Contract furnishings provider, Hightower received multiple awards at NeoCon 2021, including IIDA's 'Best Small Showroom' (under 4,000 sf) and 'Best of Competition' for its newly designed Chicago showroom.
Humanscale welcomes Elizabeth Margles to its Marketing Division in the role of Chief Marketing Officer. Margles comes to Humanscale with twenty years of experience in design, fashion and retail and a background in public relations and advertising.
The exclusive relationship with Kontrol's BioCloud® Technology will provide real-time detection of airborne pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 to help make workplaces safer as organizations return to the office.
Over the next few years, new technologies, management techniques, customer requirements and value-chain approaches will have an enormous impact on the Facility Management industry.
To enhance the competitiveness of their respective businesses, facility and service managers will be required to go beyond maintenance of the physical infrastructure and increasingly focus on innovating and differentiating the workspace and workplace environment.
Facility management is facing a critical shortage of professionals and urgently needs to attract new talent, according to a new research report by the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
The availability of quiet spaces is important to 70 per cent of workers based in flexible workspaces and 77 per cent of those asked cited good quality wireless technology as essential, according to a survey Workthere and Savills.
Good environmental performance of an office is considered important by 40 per cent of workers but only one fifth are happy with how their current workspace is doing. Workthere, a venture created by Savills, conducted a survey of 200 workers based in flexible workspaces (i.e. serviced office or co-working space) throughout the UK.
There is an ongoing feeling within the facilities management discipline that when it comes to office design, facilities managers are not consulted early enough or well enough or consistently enough to ensure that the end result is a workplace that is as functional and as effective as it could be.
Ahead of the publication of the full report later this month, RICS in collaboration with IFMA has published an executive summary of the RICS’ ‘Raising the Bar’ research series. The new report, written by Occupiers Journal, makes a case for how facilities management makes contributes to business success and organisational effectiveness. The report reviews the current state of the FM sector. ‘Raising the Bar: From Operational Excellence to Strategic Impact in FM‘ identifies the key issues facing the industry and puts ways forward for how FM can build recognition and understanding within the boardroom, among other business leaders, and with related infrastructure groups.
A recent survey of corporate real estate executives at large corporations conducted by CoreNet Global and CBRE Group, Inc. found that when a company focuses on employee health and wellness, workers report increases in engagement, retention rates increase, and absenteeism declines. The survey saw responses from 211 senior level executives in the corporate real estate profession: 66% were corporate real estate end-users (occupiers), 25% were in technology firms, and 23% were in financial services firms. Eighty-nine percent of the firms represented in the survey reported that they are focused on health and wellness initiatives.
The term “open office” is a lightning rod for those in the corporate world. With articles, blog posts, and other commentary coming out seemingly every week (many of them negative), there is no shortage of opinion about this office design. As a facility executive, it is a topic that can’t be ignored; as the open plan becomes more mainstream, it’s likely that someone from your organization knows someone who has had a negative experience in this type of work environment. Due to the pervasiveness of this design, employees may just assume their office will be next. Regardless of actual plans for future workplace endeavors, it’s helpful to have a solid grasp on the concept. So what do facilities professionals need to know?
Facility managers are often brought into the planning and design phases of a construction project far too late, if at all. Yet, these are the people responsible for integrating the maintenance of the facility itself with the processes and people within it. They understand how the space will need to function, the rigors of routine maintenance, who will use the space, how it will be used, and the implications of design decisions.
Facility managers must be viewed as key decision makers at the outset of a construction project. What can support this need? Technology that helps communicate design plans to stakeholders, with the hard numbers and data necessary to achieve buy-in at the top level.
The IFMA Foundation Workplace Summit of summer 2014 felt like an optimistic time for facilities management and the workspace industry. Heavyweights from the sector were asking searching questions about our organisational contribution, with thankfully less of the internally focused, debate-free hubris typical of much of the industry narrative. The newly announced (and now evidently historical) collaboration between BIFM and CIPD was in full swing, endorsed by social media savvy Twitterati under The Workplace Conversation banner. Finally, I thought, we seemed to be talking less about space as a commodity and more about people. Melissa Marsh of Plastarc captured it at the Summit as she evidenced co-working principles: less “managing facilities” and more “enabling communities”. It felt like some were finally starting to realise the fundamental qualitative difference between workspace and workplace: the role of culture.
Twenty years ago, a "nice" office chair was a moderately priced, if objectively hideous, task chair that didn't crush your lumbar spine. Today, as companies eschew cubicles for workplaces that feel more like living rooms, you'll find classic Eames lounge chairs, hot pink Fabio Novembre Nemo chairs, and everything in between. Chairs have become showpieces, embodying both new workplace ideals and how a company wants to be perceived. You are what you sit on.
At the 2016 Fast Company Innovation Festival, we got to peek inside the offices of more than two dozen creative companies and organizations in New York City, from Etsy and Squarespace to Microsoft and The Onion. Click through the slideshow to see each company's favorite chair.
There is an ancient Asian parable which has found its way into a number of cultures including Hindu and Buddhist lore. In one version, the Buddha tells of a king who has nine blind men summoned to his palace. An elephant is brought in and they are asked to describe it. Each man feels a different part of the elephant and describes it to the king. In turn they tell him it is a pot (the man who feels the head), a winnowing basket (ear), a ploughshare (tusk), a plough (trunk), a granary (body), a pillar (foot), a mortar (back), a pestle (tail) or a brush (tip of the tail). They disagree violently with each other to the amusement of the king, and the Buddha surmises that ‘in their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus.’ Around 2,500 years later, groups of people continue to describe big things solely based on the bits with which they come into contact and bicker with others who are close to other bits.
In a further nod to the growing relevance of flexible working, the ability to work anytime, anywhere is now key to job satisfaction with well over a third (38 percent) of employees in a global survey rating this as the number one factor, with the UK (43 percent) scoring this the highest. According to the “Mobility, Performance and Engagement” report from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and Aruba, employees in Western countries report themselves to be happier in their jobs, more loyal to their employers and more productive in their work compared to their counterparts in Eastern markets. When it comes to securing loyalty, the ability to hot desk was seen as paramount by many employees, notably in Singapore (37 percent), UAE (31 percent) and the US (34 percent), while the ability to collaborate with other employees was the number one choice for employees in Germany (43 percent), France (37 percent) and Japan (35 percent).
Sixty-four per cent of professionals from the UK’s facilities management sector describe the FM business environment as “positive” or “very positive”, according to findings from BIFM’s business confidence monitor.
Facilities Management is a diverse and demanding field. You encounter a wide variety of challenges every day, each requiring a unique skillset – so today, I’m looking at 4 skills you can further develop in order to become a more effective facility manager.
The conversation around generations and the clichéd stereotypes with which they’ve been appropriated is a tired conversation, and not relevant to informing workplace dynamics. But the characteristic relationship and comfort level of each generation with the technology that drives the workplace remains a significant indicator of generational preferences and ways of working. Technology is a key factor in the social, economic, political, global, and life events that characterize the experiences of each generation.
Unhappy employees are estimated to cost the U.S. economy between $450 to $550 billion each year due to costs related to lower performance, more sick days, and higher turnover rates. These trends have led to office design becoming much more prominent subject in thought leadership since the height of cubicle sprawls.
The modern office has thrown out the rule book which once dictated that working environments should be formal, enclosed spaces based more on hierarchy than seeking to inspire creation and productivity among the entire workforce, says Nigel Crunden from Office Depot. The trend for creating more open plan spaces is now firmly embedded in workplace culture with office spaces now increasingly used for a variety of purposes and sometimes, by multiple businesses.
I have been studying and thinking about this concept of the Corporate Placemaker for some time now. I trace it back to our work on Raising The Bar, a global study for the RICS which, after more than 140 years of history, seemed to coincide with their awakening to the importance of Facilities Management (FM). But, take a look at the link path, and it is Home/Property/FacilitiesManagement. So, FM is still a subset of property (real estate, or ‘real property’). But, is it?
What are the biggest challenges that women are currently facing in facility management (FM)? What paths did you take and should future female professionals take? What are important skills female FM professionals should develop in their coming years? What type of future should graduates look forward to?
