The value of post-pandemic FM benchmarking
Benchmarking; the act of comparing business processes and performance to industry best practices within a peer group, and allowing organisations to continually make improvements in productivity by focusing on quality, time and cost.
The year 2022 finds us transitioning into uncharted territory, ‘the new normal’: presenting businesses with a myriad of unseasoned hurdles. The situation caused by the impact of ‘post-Brexit / post-Covid-19’ has propelled management teams towards an overhaul of working practices. As job migration numbers peaked, and vacancies increased by 513,700 from pre-coronavirus January to March 2020 levels, lower-paid, lower-skilled, temporary positions, and those roles filled by a younger and more transient workforce became the hardest hit. The consequence of this unprecedented labour exodus is that many sectors are now bearing the brunt of the crisis. Across FM services, hospitality, retail, agriculture and manufacturing, this limited labour pool is struggling to deliver the service levels demanded of it.
Competing for labour requires a dynamic approach in order to adapt to changes in consumer expectations. There is a growing demand to combine innovation with upskilling, to support and restructure human resources alongside recent technologies whilst recognising the needs of a multigenerational workforce.
Inflationary pressures, such as rising labour costs, will undoubtedly be adding to the mountain you’re striving to scale; in some cases, the London Living Wage, for example, may no longer be sufficiently competitive to maintain or draw staff. However, promoting staff engagement, fresh ideas and clear routes for progression could make your business more attractive, and provide the harness you need. But how does a facilities manager determine what action to take to address all this and how much difference does ‘best practice’ really make?
Sitemark history
In 2005, the cleaning industry saw the emergence of i-Clean Systems Ltd consultancy services. Over time, the development and expansion of its benchmark datasets lay the foundations for a natural progression into recycling and waste consultancy. Subsequently driven by customer demand, the company rebranded to Sitemark Ltd in 2019, in recognition of the need to cast its net even wider. Now in its 17th year, Sitemark is the first point of contact for commercial organisations seeking guidance and support in the best practice delivery of both soft and hard FM services including cleaning, recycling & waste, support services, security and maintenance services.
To date, almost seven hundred organisations have benefitted from Sitemark’s ongoing, collaborative and unbiased expertise. They include over 300 commercial entities including the BBC, The Crown Estate, HMRC and Canary Wharf Management; over 250 education establishments including University of Oxford, University of Birmingham and the University of Westminster; over 50 NHS Trusts including Bart’s, Guys and St Thomas’ and Kings College Hospital. In addition, retail outlets including Meadowhall, The Trafford Centre, Harrods, Capital & Regional as well as other iconic or unusual sites such as the Historic Royal Palaces, the Museum of London, MCC Lords, Dubai Airport and many more have used Sitemark best practice benchmarking to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of their FM performance.
Benefits of ‘best practice’ benchmarking
Whilst traditional Benchmarking tends to focus on the ‘hard’ numbers: productivity, costs, and audit results, Sitemark soon realised that the ‘hardest to measure’ elements, for example, human resources, are the ones that can have the greatest impact on FM performance, where staff engagement, innovation, and vision may often, misguidedly, be overlooked. By considering all aspects of operational delivery, and by measuring both inputs and outputs of such a wide range of sites, Sitemark has developed a unique process that can measure the impact of each of these elements of service delivery. Although all Sitemark customers are all seeking to maximise the performance of their facilities services so that, in turn, building users improve their own performance, the key drivers to benchmarking are based on a need to:
• Improve service levels
• Demonstrate value for money
• Achieve non-detrimental cost reductions
• Ascertain whether contracts should be extended or reprocured
• Determine if services should be outsourced or insourced
• Verify compliance
• Improve sustainability
Sitemark has benchmarked more than 9,000 commercial buildings across the UK and, whilst this allows for like for like comparisons on similar commercial estates and between similar organisations, the key benefit of such a wide scope of sites is that it allows different sectors to learn from each other. So, for example, there may well be more advanced practices in the retail sector that could be adopted in healthcare, etc.
On average, Sitemark commercial customers have witnessed increased service effectiveness scores from 84.4% to 97.4%, by virtue of its ongoing benchmark reviews; similarly, in the retail sector, increases from 73.9% to 92.6% following the Sitemark procurement process and subsequent benchmarking support; and in the education sector, a rise from 75.6% to 95.1%. These figures evidence conclusively to customers the true benefits of benchmarking and the representative improvement opportunities that exist within their current operation.
General observations
Organisational ‘silos’ are often seen within FM service delivery, where a failure to recognise a more holistic approach can result in a loss of overall operational efficiency. We expect this to drive more bundled and TFM service delivery contracts. Do you encourage interaction between departments, where ideas and innovations may be initiated? Are your cleaning staff trained to report security issues, for example? Are your security officers able to communicate maintenance issues to your M&E team? Do maintenance staff engage with their counterparts within the recycling and waste department?
The micro-management of FM costs is another key area where silo thinking reduces overall efficiency. The traditional approach of measuring ‘wage to charge’ ratios is often no longer the best indication of best value. Simply measuring the number of hours you get misses the opportunity to understand how much value you get from each of those hours. By doubling the spend on equipment, training and supervision, an improvement in operative productivity has been seen to produce an overall net saving of over 20% of FM costs.
The recent metamorphosis of building usage has been dramatic. Not just a short-term transformation, it is the onset of a new ‘hybrid’ style of operation, demanding flexible and agile working. Consequently, more dynamic usage demands more dynamic services, generating inevitable ramifications in specifications and operational delivery. For example, an input-based cleaning specification may dictate the repetition of tasks, irrespective of need, such as, daily vacuuming of floors, weekly polishing of desks, monthly high-level dusting, etc.
However, not all areas may now be used on a daily basis and this revision in service delivery may determine that an output-based specification is better suited: ‘at the start of each day, this is what the area needs to look like’. Whilst, historically, it was the visual standard of cleaning that was important, it is now the hygiene levels that are of equal priority. Given that you can’t visually see the presence of bacteria or viruses, the cleaning of touch points needs to remain based on frequencies meaning that a hybrid approach is now typically best.
The future of FM benchmarking
Whilst one-off benchmarking will identify the easy quick wins, it is the ongoing process of incremental improvements that truly represents ‘best practice’. Given the innovative nature of the FM sector, the increasing use of data driven service levels and the adoption of the latest robotic options in the market, each benchmark review identifies new opportunities to improve efficiency. Such processes are equally beneficial for end-users, to manage an in-house team or contracted services; or for service providers to demonstrate best practice delivery to their clients.
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