I’m always amazed how many facility managers don’t use Facility satisfaction surveys as an important information tool to make decisions, find areas for improvement, and even provide them with information and data that they can use with their senior management to support initiatives.
I think there are two main reasons for this problem, and Facility Managers are missing out on an important source of information. Here are the reasons, and why they don’t apply anymore:
Here are the original Juggler videos from the 1990′s, produced by Steelcase. While dated, they provide a very pointed view of the Facility Manager – and unfortunately, not much has really changed since.
In my Webinar on Information Based Decisions (see the link below), I spoke about getting and using information for your benefit.
While you need an FM system and should work towards getting approval and implementing one, if you already have one, the question is whether you use it for information, not just process management. Whether you manage space with a CAFM system manage maintenance with a CMMS system or handle other typical Facilities Management responsibilities, information is king and visibility into your operations are critical to your success.
This time, as an expansion of what I talked about in the Webinar, I’d like to focus on the two challenges to getting and using information.
Our first survey from our Facility Management survey and polls site FMinsight.com was closed late last year and we now have summary results in a highly graphic format.
Only participants in the survey recieve the more detailed results, so be sure to contribute to our open surveys on FMinsight.com
For our first main survey, inspired by our FM Pie – Roles & Responsibilities graphic, we limited the number of responses and the time it was open so we could compile and report the results this year.
Visit FMinsight and Download the one-page results.
Recently I had the pleasure of delivering my first webinar for Facility Managers.
The webinar was hosted by Planon Software and dealt with using information for decision making. If you missed it, you can watch and listen to it on-demand for free here.
In addition to my segment, Planon’s Director of Product Strategy, Erik Jaspers, also gave some great examples of how to use information from an FM System in Facility Management.
I’ve talked before about the importance of having decisions here on my blog, and it’s been part of several of my Facility Management workshops and seminars as well as a section in my book “Managing Facilities & Real Estate.”
