5 Costly Mistakes Facility Managers Make and How to Avoid Them

Except, that’s how you measure your work, and how you can optimize it. Having no data means having no knowledge about your space, resulting in poor space utilization, wasteful energy use, and pointless frustration. Here’s PointGrab’s innovative yet simple technology-powered solution meant to simplify work processes and boost a facility manager’s productivity.

Poor office space utilization

Unused space is the opposite of investing in your company. It’s been discovered that, on average, organizations have 30 to 50 percent more real estate than they actually need.  Unused office space is unrealized revenue. It means the inability to hire more employees when the business needs it.

It’s slowing down business growth due to gut feelings and wrong data. Realistically, facility managers are unable to optimize office space without data. Yet, using a tool that gathers data facility managers can act upon is the first step in overall operations improvements.

Overlooking employee experience

A huge part of office life is providing a superb employee wellbeing experience. More often than not, facility managers have no quantifiable data to measure their success in this category. Giving employees the tools to plan their day more efficiently and removing frustration from day to day activities (such as looking for an available space or meeting room) is very important to a business’ success.

The happier your employees are, the less it costs to hire, train, and retain new employees. We haven’t even mentioned providing real-time data on employee service lines, such as cafeteria queue lines and gym occupancy.

Mismanagement of meeting room space

Meeting room placements should be need-based, not gut-based. Since change is constant, what was once a business necessity might not be relevant today. It’s the facility managers’ job to know this kind of information and act on it.

Maintaining empty or partially used meeting rooms over repurposing them based on business needs is careless. Tracking space utilization of each office space is no longer nice to have for successful facility management and overall business profit. It’s a necessity, especially during an economic crisis.

Wasting energy 

One of the biggest operational costs for large office buildings can be attributed to energy consumption. Many facility managers are not using any 3rd party tools to establish a quantifiable way to measure energy waste. Think about how much you can save monthly and yearly simply by turning off unnecessary energy in unoccupied spaces. Who are the lights, air conditioning, and computers on for? The challenge now is spotting these unused spaces by using the right tools.

Disregarding technology 

It’s unclear why facility management professionals are not leaning on technology as much as other fields. But there shouldn’t be any fear; there should be excitement. Excitement for progress and booming productivity for yourself and the entire organization.

All because of switching to the right technology, specifically designed to simplify and automate most -if not all – your daily tasks. We use our smart-phones every day, why don’t we use the same smart technology like that on the job?

Solution: control building operations from one dashboard

Expectations of businesses are evolving and office spaces must adapt. Obtaining the tools to monitor and maintain organization expansion from one dashboard is vital. This is why using smart workplace sensors can help save you thousands of dollars yearly. Remember, small changes lead to great results.

PointGrab’s workplace sensors:

• Gather real-time occupancy data to help you spot unused space easily.

• Are anonymous people counters that employees use to determine the load at employee services such as HR, the cafeteria, gym areas, and more.

• Gather data that helps you spot unused meeting rooms that can be repurposed for business needs.

• Help activate energy in the various office spaces based on occupancy, saving your organizations thousands of dollars.
• Save facility managers time and money by gathering accurate data on office space utilization.

Summary

In conclusion, facility managers have a lot of responsibilities but not nearly enough tools to do the great job they can do. Consequently, adding an analytics tool can boost productivity and help the business grow using its current resources. You just have to take the first step in the right direction.

Are you ready to learn more? Click here to start.