organisation,” he says.
But he believes clients in particular need to get better at managing people on their premises who are not directly employed by them. “I’ve seen horrific things where when people were in-house they were allowed to eat in the restaurant, but once they became contractors they had to sit in the car park and eat sandwiches,” he says. “If you treat people like second-class outcasts who have to wear a different colour badge then inevitably they’re not going to feel as committed as if you looked after them properly, as part of your team.”
He also points out that it can be easier to motivate people when they are working for external businesses as there is a greater emphasis on performance management.
“Often when companies do outsource they see an increase in performance, even though they have the same people,” he says. “People don’t tend to manage their own staff with quite the same rigour.”
Edmond, too, has seen examples of where two parties can develop such close relationships — both at managerial level and on the shop floor — that staff are genuinely engaged, and this eventually filters through to better service levels and even increased store sales. It’s this kind of relationship that he’s now looking to develop with external clients.
“I don’t believe that whether you’re insourced or outsourced should mean that one is inherently more successful than the other,” he says. “Today, undoubtedly, I’m able to capitalise on being part of that BT family as BTFS. But I have to then go into my next client relationship, which will be non-BT, and deliver the same without that. But that’s why I’m employed to do the job I do; I have to think of different and more innovative and motivational ways to achieve that.”
Outsourced providers also have to make efforts to ensure that their employees can buy into the culture of their client, suggests Anthony Bennett, owner-director at bespoke hospitality services firm Bennett Hay. “The very design of an outsourced set of services can sometimes get in the way of a joined-up service,” he says. “The key to ownership is for the combined FM team to be trained in the behaviours that the client wants to see in its building.
“The most effective approach is to put individual outsourced companies’ policies and procedures to one side and shape a service delivery around what best reflects the client,” he adds.
“Ownership can definitely be achieved, but service providers have to be more open-minded and look at the wider service offering, not just their area of specialism.”
Horses for courses
The size of the provider may also be an issue. FM World spoke to a head of facilities for a public sector organisation who strongly opposes the government’s push towards outsourcing, and particularly the trend towards large contracts with the biggest service providers. He believes smaller players are more likely to deliver a better service, based on a broader understanding of individual client needs, with staff who feel accountable for that.
“If you’re dealing with a smaller regional or local organisation for which you are a reasonable-sized client, they are going to be much more responsive,” he says. “In-house isn’t always more responsive; it’s very much horses for courses. But our experience is that small local contractors will be proactive in coming forward with ideas, and there’s a relationship there. They want to do a good job for you, as opposed to box-ticking.”
In reality, what is outsourced — and how important staff ownership and responsibility are — will depend at least in part on the nature of the service being provided. Pickard argues that anything involving staff being based on a client site on a permanent basis is naturally suited to being delivered in-house.
“One aspect about FM outsourcing that is different compared with other sectors is that these are services where people come and live in the building,” he says. “So reception, catering, post; these are the ones where you want that sense of ownership and community, and for them to really understand the DNA of the organisation. But with a visiting pest control person or a maintenance engineer who comes and services the boiler once a fortnight, it makes no difference whatsoever.”
Yet some employees may actually feel a greater degree of empathy and affiliation with their end-client than with their own employer.
“If you’re working for Fred Bloggs FM, which no one has ever heard of, you’re going to feel very different if you then go to work for a global brand like Mercedes-Benz or Unilever,” says Pickard. “Being able to say you work for a brand you can feel proud of will help a lot.”
This hints at a wider problem, he believes, about just how the FM sector perceives itself.
“I’ve long complained that the facilities industry prefers to put its head down and keep out of the headlines rather than promoting the great work that our sector does for the economy and society,” he adds.
“If we made more of the good things we do as a sector, then perhaps people would feel proud to work for us.” – See more at: http://www.fm-world.co.uk/features/feature-articles/a-sense-of-ownership/#sthash.LmDcO0ll.dpuf
