Balancing Hygiene and Business Continuity-
A Framework for
Corporate FM Teams
Nihal, how have you been coping, personally, with the global COVID situation? Are you adapting to remote work, new activities, more family time?
COVID certainly surprised us all! Like many people around the world, I began working from home as a safety precaution—and my kids were also home from school. It’s been a challenging time for us, but humans are agile beings. We adapted our lives to make it work, balancing both work and life at home.
But it was important for all of us—adults and children alike—to understand a few key aspects of this new reality:
First, being present at home does not mean automatic availability for the kids. It’s not a day off like it used to be!
Second, being home does not mean we’re automatically available to work.
Everyone had to learn to create new boundaries between home life and work/school life to stay sane and stay on top of our responsibilities.
Absolutely. Zooming in to the professional side—the banking sector is critical and requires error-free and timely operations. The need to provide healthy and safe spaces as well as protecting business continuity was a critical task. Stakes were high and facility managers had to quickly regroup and embrace the change. From your perspective, what were some of the biggest challenges for facility managers to deal with?
Banks obviously cannot be bystanders as a crisis like COVID develops—they need to serve as a source of resilience and do what they can to help consumers and businesses weather the storm.
The Industry’s first priority and biggest challenge was ensuring a safe environment for both employees and customers. Policies and procedures to limit the spread of the virus were created and also clear communication protocols were established between facilities and employees about these new procedures.
For example, sanitary measures to protect employees and customers in branch locations were reinforced, office spaces were regularly cleaned, hand sanitizers and disinfectant whenever necessary were distributed, the amount of physical space between workers was increased, meetings were done via conference calls, and other remote communication solutions (telephone, video calls, emails, etc.) were encouraged whenever possible.
These measures helped to keep people safe while also maintaining continuity of services for the customers
A lot was riding on FMs and the operational team to introduce new SOPs at scale. And in a critical sector such as banking, the focus was on facilities management to balance both hygiene and support business services. Talk to us about some of the ways in which FM leaders like yourself responded to the pandemic—specifically through the lens of the banking sector?
As mentioned, health and safety measures for employees and customers were top priority. As an example below measures took place immediately:
- Deferring some scheduled maintenance activities for non-essential assets
- Implementing office sanitation best practices
- Intensifying housekeeping measures
- Conducting multiple rounds of cleaning daily
- Placing signs in bathrooms reminding staff to wash their hands
- Providing advanced cleaning supplies
- Scheduling replacement of make-up air intake filters and HVAC unit air filters
We’re seeing how firms that already had a digital operational structure in place were better positioned to respond and are recovering faster than those that hadn’t. With that in mind, how have you reevaluated your operations strategy for the new SOP? Walk us through some of the tactics and tools you’ve seen the industry adopt in the recent past—both for the short term and long term?
While digitization in banking was trending before COVID, the pandemic has greatly accelerated this trend. The same goes for digitization in facilities management. The outbreak served as a catalyst for change, highlighting why we need to pay attention to how our facilities are being managed and how services are being delivered.
For example, the pandemic has forced us to view soft services that support our workplace environment through a new lens. There is a growing need for automating FM business processes—everything from move-ins, service requests and maintenance, to energy management or workspace customization.
“Facilities managers must leverage data for better decision making, capital planning, and improving the workplace experience for employees and customers alike."
In addition, there is little doubt in my mind that COVID-19 will accelerate changes in office design. The most evident is occupational density. Previously on a steep upward trend, occupational density has been thrown sharply into reverse in the midst of social distancing. Once a vaccine or effective treatment is available, we will likely see a movement back toward the pre-COVID densities, but health and well-being will remain top of mind for occupiers. This will likely prevent a return to full pre-COVID levels for some time.
I also expect that office spaces will be redesigned to enable necessary face-to-face interactions—like meetings and collaboration spaces—repurposing space once dedicated to full-day occupancy desks.
Guidelines and regulations are changing as people are adapting to live with the coronavirus. We’ve seen how these proactive measures by FMs today have not just helped minimize the risk better, but also shifted the spotlight on the FM unit as a strategic department in the enterprise. In your opinion, how can FMs be better empowered and equipped with tools and technology to modernize service delivery?
Smart technologies are accelerating almost every aspect of building automation. By leveraging these technologies, the day to day work of FM providers will be more intelligent and more efficient.
“The concept of smart buildings is pushing facility managers to visualize their buildings and assets as one single ecosystem and integrate them as such”.
Every asset or device within the building—lights, sensors, windows, HVAC units, doors, CCTV—has a unique identity while also being fully integrated into a network. With this sort of ecosystem, facilities managers can monitor and control their facilities remotely, which is increasingly important in the age of COVID. It also allows us to take advantage of technologies like artificial intelligence and IoT to increase operational efficiency and improve building management.
Finally, what do you perceive is the way forward for FMs in this new reality—in both the MENA region and globally? Do you have any useful tips for aspiring FMs or those who want to move to the next level?
“I believe the C-suite and other top management are beginning to better understand the role of FM and see FM professionals as critical to the business”.
Moving forward, facilities managers could be involved in more business-wide decisions to balance the use of office buildings with home workers. Organizations will be challenged to maximize building efficiency with reduced occupancy. FMs are also likely to find themselves rolling out new initiatives to maintain a comfortable and productive remote workforce. We’ll need to achieve all of this while spending is under increased scrutiny, so it will be crucial to optimize budget and finding ways to spread costs.
Finally, now that we’re all adapting to a new way of life, my advice is this:
Let’s not just go back to work. Let’s all look to move forward.
