Survey Reveals Drop In Pressure; Fewer Cutbacks For Cleaning Industry

This is an excerpt from a Today's Facility Manager article.

The cleaning industry has become somewhat more efficient with operations and keeping costs down in the last two years—and in the wake of an improving economy—a tone of cautious optimism is apparent. This is according to the 2013 Cleaning Industry Insights Survey from P&G Professional™.

According to survey respondents, cutbacks on luxuries have been reduced and pressures have eased. However, loss of business and customer dissatisfaction are the leading causes of worry, keeping key decision makers on their toes to ensure continued improvements and efficiencies.

The survey results were based on the responses of more than 400 cleaning industry professionals and key decision makers across healthcare, food service, commercial, and hospitality sectors. This study follows the inaugural survey which was released in late 2011.

The full article is available at todaysfacilitymanager.com.

What You Don’t Measure You Don’t Manage: Taking the Guess Work Out of FM Performance

This is an excerpt from a Facilities Management Journal article.

At a recent breakfast briefing held at the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) HQ to discuss the benefits of benchmarking FM performance, the very clear message from the speakers was “What you don’t measure you don’t Manage”.

According to the event speakers, the implication of neglecting to measure, is, at best, that you are not in a position to outline ways of improving your performance, at worst, your decision is a guess which can simply end up costing your organization more money.

Whether you are using in-house or a third party FM provider, the need to benchmark remains the same. It allows you to identify the value for Money you receive from your FM provider or to develop the business case to make any internal investment.

During the event all the speakers had a variation on the same message, to drive up standards and drive out inefficiencies you had to first know your current status, which means measure how you are currently performing. This also allows you to identify your objectives and formulate your strategy for delivering on your objectives.

The full article is available at fmjdata.com.

Competitive Safety: Breaking the Mold

This is an excerpt from an EHS Today article.

Organizations that compete for market share in products and services tend to cooperate and collaborate on safety. This mindset has led to a cooperative, kaizen environment in which the only winner is the one who can do the same things better than everyone else. Sure, we look for those tiny improvements and efficiencies and we are open to the next big program that can create a step-change, but we basically are all operating safety with the same strategy (or lack thereof).

It is the lack of safety strategy that is concerning. Few organizations have one. They have goals and wishes and programs designed to improve workplace conditions and enhance the cognitive and behavioral factors in workers that tend to lower accident probability. They have safety departments that focus on compliance, training and reactive safety activities. Since these mirror other organizations' safety efforts, there is an assumption that these are the right (and only) things to do. There are very few key processes in business that are managed with such basic lack of strategy.

At the core of this thinking is a more basic paradigm: business is what we do and safety is just a nagging problem that can keep us from doing it if we are not careful. Business is full of strategy. Rolling out a new product or service involves massive strategic thinking and planning. We seek competitive advantage and market share. How can we do things better, cheaper, faster, more fun or efficient than our competitors? We even look for products and services that don't yet exist. We do market research to determine feasibility and we test the new stuff on potential customers before we roll it out to the marketplace. After we enter the marketplace, we analyze competing products to make sure we maintain competitive advantage and look for further improvements we can make in our next generation of product.

The full article is available at ehstoday.com.

Managers Versus Leaders

This is an excerpt of an fmlink.com article, which was adopted from BOMI International course materials.

Leader and manager positions are different, although the same person may often perform the two jobs. Leaders, and those with effective leadership skills, manage employees and situations more efficiently and successfully.

Leaders are more task, goal, and relationship oriented, whereas managers are more operations oriented. Leaders have more effective interpersonal styles, and leader-member exchanges ultimately influence employees' behavior. Ultimate effectiveness, though, depends on appropriate leadership style.

Leaders are typically out in front. However, this does not mean they are always visible and actively involved in a function. For example, managers and supervisors can be out in front of a workgroup in terms of ideas.

• Leaders see possibilities and potential, and develop ideas that others do not see.
• They identify problems that have only begun to develop.
• They plan well in order to mitigate problems for others.

The idea is to have a manager who is also a capable leader. Functionally, however, differences between the two are obvious.
Characteristically, managers who are clearly leaders are distinct from other managers. Leader-managers actively embrace these roles:

• Visionaries: They can see the end result.
• Risk takers: They are willing to go all out.
• Motivators: They help inspire others with ideas or attitude.
• Initiators of change: They help move people or ideas in a new direction.

In addition, leader-managers responsibly exhibit these qualities:

• Provide direction: They share their ideas with colleagues.
• Play an active role: They are not indifferent to the work or to the people performing it. They are willing to roll up their sleeves.
• Function as part of a team: They are interactive in the process. 
• Delegate effectively: They allow others to learn and grow.

The full article is available on the Facilities Management News website.

Start as You Mean to Go On

This is an excerpt from an article in the Facilities Management Journal.

No one has a better understanding how a building operates in its day-to-day life than the facilities manager (FM). The responsibility for even the smallest of operational elements results in a much greater understanding of economy, aesthetic and efficiency and how all of these impact on the end user. Now, with the advent of Building Information Modeling (BIM), the role of the FM in the design process is expected to increase.

BIM is a completely different approach to designing buildings. It analyses a building’s efficiency at all stages of the life cycle, treating it as a holistic entity. As such, different aspects can be added, changed or removed to alter performance levels before work even begins. This step change in every aspect of building design has meant a review of processes of how decisions are made and the people involved in making them.

Alongside this development, a recent report from Building Research Establishment (BRE) and the British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM) looked at the results of a three-year study to increase the role and profile of FMs both in their organizations and relationships with other sector or industry professionals. One of the most interesting aspects, from the point of view of a partitioning company like Komfort is the setting out of the multiple benefits of involving FMs within initial design consultations and the common reasons they’re excluded from design processes.

The full article is available on the Facilities Management Journal website.

New Research Identifies Trust As A Business Critical Issue

This is an excerpt from an article posted on todaysfacilitymanager.com.

A new report prepared by Working Families and Lead Research Consultant Susanne Jacobs (and in partnership with Unum) has revealed not just the importance of the sense of trust between businesses and their employees in creating a high-performance work culture, but also what drives this trust and how it can be applied in a practical manner. The report, entitled Trust: The Key to Building Well-Being and Performance in the Workplace, describes the advantages of creating trust in the workplace for wider communities and societies.

The study examines the importance and influence of key external factors—work-life integration, workload expectations, and flexible working alternatives—as they relate to well being. In particular, work-life integration supported by flexible working was shown to provide a significant boost to operational performance.

Linda Smith, HR Director of Unum, says, “Given the unprecedented demographic, social and technological changes that have transformed the workplace over the last 30 years, businesses need to be smarter than ever about how they hire, develop, and retain talent. The report shows that any effective strategy needs to deliver an integrated approach that focuses on the issue of trust. By embracing flexible working, freeing up communication, and providing a balanced employee benefits package that delivers long-term financial security, firms can create a high-performance culture that delivers a real, competitive advantage.”

In the report, the benefits of a flexible working culture were shown to be equally important to both genders; they were also equally important to those with or without dependents. It also dispelled the myth about flexible working, demonstrating that there is no link between flexible working and “work centrality”— the importance employees attach to work in their life.

The full article is available on the Today's Facility Manager website.

Water Efficiency

This post is an excerpt from an issa.com article.

Americans have been blessed in the sense that, for most of our history, a shortage of water has just not been a big concern. Except for the Dust Bowl period in the 1930s and short-term droughts over the years, water has been plentiful and relatively inexpensive. However, this appears to be changing and, as it does, the shortage is likely to impact both consumers and companies, including those in the professional cleaning industry.

As far as the business implications, Marc Levinson, an economist with JPMorgan Chase, complained back in 2008 that most American companies are simply not taking water shortages or the cost of water in the United States seriously. According to Levinson, many firms filling out loan applications or seeking investors “provide a great deal of information about potential risks to their operations, earnings, [and] profits, but they don’t do an adequate job of disclosing the risks they face in the event of water shortages—even short-term ones.”

Furthermore, Levinson believes that the few companies that actually do think about water supply risks remain very shortsighted. “They figure they can truck in water,” he says. “But not only is it very expensive to truck in water, but they’ll be in competition with scores of hundreds of other [companies and consumers] scrounging to get water at the same time.”

The end result: The cost of water is going up in many parts of the country and will likely continue to go up, potentially impacting a company’s competitiveness, and in worst-case scenarios, threatening its ability to survive. In fact, many experts now believe companies closing plants or going out of business entirely due to rising water costs, water shortages, or the lack of dependable water supplies will become more commonplace in years to come.

And as the cost of water goes up, so too, will the cost for many agricultural products, including those used to manufacture green cleaning products. And as these costs escalate, those increased charges will be passed on to end customers.

The the full "Water Efficiency" article is available at the ISSA website.