FM Pulse: Despite Challenges, Job Satisfaction Stays High For Facilities Managers

This is an excerpt from a Building Operating Management article, which provides details on the publication's annual FM Pulse survey results. This year, 2,591 facility managers responded to the survey.

These should be the worst of times for facility managers. After two decades of steady pressure on resources, the Great Recession brought a whole new level of budget pressure to bear on hard-pressed facility departments. Staff was cut, retirements were delayed, demands rose, the working day often got longer, and raises were deferred and deferred again. But through it all facility managers have been resilient. Perhaps the best indication of how resilient is the job satisfaction ratings in Building Operating Management's annual FM Pulse survey.

From 2008, before the full force of the recession had been felt, through the depths of the recession, to this year, those job satisfaction numbers have remained remarkably constant. ... Those who indicated that they were satisfied ranged from 88 percent to 91 percent. Within that group, those who called themselves very satisfied ranged from 44 percent to 48 percent. The most striking change came in 2009, when the number who said they were very dissatisfied jumped from 1 percent to 8 percent, before falling back to 2 percent in 2010.

But those job satisfaction numbers don't mean that facility departments somehow escaped the Great Recession unscathed. Just the opposite.

The full article is available on the Building Operating Management website. (Links are below.)

From: FM Pulse: Despite Challenges, Job Satisfaction Stays High For Facilities Managers, Building Operating Management