Mitie, the facilities management contract company, has found that half of the UK’s service sector employees are being hampered by inadequate workplace management and design. The findings, based on a nationwide survey of 2,443 service sector employees, show that facilities management (FM) needs to put people ahead of buildings.
The research will be announced at The Facilities Show on Tuesday, June 16. Employees aged 20 to 29 were especially critical. Two-thirds of this group felt that their offices were not designed to optimise productivity.
Finance and legal workers felt particularly let down by their workplaces, with almost half of feeling that their workplaces did not optimise their productivity. These two sectors were also emotionally disengaged with their workplaces. Fewer than 35pc of finance and legal workers identified themselves as ‘emotionally attached’ to their workplaces.
However, those working for not-for-profit organisations were most damning. Over 90% of these employees were emotionally detached from their workplaces, whilst only 30pc felt that the not-for-profit workplace maximises productivity.
The Quora report, commissioned by Mitie, showed that 80.3pc of those surveyed agreed that Facilities Management is a core people-facing operational function.
Martyn Freeman, MD of Mitie’s Facilities Management business, said: “Business faces an urgent challenge. Service sector workers are clearly disappointed by their workplaces. We must listen to this call for change. We need to ensure that FM serves employees and not buildings. We need to be flexible towards individuals and not enforce a blinkered one-size-fits-all approach. Every effort must be made to ensure that FM, in unison with other business functions, puts people first.”
