Leveraging Data Analytics for Smarter Facilities Management
Takeaways from IFMA World Workplace 2024
The IFMA organizers said it best: “Facility management is the art of creating an environment where people and processes thrive seamlessly, transforming spaces into engines of productivity and innovation.”
Facilities managers from across the globe convened last week at IFMA World Workplace in San Antonio, a three-day event of speaker sessions, educational workshops, and networking. The prevailing theme throughout the conference was dynamic facilities management—fostering agile, accessible, and connected workplaces that enhance the employee experience and support flexible ways of working.
Creating a dynamic workplace is no easy task, especially with the pressure on FMs to make offices sustainable and cost-efficient. Throughout the week at IFMA, thought leaders shared innovative strategies to help FMs address these challenges.
These were the biggest takeaways:
How facilities managers can leverage workplace data
Space optimization and workplace efficiency are common buzzwords for the latest phase of facilities management. In a flexible working environment, FMs need to gather data faster and more accurately to advocate for space changes, real estate attrition or expansion, and new workplace policies.
Jim Whittaker, the global Head of Workplace Products at JLL, led a session on the future of facilities management, emphasizing the key roles of technology and integration for gaining a holistic picture of the workplace. He explained that many teams are moving toward automated, real-time data to create more agile workspaces.
Utilization data, or presence data, can be a leading indicator for space optimization, and replacing manual check-ins with automated sensors can lead to less friction at the office and greater accuracy for reporting. While FMs may have the ability to gather the data, what to do with that data remains a question mark for many teams.
Getting data out of silos
Making sense of data can be intimidating—a common sentiment among IFMA attendees—but it doesn’t have to be.
While teams may have the tools to monitor and track attendance, if that data is siloed, it’s difficult to draw meaningful conclusions.
Data collection is the first step toward a more efficient workplace, but FMs need ways to surface attendance stats alongside other key metrics. For example, metrics that show how often a meeting room is booked are a great starting point, but getting more granular by comparing the room’s capacity with its occupancy (how many people attend each meeting) can reveal whether the space is too large or small for team needs.
Overall attendance data can indicate how teams are responding to workplace policies, but gathering that data over a period of time can illuminate trends, like which days of the week have a spike in attendance. Comparing attendance rates to available desks and spaces will help inform strategy and workplace design, and assist FMs in making a case for repurposing space, adding more desks, or implementing new policies, like seat sharing.
By integrating various data points, FMs can make faster, informed decisions about space allocation and workplace policies. The right reporting tools are key: FMs can save time by using workplace management software that automatically generates easy-to-interpret, actionable reports that can quickly answer critical questions about the workplace like:
- Which rooms are underutilized?
- Do we have the right mix of room sizes?
- What’s the peak daily utilization of each office location?
- How often does the accounting team come into the office?
Not only can these reports support strategic decisions, FMs can also use the data to report up to the C-Suite for faster approval. With real-time metrics, the process becomes more agile, allowing teams to reshape spaces and policies as they grow or as employee needs change.
How AI can simplify facilities management
FMs recognize the value of AI for speeding up manual processes and automating rote tasks, but IFMA introduced new use cases for AI in facilities management.
Melissa Marsh, founder and executive director at Plastarc, led a discussion on how AI can help facilities managers craft a better employee experience and improve operational efficiency: Leveraging AI in the workplace can help teams create more responsive, user-friendly working environments that learn from and adapt to user behavior.
Marsh also highlighted the privacy and ethical concerns brought on by AI. As organizations across all industries incorporate AI into their practices, they should also emphasize adequate training and ethical guardrails around its use. Workplace leaders have the opportunity to streamline processes and achieve faster results at scale, but humans should remain at the center—AI can be thought of as an assistant for FMs to make their lives easier, not a replacement of their skills or expertise.
The OfficeSpace platform provides facilities managers with actionable reports offering critical insights about the workplace. Request a demo today to learn more.
Continue reading
