News & Views

What a shame that London mayor Boris Johnson has bowed to pressure and axed two so-called “chill-out” spaces at City Hall. The report in today’s FM World Daily claims that the business lounges where staff can read, eat and hold informal meetings are being removed to make way for more desks.

The “chill-out” spaces have caused controversy because of the big expense to fit them out – about £25,000 (not that much when you consider the building’s overall budget but the Evening Standard kicked up a big fuss at the time). Some chairs apparently cost nearly £900 each, four high tables cost £2,000 each and carpets added another £4,170, according to the FM World report (although that may well be the list price and a substantial discount was achieved). In any case surely setting the spaces up and then demolishing them 12 months later is the real waste of money?

It’s also interesting that according to the FM World report, the original design in 2002 was for 426 desks, on handover there were 570 and this eventually increased to 697. And more to come by the sound of it. It would be interesting to know how many staff the building supports, the desk to person ratio, how many of the staff in the building are encouraged to work flexibly by time or location or whether agile/intelligent working has made it as far as City Hall.

Usually much more can be done to encourage people to work in other locations (either at home, in client sites, local offices, third spaces etc) which then frees up much-needed space in the main head office.  If people were to work in this way, then the business lounges currently being ditched would be the first thing needed to allow staff to drop in to work, meet colleagues informally. Those types of informal spaces can support many more people when they’re set up as business lounges, rather than being covered in desks.

Despite renowned architect Frank Duffy claiming that the modern office is on its way out, it remains the base for the majority of people from 9 til 5. But new ways of working combined with new technology have made obsolete pieces of furniture that were, until recently, stalwarts in the office – and home.

1. The Desk
Experts (read consultants) in new ways of working would have us believe that the humble office desk is dead. Instead of being chained to our own personal bit of mdf, we will work in everything from office break-out spaces to cafes, drop-in meeting facilities and the kitchen table. But nothing has quite replaced the desk for sheer ergonomic comfort, as anyone who has spent a day hunched over a laptop in Starbucks will testify.  The size and shape of the desk has certainly changed – gone are the massive L shaped desks which took up half a room. Instead smaller desks, or collaborative benches are popular. And even the big law firms where massive mahogany desks were passed down the generations from father lawyers to son lawyers, have gone (but probably only to the home office).

2.Tea trolleys
The distant rattle of the tea trolley was the highlight of most office workers’ afternoons. The steaming aluminum tea pot would hove into sight, and all work was forgotten as workers queued up in soup-kitchen style for their brew and a slice of, often homemade, cake. Sadly the nearest most workplaces get to the tea trolley is the sandwich man and his crate of tepid sandwiches which have already been polluted by a circular London commute at exhaust pipe height.

3. Clocking off machine
Clocking off machines were a permanent fixture in most offices, ensuring that you were measured not by what you produced, but by the minutes you spent chained to your desk (or at least in the office). While some factories, and even places like MacDonalds, still have them, they have largely disappeared from most offices meaning that workers may actually get judged by their performance, and not their ability to work the system – did bosses really think we didn’t share clock in cards?

4. Office nameplates
Back in the day before even the CEO sat in an open plan environment anyone who was anyone had an office, and even if you didn’t get a view, you always got a name plate – usually with both your name (not first name of course because that would be too friendly) and job title. They were designed partly as a source of information about the occupant, but mainly to instill fear and awe in any subordinate forced to knock on said door. The most fearsome name plate always belonged to the head secretary whose office overlooked …

5. The typing pool
Although you could argue that the modern-day call centre is very much like the post-war typing pool, it doesn’t come close to the uniformity both in dress and behavior of 100 touch typists in perfect synchronisation being watched by a matron in her 50s to ensure that no gossip, mistakes or short skirts left the typing pool to distract the rest of the business.

6. The telephone table chair
Remember the telephone table? It sat in the hall from the early part of the last century until the mobile home telephone made the sofa a more preferred spot to take a long call. Ebay is now deluged with hundreds of ‘vintage’ models.

Next for the chop will be filing cabinets (paperless office anyone?), pedestals will be replaced by those funky lockers and in-trays will become obsolete in the new paperless mobile world. Are you feeling nostalgic yet?

I’ve just got my hands on Jason Hawkes’ London at Night,
a beautiful, glossy coffee-table book with stunning photographs of the capital in darkness. It is also a sad illustration of the light pollution lack in the UK’s biggest city. Because when I say “darkness’ I refer only to a lack of sunlight. Every image on every page is flooded with light. Some are street or car lights, or lights from bars and restaurants – all probably necessary to some degree. But the majority of brightness comes from office buildings.

And those where the reader is close enough to see individual chairs and desks appear to be completely deserted. The majority of the floors of the Willis Building at 51 Lime Street are lit and devoid of people; and this eerie emptiness can be found throughout the City, in the American-style office blocks in the Docklands and the More London complex near London Bridge which houses big names such as Ernst and Young and Norton Rose. The Gherkin is one of the few buildings which appears to be selective about its lighting requirements: a beacon of darkness in a city of shining lights.

Yes, cleaners would no doubt be accessing the floors of some of these buildings, and there would be some people working late in distant, unseen, corners. But the vast majority of the energy used is unnecessary, and costly to both the bottom line and the environment. When are designers, facilities professionals and building users going to wake up to the need to switch the lights off: either manually or through movement or time sensitive controls. It’s not as if the technology doesn’t exist. In theory we’re willing, but in practice it seems, we’re weak.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the unstoppable trend towards mobile working and how, wherever you go, there are people perched with their laptop or talking business on their mobile phone. I had two concerns: lack of free WiFi coverage and a lack of consideration for ergonomic comfort. The day after that piece was published in this magazine I was on the Stansted Express when two chaps got on and started discussing their employer, a well-known facilities management company. Not only did they openly name the organisation several times but they talked about what they believed to be fraudulent practices and made derogatory remarks about senior execs.

OK, this was an extreme example but it got me thinking about privacy and confidentiality for mobile workers. Sitting in a Costa Coffee a few days later I overheard two colleagues talking about a major client and the contract renewal process (including how they could add in ‘additional costly services’ once the deal had been signed). On the train to a meeting, a woman was on her mobile to a client talking about fairly confidential aspects of their relationship. And at a serviced office space, I was sharing a table with someone and could clearly see the business plan they were working on.

Ask around and you find that this is a common experience. One facilities professional told me how she was waiting in a hotel reception before a FMA meeting and couldn’t help but overhear a chap talking about a named FM client to a colleague over the phone. Once the call was finished, she introduced herself and said she was also in FM. He went white. Someone else told me about a recent train journey when he was sitting next to someone who was working on an internal document about a new software product which was going to market despite several known glitches. And of course the press is full of stories about memory sticks and confidential documents left where they shouldn’t have been. Next time you’re out and about, look and listen and I bet you’ll pick up some interesting titbits.

You would have thought that much of this is common sense. But I think workplace managers and HR professionals must also shoulder some of the blame. I don’t think we take the time to train people in new ways of working. We take them out of static workspaces, give them a laptop and a BlackBerry and expect them to understand the etiquette of working in public. But of course they often don’t and they continue to work in the way they did when they were in private workspaces. We need to explain how people using those spaces need to adapt their style of working – perhaps by using code names when talking about clients or your own business in public; not naming people individually but perhaps by their job title; and being careful what confidential documents you work on in certain environments.

I’m writing this on the tube and don’t think I’ve been overlooked…

As crisis management plans go, Japan’s was a well-prepared one. After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, the Japanese have become world leaders in seismic technology and all modern structures are designed for earthquakes – and older buildings retrofitted appropriately. Buildings shorter than three storeys have reinforced walls and foundation slabs of a certain thickness, while taller structures have innovative earthquake-resistant designs that undergo regular review by structural engineers. Mid-rise buildings often rest on huge rubber or fluid-filled shock absorbers which slide from side to side, dissipating lateral motion and turning it into heat. Buildings sway in high winds but that helps to prevent them disintegrating into reubble when earthquakes hit. Every household is instructed to keep a survival kit with a torch, radio, first aid kit and enough food and water to last for a few days, and issued with instructions such as avoiding placing heavy objects in places where they could easily fall during an earthquake and cause injury or block exits; having a fire extinguisher to hand; and being familiar with the local evacuation plans in their area. Earthquake planning is a key part of all organisations’ business continuity planning, and the Japanese view crisis management planning as a core business activity – it is simply an essential way of life.

This is a country used to quakes as the Japanese archipelago is located in an area where several continental and oceanic plates meet. But the recent earthquake in the north of the country, measuring 8.9 on the richter scale, followed by a series of aftershocks many of which were larger than the earthquake which devastated Christchurch last month, a tsunami and the resulting nuclear emergency, demonstrated that no crisis management plan, however carefully prepared and well practised, can cover all eventualities. The crisis management plan for New York’s Twin Towers, for example, included the notion that a plane might strike the towers. But it was envisaged that this would be an accident on the way back to a New York airport and the planes would therefore be almost empty of fuel. Of course when the planes hit on 11 Septemmber 2011, they were full of fuel which exercerbated an already disastrous situation.

The crisis in Japan is expected to be the world’s costliest natural disaster – in the region of £100bn. As facilities professionals, all we can do is to plan for realistic and anticipated emergencies. No doubt, crisis management plans in earthquake prone areas are being revisited at the moment, and of course it’s a timely reminder for all facilities professionals to dust off the business continuity plan and make sure it’s suitable for today’s business – and continually rehearsed and updated.

But of course it’s not just earthquakes and natural disasters which can rock a company. Cotswold Geotechnical was fined £385,000 last month after becoming the first company to be convicted of corporate manslaughter. The sum amounted to 115 per cent of its annual turnover and could well result in the company’s liquidation. The message is clear: while the horror of earthquakes and the shocking loss of life make the headlines, a lack of proper health and safety management can quickly result in not only reputational damage and massive fines, but also in the company’s demise. And all this is in the hands of the facilities manager.

Search Twitter under the hashtag fail and you’ll come across a lot of examples of poor service, disgruntled customers and some almost unbelievable situations. Look for the hashtag fmfail and there are some great examples of facilities management failings, enough to make even the most robust facilities professional blush – the security guard playing solitaire in a City office reception and the receptionist reading news stories on the internet (thanks FM Guru), the security asleep when the FM turns up to do a site inspection (@stapletoncoach), the empty Klix machine during a swimming pool gala (@FM_day2day) or the retailer who plays rap so loudly in their changing rooms that shoppers are forced out (cathy_fm_world). BIFM deputy chair and powerPerfector consultant Ismena Clout (@iswhiz) added to the list when she went for a night out at a local restaurant and spotted the big aggressive sign in a restaurant to instruct people to use the loo brush after use – with no loo brush provided.

As a nation we’re renowned for being poor at complaining and being prepared to put up with some awful service but the joy of Twitter has allowed us to rant about poor service without the embarrassment of actually complaining to a person (big companies should take note – if you’re not searching Twitter for mentions of your company and responding quickly to complaints, then you’re missing a trick and what might now be a minor complaint could escalate very quickly when people retweet the more hilarious or serious complaints). Virgin has been very swift to respond to #virginfail tweets but other companies have not performed as well. It’s now known by BT customers that it’s very difficult to get through to their customer service department to actually speak to someone but if you post negative tweets about an organisation, they will respond more promptly. Surely properly staffing their call centre in the first place would avoid customers having to go public via Twitter with their complaints?

But do we reward good service? Asda is known for its very competitive pricing but not usually for its good customer service or friendly staff. So when an Asda delivery driver went beyond the call of duty and carried my shopping down two flights of stairs to my kitchen (not even the Ocado man used to go that far) I went on to Asda’s website to email my thanks to his bosses, so he would get recognised. Even though there was an option to complain, there was no way to simply make a comment or say ‘thank you’ so I ended up sending a complaint to say thanks (which probably never got read).

As an industry, we need to get better at recognising great service. Yes, there are various annual awards, but what about the numerous examples of exceptional service that happen in facilities management teams every day? Which is why @izwhiz and @theatreacle have suggested an #fmgoldstar hashtag on Twitter. If you have witnessed great FM, then post your comments on Twitter with #fmgoldstar and we can start to recognise all the great things happening in our profession and learn from them.

But don’t stop the #fmfail either – it’s good to know when we get it wrong so we can make it right. My next #fail is directed at computer manufacturers who bury the hash key deep inside the keyboard – they need to move with the times and have it as easy to reach as the exclamation mark. Moan moan moan…

When Sky Sports presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray indulged in a few off-air comments about female assistant referee Sian Massey and West Ham vice-chairman Karren Brady during the Liverpool and Wolves football match late last month, they thought that was the last they’d heard of their banter. But what they thought was a private off-air chat turned out to be an extremely public one, when transcripts of their conversations were published in the Sunday newspapers and the video became one of the most watched clips on YouTube. Gray was sacked from his job and Keys swiftly resigned.

Keys and Gray are hardly the first people to be caught out in that way. The tabloid archives are full of celebrities recorded saying things when they thought the camera, microphone or tape recorder was off (often with hilarious consequences, at least for the headline writers); employees have been sacked for making disparaging remarks about their employers on Twitter and Facebook; and personal and business relationships have broken down when the wrong person was sent the wrong email.

Sending the wrong communication might lead to some pretty dire consequences but sending no communication at all can be even worse. Last week I visited the FM team of a major retailer embarking on a large facilities management project, which has been in the planning stages for two years. My visit coincided with the head of FM presenting the new project to the company’s purchasing department and I was invited to sit in on the meeting to get an overview. I naively assumed that the presentation was the latest update on the project to the procurement team but I couldn’t have been more wrong. This was the first time the head of purchasing and his team of regional purchasing managers had heard about the plans, despite the proposed strategy affecting their day-to-day roles. After the meeting I quizzed the FM about this, and was told that the purchasing (and other) departments in the company had been consulted about the project since its inception but had not responded. It turned out that few people understood what FM was in the organisation and even fewer cared – despite the FM team playing a key role in managing the organisation’s core business, its retail stores.

Clearly there are two sides to every story and maybe the company’s other departments weren’t that interested in what FM was all about. But the success of that FM’s particular project lay with other departments changing the way they worked so communicating the plan was an essential part of the strategy.

Sometimes us facilities professionals are very good at doing the technical and practical job of an FM but terribly bad at communicating to other people. If we remember to tell people that the loos on the first floor will be shut next week, it will be a brief note on the door saying ‘out of order’. Instead we need to adopt some PR skills and promote why we’re doing something and the benefits: ‘Apologies that these facilities are closed. Your newly-refurbished bathrooms will be unveiled next Monday’ is a much more positive message.

Good communication is so essential to the success of what we do. Getting it wrong is unlikely to end up with public shame like Gray and Keys but could lead to professional obscurity, project failure and even prosecution if we fail to communicate important legal issues.