The Workplace Opportunity – A European tour by Chris Moriarty

News

Almost a year ago, at our national conference ThinkFM, I took to the stage as the closing ten-minute talk. I had only just recently re-joined BIFM, as it was, and we’d recently made the announcement about our change of name. This was the first time I had a chance to put forward my view on it. This view was based on my years in Leesman where working with some of the biggest brands on the planet I was talking about their workplace aspirations but FM wasn’t in the room. And if they were, they often weren’t driving the conversation; they were being ‘done to’. Something that came out in our research with 3edges in 2017 and published around the same time as this talk in 2018.

So there I was sharing my views and explaining how the opportunity to lead these conversations were there but we, as a profession, needed to seize it. Little did I know that 12 months later I will have delivered a version of that talk in Bulgaria, Romania, Ireland, Greece, Denmark and several times in the UK. In each of these countries the sense was the same which did, I admit, catch me by surprise. My own ignorance about ‘market maturity’ perhaps getting in the way. People out there smelt that opportunity and recognised that we needed to reframe our role and with it our value to organisations if we were to take the next step towards recognition that so many of us yearn for. The fact that across Europe these national FM associations wanted their audience to hear what we’re doing was testament to that desire being matched outside our little island. That journey started in Sofia at the 2018 Euro FM Conference.

Something that has struck me as I’ve engaged with nearly 1,000 (!) European FM’s is the sense of disruption. Often this is uttered in the same breath as technology and at some point someone (normally me) will talk about disruption and Netflix/Uber/Instagram (delete as appropriate). Sometimes it feels like we know disruption is coming, not driven by technology but certainly powered by it. But we’re teetering on the edge either waiting for someone else to make the first move or paralysed in the fear that a shift presents risk to a set-up which is understood and comfortable and has, let’s face it, made a lot of people very wealthy. But as we aim to avoid the risk of change, I fear that we leave ourselves open to the true risk.

I was asked at our London Regional Conference whether I thought that disruption was going to come from within the sector. My view was that by its definition disruption is more likely to come from the outside rather than within and we should take that as a warning. As technology creeps into all aspects of our lives what role do we see us, as a profession having, and what impact will that have on the industry that supports it? A good chum of mine, Allister Frost, leant me this quote for the Workplace Opportunity:

“FM will be disrupted beyond recognition. Spaces will self-manage. self-clean and self-report. Routine maintenance will be fully automated and the people the facility exists to serve will have immediate, frictionless abilities to instantly redefine it for their unique needs.

“Anyone who still believes that FM will be the same industry, but maybe with a few more screens screwed on the wall, is dangerously out-of-touch.”

So where does that leave us? I feel that we’re left with a simple choice. We either embrace the opportunity, challenge ourselves, upskill and charge forward. Or we sit and wait to see what happens and figure it out. Either way we need to be crystal clear on our value proposition and purpose and I’ve suggested that simply put we’re here to “create amazing workplaces to enable people to do amazing work”. I’m sure others will disagree or change that but we need to get something simple to hang on to so that we can take our place alongside our colleagues in the business. And we’re not the only profession going through this period of disruption, Lucy Adams will be talking about the journey HR are on at our National Conference this year. We can learn from that but we need to make change happen because otherwise we’ll get locked in the negative feedback loop which sees a lack of recognition, and therefore perceived value and so on.

What’s next then? As we approach our first National Conference under our new masthead, we have to convert talk into action. I finish all my talks with a plea to the audience; don’t just listen, nod and tweet. Do something. Be the change. Only together can the dial move. We’ll help guide and channel the energy and thinking but it will only work if, as a profession, we support each other and make sure the world sees the value we all know we bring. It starts on the 24 April in St Paul’s and what follows will be a series of action focused change programmes. I look forward to seeing you all come along for the ride.