In the workplace, the past 3 years have brought renewed focus to work/life balance, flexible work time and the length of the work week. Following the lead of shortened workweek trials from Iceland to New Zealand, the U.K. has also undertaken a four-day workweek experiment. Across countries and industries, emerging discussions not only consider how many days to require in the office, but also how many workdays to require in the week. Covid not only disrupted the consensus about how and where employees work best and most efficiently, it also prompted a shift in employee expectations for the workplace experience.
What if the question should not be the days of work in a week or the days in the office, but rather the experience in the workplace?
Fiscal and personnel metrics have long tied corporate success to employee experience (IBM 2018; Emmett, Komm, Mortiz & Schultz, 2021). Furthermore, Gallup’s recent research “Would Employees Thrive in a Four-Day Workweek?” concludes that the quality of the workplace will have a bigger impact on staff engagement, satisfaction and ultimately on productivity, than the number of days in the office or the hours in the week. “The quality of the work experience has 2.5 to 3 times the impact of the number of days or hours worked,” (Harter, 2021). The design and operation of the physical office has a new opportunity to contribute to the employee experience.
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Cavo from 9to5 Seating is a ground-breaking new high-design multipurpose chair addressing the needs of today’s fluid workspaces that crave a beautiful aesthetic and functionality. Engineered for reliability and style, Cavo answers the call of multipurpose seating with guest, stool and bariatric models that fit enterprise-wide from meeting rooms, patient rooms, and collaboration spaces to cafes or classrooms.
Cavo's Italian designer Claudio Bellini, whose work “seeks the harmony of beauty and efficiency,” believes that today’s work requires it, offering solutions that are aesthetically appealing.
With all its visual appeal, Cavo is also durable. Designed for high-traffic environments, Cavo withstands frequent cleaning. The wall-saver frame prevents scuffing while the edge-to-edge under-seat cover enables stacking four on the floor and 10 on a dolly, with weight ratings of 350 lbs. for guest and 750 lbs. for bariatric options.
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New research revealed that results from the world’s largest trial of a 4-day week are largely consistent with existing global evidence, further demonstrating the benefits of reduced-hour, output-focused working. The pilot program — conducted in the UK by nonprofit 4 Day Week Global, the UK’s 4 Day Week Campaign and think-tank Autonomy — guided over 60 companies and almost 3,000 workers through a six-month trial of a 4-day week, with no loss of pay for workers. This brings the global campaign’s total number of completed pilot participants to 91 companies and approximately 3,500 employees.
Results show that almost every organization will stick to a 4-day week post-trial, with 91% definitely continuing or planning to continue, and a further 4% leaning towards continuing.
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The Gridd® adaptive cabling distribution system enables a building to adapt to inevitable technology changes, remain highly functional and operational, and save money at every stage of its life cycle. An original contributor to the circular economy, Gridd’s fluid, modular design enables moves, adds and changes without the mess of traditional cabling methods. If a facility manager can avoid contributing to the waste stream, that’s also an added benefit to the company’s ESG commitment.
The Gridd Mobile App makes it even easier for FMs, IT teams, electricians and maintenance personnel to make power and data cabling. Gridd Mobile provides augmented reality (AR), technical support, as-built drawings, how-to videos, original site pictures, and product information conveniently accessible on a smartphone or tablet.
Gridd Mobile allows facility technicians to see exact power, voice, and data cabling locations through the floor in an instant, making systems’ changes quick and easy. Gridd Mobile improves the life of your facility, allowing future facility teams, even years from now, to make moves, adds and changes to the same space with ease. When using Gridd Mobile, there is no knowledge lost between teams.
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Traditionally, Facility Condition Assessments (FCA) of buildings were performed by A/E firms every five to seven years. That’s no longer acceptable. Contemporaneous data on buildings is in demand as property owners want to know how their real estate is performing or serving the needs of the business. New software enables the availability of up to the minute data to be accessible to the facility and building management team and all the technicians who service building equipment. Eileen McMorrow, editor-in-chief, The McMorrow Reports and FMLink, learns how data is obtained and managed continuously in a discussion with Josh Lowe, co-founder and chief solutions officer of AkitaBox.
Expand on the concept of a living FCA, where software makes it possible to provide better data for capital planning vs. static/cyclical FCAs.
Lowe: A conditions assessment usually gets down to an Excel report (that offers) static data. Depending on the company, some people do the FCA with an iPad and camera; someone else takes notes on paper with a clipboard and then someone else prepares the report. The new FCA software will help in preparing always accurate reports; the data needs to be sustainable, transparent and defensible. We can show pictures and add new pictures that document changes to a piece of equipment. At AkitaBox, we stress transparency and defensibility of the data.
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Like all facilities professionals, you are very busy at your workplace and can’t imagine getting away for two to three days to attend a conference, but if you consider NFMT in Baltimore, this is what you may experience:
- Valuable education at the conference sessions;
- Direct access to industry experts;
- Solutions companies to visit in the exhibit hall and product zone sessions;
- Connections with peers who share the same goals; and
- Learning that results in Continuing Education Units.
The McMorrow Reports & FMLink have been attending the National Facility Management and Technology Conference & Expo for at least 20 years, and we know our readers should, too. It will be worth the time invested when facilities managers, executives, engineers and allied professionals gather March 21-23 at the Baltimore Convention Center in Maryland. Both the educational conference sessions, starting on Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. and ending on Thursday at 4:45 p.m., and the Expo floor are bountiful with resources and exhibitors for all FM segments.
Sessions of note for corporate office and other commercial FMs include: Three-Pronged Approach to Manage the Building Envelope of Your Facilities with Sergio E. Pagés, Client Relations Manager, StructureTec; The Value of BIM across all Building Operations Stakeholders with Jacob D’Albora, FMP, Director of Digital Building Operations, VIATechnik; and Leveraging an Owner’s Project Requirements (OPR) Documents to Support Facility Managers with Rodney Ashmore, CxA, NICET, Sr. Commissioning Project Manager, WSP and Michael Scott, P.E., CxA, Associate – Commissioning, WSP.
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Leading organizations have joined OSCRE International’s Environmental Data Standards Working Group — a real estate industry effort to standardize environmental data. Standardization is a key piece in the corporate and real estate sectors’ efforts to better measure progress on sustainability and environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) goals. Corporate members of OSCRE participating in this initiative include: BentallGreenOak • Blackstone • Brookfield Properties • CBRE • CoreNet Global • Cushman & Wakefield • Dealpath • EBusiness Strategies • Ernst & Young • Hines • International Facility Management Association (IFMA) • Intuit • JLL • Lionpoint • MRI Software • Yardi.
"As the SEC advances its rulemaking to address climate change and real estate’s impact on the environment, ESG has become a priority for the real estate industry," stated Lisa Stanley, CEO of OSCRE International. "The purpose of the Environmental Data Standards Project is to bring together a diverse group of real estate stakeholders to address a common need — a standardized approach to collect, analyze and report data that’s collected across platforms that don’t communicate with each other."
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The Book of the Week from FMLink's new Books section hails from the Costbooks category. This collection of peer-reviewed titles from BNi Books has been curated by the editorial team at FMLink to provide facilities, engineering and A&D professionals with access to publications relating to estimating costs.
The 2023 Architect's Square Foot Costbook puts right at your fingertips accurate square-foot costs — broken down by CSI division — for an incredible variety of actual building projects. This year's edition continues to focus on today's most robust growth markets: Public Construction, Educational and Housing.
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Revenue stagnation, increasing operational costs, and sustainability compliance regulations are primary causes of concern for the real estate industry and large enterprises globally in 2023, according to a study cited by Facilio CEO Prabhu Ramachandran.
While most of these are common problems real estate owners and operators encounter, they threaten the very existence of such businesses during economic downturns, notes Ramachandran. How do they keep themselves afloat and profitable? Real estate owners and operators are turning to technology solutions to find ways to curb spend and improve the bottom line in 2023 and beyond. The C-Suite has started viewing property operations technology as a strategic investment, and expects comprehensive and real-time visibility into their real estate portfolio's performance.
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The 54th edition of the leading platform for commercial interior design and facilities planning returns June 12-14 to THE MART in Chicago when NeoCon 2023 unites the design community to experience groundbreaking commercial interiors products, educational programming and industry gathering.
During NeoCon, major commercial solutions manufacturers as well as emerging companies will showcase thousands of new products and services in categories including furniture, flooring, fabrics, interior building products, interior finishes and technology.
Facilities management and design professionals representing markets ranging from workplace, healthcare, education, public space and government to hospitality and retail converge each year at NeoCon to source products, network with suppliers and learn about new trends and building codes.
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