NEWS & ANALYSIS FMJ.CO.UK
FM COMMUNICATIONS
6 FEBRUARY 2021
FACILITIES SHOW ANNOUNCES
PLANS FOR 2021 AND NEW DATES
FOR IN-PERSON EVENTS
Facilities Show, the largest gathering of FM
professionals, has announced it will now
take place from 12 – 14 July, 2021 at ExCeL,
London and will be run in line with the industry
recognised and Government approved
AllSecure standard, to ensure attendee safety.
Chris Edwards, Group Director at Informa
Markets announced: “The safety and wellbeing
of our attendees and exhibitors is our foremost
priority which is why we have moved the date to the summer of 2021 and will be
looking to operate under the highest possible level of health and safety standards,
which Informa AllSecure enables us to do.”
AllSecure was piloted in September 2020 and approved by the UK Government
on 19 November 2020 as a model for running large events safely. It involves several
health and safety measures, including deep cleaning, social distancing on-site,
staggered arrival times and PPE, such as face masks.
In addition, Facilities Show has also announced plans for a variety of online
events, set to take place in June 2021.
Edwards commented: “While 2020 had its challenges for in-person events,
Facilities Show was able to innovate and bring the industry together remotely via
online platforms and we are looking to further build on that success in 2021.”
Facilities Show’s online experiences will provide opportunities for audiences to
organise live video calls with exhibitors, browse solution providers and products
via an online marketplace while some of the very latest in tech innovation, industry
best practice and thought leadership will be showcased.
BCC WELCOMES INAUGURATION OF ALLPARTY
PARLIAMENTARY GROUP FOR THE
CLEANING AND HYGIENE INDUSTRY
The proposed All-Party
Parliamentary Group (APPG) for
the cleaning and hygiene sector
was inaugurated on Tuesday, 2
February. The APPG will represent
the interests of the cleaning and
hygiene sector in Parliament
and influence MPs, ministers and
Government.
The BCC, which is sponsoring the
move wants the APPG to put the
status of the sector’s operatives as
key and essential workers, and their priority for COVID-19 vaccination, at the
top of its agenda, in recognition of their role fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over 50 MPs and three Members of the House of Lords have indicated they
will join, making it one of the bigger and most credible APPGs.
Members of four parties will take part - the Conservative, Labour, Scottish
National Party and Democratic Unionist Party – and participants will include
some of the most prominent Parliamentarians in the country, such as the
former Director of Age Concern, The Baroness Greengross, OBE, former
Chancellor, the Rt Hon The Lord Lamont of Lerwick and the former CEO of
Mitie, The Baroness McGregor-Smith.
Said Chairman Paul Thrupp: “The formation of an APPG for the UK Cleaning
and Hygiene Industry is a major step forward in gaining the true recognition
this valuable industry demands and deserves. An industry that employs over
1.6 million people, contributes £54B+ to the UK which is around five per cent
of the GDP putting cleaning in the top 10 UK industries.”
TOGETHERNESS AND OTHER
2021 FM CHALLENGES
CERI HENFREY, CHIEF OPERATING
OFFICER AND JESS PRITCHARD, HEAD OF
THE CORPORATE SECTOR, MONEYPENNY
As a new year unfolds and the pandemic continues to loom
large, there are burning questions facing FMs in 2021 -
including how to create togetherness and community as
hybrid working beds in?
FMs are really grappling with what hybrid working looks
and feels like in practical terms, which will dominate the
fi rst half of 2021. How do you still ensure that businesses and
workplaces maintain a sense of belonging when people aren’t
together physically in the offi ce? Answering this prompts
wider questions around how much space you might need and
how best to use it. We can expect to see more analysis and use
of workspace insight tools amongst FMs and other property
professionals, in order to understand new behaviours and
what this demands of the physical and digital workplace.
Many more businesses will look to downsize as a way to cut
costs which will encourage FMs to think diff erently about how
space is used. In response, FMs are already putting greater
focus on creating workplaces that off er employees something
diff erent to and more desirable than their homeworking setups.
It will result in more collaborative and social spaces and
areas that can fl ex as needs change.
Over the last year businesses have missed out on the
creativity and problem solving that comes from serendipitous
encounters in the workplace. Some of our clients are
envisioning whole company days where everyone is in the
offi ce at the same time to combat this - but this presents a
space conundrum that FMs will need data and insight to solve.
Expect a far greater focus on technology, with quick fi xes
from the start of the pandemic turning into longer term
strategies to facilitate remote and in-offi ce working. The
pandemic has exposed weaknesses for many businesses, such
as the inability to quickly mobilise a remote switchboard or to
readily scale up or fl ex servers and systems. Now that agility
is proving integral to survival, we’ll see even more appetite for
outsourcing as a way to future proof agility – spanning call
handling, document management and the use of more cloudbased
software and collaborative tools.
As offi ces reopen, the FM industry will be tasked with
fi nding ways to manage the fl ow of people and the use of
resources. Greater adoption of digital visitor management
solutions and meeting room and facility booking software will
be necessary to do this and will encourage FMs to reimagine
and improve the visitor experience.
FMs’ contribution during the pandemic may see the
profession involved in more holistic company-wide projects
as a result. A trend has emerged during the pandemic where
some companies have been stealing back previous employees
because they haven’t had a sense of belonging in their new
team. Part of the solution is for FMs to be even more closely
aligned with HR and internal comms to help ensure that the
physical and digital workplace supports a sense of community,
belonging and team work, whether staff are all in the same
space or not. As part of this,we can expect to see the FM
profession more broadly involved in workplace experience and
ensuring its ‘sticky’ for the brightest and best talent.
The pandemic will continue to test businesses of all sizes
for some time, but what’s particularly clear is the tremendous
breadth of skill, tenacity, fl exibility and problem solving that
we’ve seen from the British FM industry throughout. As a
profession we’ve been learning lots. 2021 is the year we’ll act
on many of those lessons and help to keep our businesses
evolving and thriving.
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