As a facility manager, you are juggling multiple responsibilities at the same time. You take charge of the building’s maintenance, record-keeping, security, compliance requirements, business continuity and disaster recovery, just to name a few. On top of that, the obligation of ensuring a safe workplace for all occupants also ultimately falls on your shoulders. These plus all the travelling required if you are managing buildings in several locations can make your day challenging.

Do you want tomorrow to be different? Responsibilities will always be part of any job, but there are ways to make work easier. Here are some tips that can give you more time on your hands so that you can focus on your core activities.

1. Tighten supplier selection process.

Conducting due diligence to determine a supplier’s capacity, capability, and track record will ultimately help you make the fitting choice. During your selection process, it is advisable to look at the provider’s capability, capacity, delivery methods, and quality assurance practices.

Do they have the appropriate experience and certifications for the services they are offering? Do they have full-time resources that can plan for and deliver the scope of work? Do they have a single point of contact you can reach out to when issues arise? Do they have processes in place to ensure maintenance of service quality? Do they have the capacity to provide multiple services that your building requires so that you can increase your buying power with as few providers as possible?

Tightening your supplier selection process will help you make sound business decisions that will bring value to your company and tenants. With the right supplier, you will have peace of mind that they will deliver quality service and outcomes as agreed. This means fewer complaints from tenants and fewer worries for you.

2. Focus on tenant and occupant satisfaction.

Your day-to-day activities as a facility manager involve ensuring that managed buildings meet the needs of the owners, tenants and general occupants. This is not an easy feat especially if you are managing multiple buildings with thousands of occupants in your care.

The following practices, if implemented consistently, can help improve tenant and occupant satisfaction:

Ensure constant communication. Tenants and occupants will appreciate an advance notification if their workplace is disrupted due to activities and projects such as repairs, training sessions, or evacuation exercises. They deserve to know if there are maintenance issues, how long they will last, and what your team is doing about them. Sending regular notification emails or newsletters is effective in keeping tenants and occupants up-to-date, especially for larger buildings where multiple projects a year are commonly conducted.
Ask for feedback. Getting feedback from tenants and occupants will be beneficial to you and your organisation in a lot of ways. It will give you a clear overview of your tenants and occupants’ pain points and will help you prioritise activities that will solve urgent issues. Results of surveys will also aid you in making data-driven decisions.
Make it easier for them to report problems and track work orders. Dissatisfaction mostly happens when problems and complaints are not acknowledged timely. Tenants and occupants will appreciate if there is a system or process in place that would make reporting issues easier. Having the ability to track the progress of work orders or repairs will also increase their confidence in your services.

3. Use technology to simplify work processes.

Technology is redefining businesses and industries. Now, there are services relevant to facility management that can be offered online, such as compliance management and warden training.

EvacConnect is a web-based management tool that offers compliance management and online training system. It provides a secure, user-friendly platform to manage warden lists and to allow all staff to undertake their compliance training online.

The system can validate the Emergency Control Organisation (ECO), provide warden training and other supplementary training, as well as provide a dashboard that demonstrates the compliance of the portfolio and the site to AS3745.

Compliance management and online training system will reduce the liability of chasing documentation and service records. It will also increase engagement of assigned wardens during training sessions. Here’s how:

With traditional face-to-face training sessions, hours are mostly fixed, regardless of participants’ learning pace. With online warden training, sessions are only as long as the learner needs to absorb or understand the course.
Upon completing the session, participants can easily print their training certificates.
Online warden training allows participants to fit training around their schedule. They can learn at their own pace, without the need to compete with other participants.