Office managers could learn a lot from the world of hospitality. Consider the following scenario, where you arrive at a building for a business meeting:
As you walk up to the front entrance, a doorman approaches. He welcomes you by name, ushers you inside, and offers you a copy of the Independent and an espresso with one sugar — your usual newspaper and your usual drink.
While you’re wondering how the doorman knew your name and remembered what you like to read and drink, your appointment arrives. En route to your meeting room, she greets many of the people you pass including a chef and a housekeeper. She allows a group of four to take the first lift that arrives so they can stay together, and on arrival at the meeting floor, she picks up a stray piece of thread on the lobby carpet, explaining that she “just cannot walk past.”
Taking a detour to the men’s toilets, you meet another member of the service team emerging with a half-full packet of hand towels. Maria, as indicated by her name badge, greets you pleasantly, holds the door for you and sets off down the corridor with a spring in her step.
Later, a knock on the door interrupts the meeting and the receptionist steps into the room to politely deliver a message from one of your colleagues, on which is written the instruction “to be delivered by 10am”, which is in fifteen minutes’ time.
After the presentation, you are walked back to reception, and wished a pleasant ‘good day’ by the receptionist who also remembers your name. You are about to pull away in your car when the doorman approaches the car window, and cordially hands over your umbrella, which you left in the meeting room.
Were you in an office or a hotel? Most people answer that they were probably in a hotel. When asked to explain why they came to this conclusion, the majority say that this is the environment where such high standards of service may be expected. When pressed further on what particular aspect of service, most cite the employee behaviour, focused on customer care.
It is interesting to consider the implications of the above for the corporate workplace. Reception, catering, parking, meeting rooms, housekeeping, and engineering are all services provided in a hotel and also in the corporate workplace.
In both situations, these services are provided to customers: guests in the case of a hotel, and employees and visitors in the corporate workplace. The obvious difference would be that a guest usually pays for a hotel and is staying there for pleasure.
However, upon closer examination this argument has some flaws: what about a corporate meeting in a hotel, or an overnight stay, when the guests are paid to be there by the company? Perhaps the two scenarios are not so dissimilar.
In the workplace, the choice for an employee is ultimately the same, based on value, satisfaction and loyalty, albeit this may be a more complex decision to make.
Therefore, the hotel analogy is not about a mindset of giving everything for nothing, and it is good to remind oneself that hotels are commercial businesses.
It is about a mindset of service delivery and recognition of the impact (positive and negative) that front line service people can have. If a hotel company was running a corporate workplace environment, what would the organisation structure look like?
More than a building
Approaches to workplace management have traditionally been drawn from property management with a focus on ensuring the building functionality, led by people with the appropriate skill set. With the advent of outsourcing, contract management became an important consideration and people with this expertise joined the sector. An emphasis on finance should be no surprise when property is often an organisation’s second largest expense after payroll, but perhaps this has been a distraction from understanding the true potential of FM to perform a more central role in an organisation’s business strategy.
There is a case to be made that good workplace strategy can optimise an organisation’s investment in people. A well-referenced study by Gensler estimates that poorly designed offices cost UK businesses £135bn a year. The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment and the British Council for Offices found that 24 per cent of staff satisfaction is influenced by comfort, air quality, temperature, noise, lighting and office layout. A Sheffield Hallam University study found that about 60 per cent of HR managers feel that the office environment has an impact on the effectiveness of staff. They believed that collaboration, knowledge sharing and the development of ideas was affected by workplace design.
So FM can provide an important competitive advantage in the war for talent and save costs in recruitment and training by helping to retain employees for longer and improve employee productivity in the workplace.
Another lens through which to view FM is the brand perspective. The workplace is a highly visible, symbolic representation of an organisation’s brand and culture (visible to all stakeholders). This is increasingly relevant in our age of social media where organisations are no longer what they say they are, but rather what others (including employees) say they are. Because of the customer-facing nature of the services provided, FM therefore plays a central role in creating a strong ‘service brand’ by alignment of strategy in the areas of customer experience, employee engagement and brand DNA. When this is done well, key stakeholders will receive a transparent, consistent experience, which is aligned to the culture, values and personality of the organisation. This approach is based on the well-respected service-profit chain model.
Additionally, the heavily outsourced nature of facilities management means that services are often provided by a range of different companies with little focus on seamless delivery or behavioural representation of the client organisation brand values.
‘Outside-in’ service delivery
Perhaps the next step for FM is to place the customer experience rather than buildings and contracts at the centre of the approach. Insight from all stakeholders (employee, customer, community and supplier) is needed and a measurement framework would assist comparative efforts. This could include specific workplace-related questions as part of the business’ employee engagement/satisfaction process. It should also involve consolidation of valuable information from a range of sources such as help desk calls, focused surveys and feedback forums to create a rich picture of feedback from all stakeholders.
Critically, consideration also needs to be given to the emotional perception as this is a major contributor to the overall perception of a service transaction. However, culture needs constant nourishing and attention to flourish and be strong. Choosing to include emotional factors makes accurate measurement more of a challenge, however, leaving them out can mar any assessment, even rendering it meaningless.
It is possible, therefore, to develop an understanding of how a customer’s experience measures up to their expectation, linking everything back to resource, in order to assist in prioritisation and resource allocation of workplace services.
Analytics (rather than pure opinion) could then drive business strategy and the business planning process. A more transparent, scientific approach would also aid the transition to a ‘customer journey’ approach, which could make savings and reduce silo structures. However, caution will be needed when communicating this approach, because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and individuals’ reactions could be counter-productive if not carefully managed.
From a property and cost management perspective, FM has made big improvements. However, the potential to continue this trend is limited, and may even be detrimental to the core business. What is now required is a focus on value and to regard buildings as a means to an end rather than an end in their own right — buildings are only there to enable people to do something. Placing the customer experience at the centre of the way we design and deliver workplace services, gaining scientific insight and understanding emotional considerations can elevate the role of FM to a more strategic, valuable and valued position in an organisation.
