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DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
In tandem with the sustainability goals Operate aims to become the most inclusive employer of choice in the industry, reducing its gender and ethnicity pay gap by 10 per cent year on year and meeting some ambitious recruitment targets set out in its 2020-2023 Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.
Says Abbate: “If I look at the metrics within our business, I am pleased to say we’re quite diverse, with approximately 52 per cent female and 48 per cent male as a gender mix in Operate within the UK, whereas globally 40/60. At senior management the balance is around 40/60 also, with promotions within the business being quite even. We’re now carrying out research to examine the ethnicity within our business across the world.
“We are also changing our recruitment practices so for instance not advertising a full-time role but a flexible one, which should help open up the market and encourage a wider cross section of people to apply. We’re also looking at getting away from rigid hiring of people with a certain skill set or degree, introducing blind CVs and ensuring that among any final group of candidates there is a diverse mix.”
Aligned to the sustainability drive is a continuing plan to drive social value across every project and programme Mace works on, with the target being to generate more than £700 million value to society each year by 2026.
“Societal impact is one of the messages in our target operating model,” says Abbate. “We always had the responsible business in there but from an FM perspective, people working for organisations are not just looking for a positive workplace experience but the societal responsibility of their organisation and its moral fibre.
“We measure our societal contribution both as a Division and as a Group. If you look at our UK investment in apprenticeships, volunteering and pro bono work, in 2019 Operate contributed six times more social value than profit. Across the world we’ve created something like £2.8 million in social value.”
DIGITAL DISRUPTION
A vital part of the strategy is the ramping up of Operate’s integrated operations and technology offerings, utilising data and technology to improve services and enhance workplace satisfaction levels. The adoption of tech within the FM sector has expanded during the COVID crisis, but some FM services providers that boast of leading-edge technology solutions too often rely on ‘smoke and mirrors’ according to Abbate.
“We’ve been able to produce a reporting system by investing heavily in a data lake, so all of our systems data goes into this. Using Microsoft BI we’ve created a top hat reporting system so that clients are getting real information automated directly from the system. The difference is that ours is truly integrated, while others are relying on using a team of people to work through a series of spreadsheets.
“It’s been an investment which in some ways COVID gave us time to develop and which over the last six months we’ve been able to ramp up in terms of what we’ve been able to do and the data we’re providing our clients. By looking at what’s best in class around the world, over the last few months we’ve been working with Evolution, our IWMS system where you’ve got components such as visitor booking, desk booking and a product called chat log for remote communications.
“We’re also looking into apps that are designed to help create communities, so as part of our target operating model we’ve tweaked our app to include a home working model, because for us, whether you’re at home or in the office you should be getting the same workplace experiences.
“That’s the area where technology is going, using it to help create community; with apps that deliver catering to home, from an experience point of view you can touch it and feel it and see it happening.”
CONCLUSION
To help meet these targets Operate has brought FM stalwart Andrew Smart back into the business as Head of FM Consultancy(ii), responsible for consultancy within the FM business. His remit is to help grow and develop the global consultancy team and the service offer in line with Mace’s strategy, to “adopt new technology and approaches that focus on creating the best possible end-user experience in the most sustainable and effective way”.
Operate’s plans are certainly ambitious especially given the uncertain future for FM and Corporate Real Estate amidst predictions of the wholescale adoption of remote working. But ever the optimist, Abbate emphasises the opportunities.
“My personal view is that we will get back to somewhere near where we were before with people perhaps no longer wanting to spend five days a week in the office but maybe spend three days in the office and the rest at home.
“What organisations will be looking for from FM will be regarding consumption. If you’re delivering traditional FM services for a typical office, it’s for five days a week. But what clients might now look for is a sort of ‘pay as you go’ model, i.e. a consumption model. This is where IoT will help.
“For us this means determining an organisation’s base number then ramping up services depending on consumption, and the way to achieve this is to measure how many visitors are in the building over the next week, and on the Monday and Wednesday for instance deploying an additional receptionist.
“If there are more desk bookings on the system you know you’re going to need more cleaners, by measuring the number of people going to use the washroom and every time 20 people have used that washroom sending a cleaner round. It means using the data to establish patterns and resource teams accordingly.
“Over the next six months to a year there will be an underlying ramp up of people going back to offices and Mace Operate has the technology and the purpose to help them manage this.”
