Facilities futures: Brave new workplaces

What is it about the practice of facilities management that substantiates its claim to be a profession? We need a convincing answer if the effort that has been put into developing a professional infrastructure in the UK is to succeed.

In one respect, the signs are not encouraging. In spite of the early emphasis in facilities management on the link between user needs and a more effective workplace, the main influence on the recent development of facilities management has been its association with cost cutting and outsourcing. This has shifted the focus away from the value added aspects of workplace provision.

However, current debates about stakeholder needs and healthy sustainable workplaces gives facilities management the chance to reconnect to its pioneering ideals and strengthen its case for professional recognition. The promotion of user participation in workplace design and management would be one way to achieve this and restore the balance between cost and value as the essence of the facilities management role.

Facilities management and cost control
When Frank Duffy, to many the father of facilities management in the UK, describes cost cutting as facilities management's 'predominant objective and chief distinguishing feature' (Facilities, 2000), then we know we have a problem.

Duffy has tirelessly promoted the cause of better working environments and the imperative to understand user needs. Facilities management has been instrumental to his argument as the embodiment of a function that understands the impact of the physical environment on people at work and can link their needs and aspirations with the realities of organisational investment in the physical infrastructure.

Implicit in this view of facilities management is that its main function is to promote both the social and economic benefits of a better 'fit' in the workplace, improving both space utilisation and user satisfaction. Duffy's statement implies that this balance between cost control and added value has not been achieved.

It is understandable that a demand-led function like facilities management should be influenced by the strong tide of organisational re-engineering and rationalisation, and that this should push facilities management into a close identification with cost cutting. But the predominant view of facilities management as a cost control function threatens its onward professional development.

We need to understand the forces that have driven facilities management down this road, in order to mobilise the powerful counter-arguments that will consolidate the profession. This will not be easy, as the traditional culture of work, which promotes short-term expediency based on stringent cost control is entrenched. At the heart of this culture is the classification of most employees and the space that they occupy as a cost. Under the pressures of globalisation and increased competitiveness this culture has been intensified.

The recent publicity about the autobiography of the chief executive of, arguably, the world's most successful company has sharpened the focus. The methods Jack Welch used at GE to consolidate its position as the world's largest corporation reinforces the power of the traditional top down autocratic structure based on the military model to respond to increased competition. The policy of making redundant the lowest performing 10 per cent of management year on year highlights a culture in which most employees are regarded as a cost that must be controlled.

This is reflected in the increasing use of technology to monitor how people work. In the words of Baldry et al (Workplaces of the Future, 1998) this has made the workplace 'less personalised, more subject to hierarchical delineation and structuring and less open to control by individual workers'.

This may not be a very humanistic way of managing, but it cannot be denied that it has been highly effective. If the most successful business on the planet has used these methods to achieve success then there needs to be good reason why it should not be copied.

If, in a tight situation costs have to be cut and this can only be achieved by getting rid of people and facilities, then why should facilities managers object? As cost cutting and outsourcing have been the standard weapons of corporations to combat global competition, it is not difficult to see why the facilities management function has been focused on cost cutting and the efficient use of facilities. In this culture it is highly unlikely that physical facilities will be seen as anything other than a cost.

Facilities management and value
The irony of this intensification of the traditional culture is that the voices insisting that global organisations must take a very different path to survive are growing louder. The message can be summed up neatly in Peter Senge's assertion that 'in a world of increasing interdependence and rapid change it is no longer possible to figure it out from the top' (Harvard Business Review, 1997). The manifestation of this new culture is the growth of extended organisations characterised as networked alliances held together by an electronic infrastructure.

Senge's message of less controlling and more learning is powerful. Organisations must continually create and share knowledge. The effect of IT and global competition is to produce organisations that can only compete by being creative and innovative.

Increasingly the difference between success and failure is not the products but the knowledge behind them. But knowledge has a short shelf life and requires a large educated and empowered workforce to keep generating new ideas. In this situation people are increasingly the principal asset. They are the repository of existing knowledge and the source of new knowledge. This value-added view of employees means they have to be treated differently. Charles Handy for example has suggested that organisations should be viewed as communities with employees treated as citizens with both rights and responsibilities.

Facilities management in this scenario is about enhancing employee value by balancing rights and responsibilities, and is much closer to the pioneering ideals of Becker and Duffy. But this brave new workplace is not universally accepted. It requires a radical shift in organisational culture that is beyond the scope of facilities management. However, the sector does have a part to play.

We know that the relationship between the physical infrastructure of work and the work process is not well understood and that we use workspace very inefficiently. Participation by those who are most affected by it can only be an improvement if they are willing to balance needs and responsibility. Facilities management could be both an advocate of user participation and a mediation force that holds the process together.

This would be a useful step to viewing the development and management of the physical infrastructure of work as a means to enhance the value of employees. Facilities management in this scenario is about understanding the needs of users to ensure that the supporting framework helps rather than hinders the process of work and that the physical workplace is an ingredient in the productivity of each worker. This emphasises effectiveness as well as efficiency, and will become more important as organisations realise the implications of the network structures that they have become. Knowledge holds the network together, value is distributed throughout the network away from the core, and distinctions between what is core and non-core disappear.

Facilities management as a profession
User needs lie at the heart of the issue of facilities management's claim to be a profession, but if the future of facilities management is to be primarily as a cost control function within the traditional culture of work then the claim looks hollow. For facilities management to be widely accepted as a profession it must comply with the prevailing expectations about the characteristics of a professional function.

There are many debates about the nature and role of professions in western society, and professionalism is clearly more than just the rigorous application of a defined set of knowledge and skills. However, one theme that recurs consistently is that of social responsibility — the carrying out of a function that impacts on people's lives in such a way that the practitioner clearly has a duty to society over and above duty to the client.

In the case of the major professions such as medicine and law this duty is clear. In others, including many in the field of built environment, the social impact is difficult to define and, in Glazer's typology, these are classified as 'minor' professions. Facilities management is likely to fall into this category if it is seen as primarily a cost cutting function.

Such limitations on the role of facilities management are unnecessary. Who could argue that a function that revolves around the organisation of the workplace at a time of great change does not have a major impact on the lives of people when they are in the workplace? Pioneers like Becker were spot on — the co-ordination function central to facilities management that links the employee and the organisation via the physical infrastructure does have an impact on social well-being and economic performance, whether we chose to recognise it or not. Facilities management needs to do is make a virtue of this necessity.

The enhancement of the value side of facilities management activity is very much in line with the imperative to produce a more inclusive, less regulated and more creative working environment. The public manifestation of this trend is the stakeholder debate and the need to include all primary stakeholders in the decision-making processes that affect their lives.

Facilities management as a profession should contribute to this debate and promote the importance of the infrastructure of work as an integral part of the work process. The pressure for more creative workplaces gives the opportunity to show that the workplace can be a positive influence on productivity.

This trend in workplace evolution is not confined to the static office environment. The growth of flexible working away from the traditional office is both liberating and threatening, and presents facilities management with a whole new challenge.

Although facilities management has made considerable progress towards defining its set of skills and knowledge, and has set up rigorous processes to test these to a professional level, its progress towards general professional recognition may be stalled if it cannot convincingly articulate its social role. This has not happened to date and few facilities managers or their employers would recognise any social dimension to their role.

While facilities management must continue to provide an effective product for the current market, it can play its part in developing the new culture and focus on effectiveness rather than cost control. The promotion of user participation based on a thorough understanding of user needs is an important element in this change.

The professional mission of facilities management must be to develop as a value creation process focused on people. It should reinforce the message that people are a valuable asset and that the physical environment is part of the process that creates value. As a socially responsible profession it should act as an advocate of user needs, regard the physical infrastructure as a mediator between the human elements of the organisation and support work wherever it occurs. The entrenched power of the old culture should not be underestimated. Facilities management has an important role to play in shaping the future but it needs to have a clear view about its contribution and how it should be made.