NEWS & ANALYSIS FMJ.CO.UK
IWFM CONFERENCE
THE BIG PICTURE
Moved in August to an online
format, this year’s IWFM
conference, chaired by IWFM’s
Director of Insight and Engagement
Chris Moriarty, o ered delegates
an entire week of events; including
sponsored presentations from
EMCOR on wellbeing and a
demonstration by SimPro of its
job management so ware. There
was also a range of more o beat
sessions. This included a talk by
Science Writer, Broadcaster and
Comedian Timandra Harkness on
resilience and a presentation on
Rebellious Acts of Positive Change,
by Author of Be more Pirate , Sam
Conni who asked, “are you really
a leader or caretaking for someone
else to come along?”
The final day covered four mega
trends; climate change, wellbeing,
technology and the future of work.
This comprised a pretty stellar range
of speakers. Majorie Wallace CBE,
Founder and CEO of Sane, leading
Arctic Ocean Explorer Pen Hadow,
Technology Author and Expert Dave
Coplin and none other than the Author
of the Good Work report, Matthew
Taylor, CEO of the Royal Society of
Arts. This macro level approach was
certainly thought provoking, but it felt
at times there was a need to drill down
to apply some of the lessons learnt to
the FM sector.
CLIMATE TO CULTURE
Take for example Pen Hadow’s
disquieting session on how climate
change is a ecting the polar region
and its wider impact on our planet. He
revealed that because the sea ice has
been dramatically reduced by global
warming, commercial shipping is now
encroaching into the arctic ocean,
leading in turn to more environmental
pollution.
This he said: “Raises the question for
you - what is your level of ambition?
We've got to aggressively reduce our
10 OCTOBER 2020
carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
Our continuation as a race depends on
what we do now and you're in more of
a position than the average person to
do something about this.” All stirring
stu , but we could have done with a
follow up session on the latest insights
from within the built environment that
might help make that di erence.
Former Investigative Journalist,
and Chief Executive of mental health
charity SANE, Majorie Wallace CBE
was a good choice to talk about
the e ects of lockdown on people’s
mental health. She disclosed that the
rate of callers talking about suicidal
thoughts and self-harm has risen since
lockdown and predicts a mental ill
health epidemic due to the isolation
felt by many of those working from
home. Loneliness can be a killer
she said, citing a study by Sane of
300,000 people which revealed it is
associated with a 29 per cent increase
in mortality. “It is a significant factor
in poorer health outcomes and
premature death, which is why we
need to balance these risks,” she
warned.
In his look at technology, Dave
Coplin described the practice of
enduring a “dehumanising commute
to be in a particular location when
o ice workers are o en more
interested in the piece of plastic
they’re carrying with them to actually
do the work”.
Pre-COVID, work was a destination,
described as going to work, but what’s
become clearer than ever over the last
six months is that work is an activity,
he explained. “Not somewhere you
go, but something you do. Work is the
thing we make happen, rather than the
location.”
One of the few good things about
the pandemic he added is that it has
helped cut through the red tape which
held organisations back in utilising
technology. In just one example,
organisations are no longer averse to
hiring people online, or using data to
measure usage and occupancy. Coplin
concluded the disruption caused
by COVID spells a huge opportunity
to change the way we work. “The
organisations that start to do this
will start to accelerate and reap the
rewards, not at the cost of their people
but in terms of levels of engagement.”
FUTURE PROOF
The final mega trend of the conference
- the Future of Work was appropriately
delivered by Matthew Taylor, Author
of Good Work, the Taylor review of
modern working practices . He avoided
making any kind of what he called
‘inglorious’ predictions on the future
of work, but instead focused on asking
the right questions. Saying, “how do
we respond to technology?” is wrong,
a better phraseology is “how do we
use technology to help us create a
better world?”
He advised that the quality of
people’s working lives is an important
measure of progress, so any starting
point should be, what do we want
from work? He also advised that if we
want people to be enthusiastic about
automation, we need to convince
them it won’t make their working lives
worse.
Chair Chris Moriarty was keen to
discover Taylor’s views on how low
paid workers, including those within
the FM sector, such as cleaners and
security sta , societal worth has been
rightly elevated by taking front line
roles during the pandemic, and what
this should tell us about valuing our
sta ?
Taylor agreed there is a gap between
many operatives social value and their
economic or market value and argued
that one of the issues is that “the
interests of consumers and producers
lead to practices that are designed to
provide cheap services, and because
of that it seems inconceivable you
can include decent pay and working
conditions within those systems.
We need to work to achieve a better
balance, which requires our systems
to change.”
Taylor added that it is up to institutes
such as the RCA and the IWFM to help
push forward social changes: “Unless
we reconcile ourselves to working in a
sector where a lot of people are never
going to be economically secure and
never have jobs that give them dignity
and opportunity.”
So, if the crisis o ers an opportunity
for a step change in how we work,
people’s expectations of the quality
of their workplace will rise. As
Taylor suggested, in a world where
more people are working from
home FMs now have the capacity
to think more deeply on how it can
influence people’s working lives. As
Moriarty reflected, this represents a
“Call to arms that we, as a group of
professionals can be right at the centre
of enabling good work.”
Navigating turbulent times, the title of this year’s virtual IWFM conference, was
an appropriate theme for 2020, but the mega trends it covered would have
benefi tted from a closer look at what this means for FM, says Sara Bean