A company consists of one or more buildings, but more importantly, the people within them! Managing the work environment goes beyond just the real estate and materials. One of your essential roles as a Facilities Manager is to assign workspaces: ensuring everyone has a place to work, implementing a strategy to optimise space usage, defining methods for accessing workstations, and most importantly, ensuring that everyone knows who is where. A smooth organisation allows employees to work under good conditions, with a focus firmly on the human element.
This article covers the following aspects:
Since the dawn of time, the question has arisen: "How does man occupy his living space?" In terms of assignment, it means defining how he occupies his workspace. Beyond determining which workstation an employee uses, thinking about assignment involves making choices by management about how they want to use their premises. There are indeed several ways to approach assignment to address concrete issues, as well as to reflect the company's values and objectives.
The organisation of workspaces carries several challenges. You need to provide solutions to concrete questions such as:
Considering assignment means viewing the use of premises through the lens of people. The workplace is a complete living environment. Ultimately, thinking about assignment involves taking into account the most concrete and human aspect of the company: its daily operations.
Addressing the issue of assignment and dedicating time to genuine reflection is always useful, regardless of the objective. What does employee assignment mean to you?
You are seeking performance and productivity. As a Facilities Manager, your priority is to ensure that employees have all the resources needed to work. When considering assignment, you may prefer to group occupants by project. This approach is very dynamic and should be renewed with each project change. You might also consider a Flex Office by territory.
You want to emphasise conviviality and collaboration. Within your company, you recognise that coming to the office is about social connection and peer interaction. In a traditional organisation, a fixed assignment fosters office friendships and allows for personalisation of the workspace. With new working methods, this could translate into a Flex Office by reservation, allowing everyone to choose their place and their desk neighbour. Your priorities for Quality of Work Life will also be reflected in workspace design and occupant services.
You aim to optimise space utilisation to ensure employees move easily within your premises. You might also have constraints related to accessibility for people with reduced mobility. As a Facilities Manager, your main concern is adhering to safety and regulations. Knowing who works next to whom is less important; you focus on ensuring that workstations are distributed across different areas of the building and that everyone can easily access their evacuation routes.
For you, mastering assignment is primarily a way to save costs. You analyse occupancy data to help reduce operating expenses. You allocate the maximum number of employees to the smallest possible space: Flex Office, shared workstations are implemented based on your occupancy rates and density, and the workspace area is optimised down to the square centimetre. Depending on your activity, you might even consider a fully remote setup. This would eliminate concerns about layout or assignment.
Your assignment strategy reveals the company's priorities and values. For instance, the amount of space allocated to different organisations reflects the importance placed by senior management on the core business activities. At an individual level, the size and location of a workstation within a business unit indicate the value placed on the individual and their role. Large offices with glass walls for executives and open-plan spaces for the general staff say it all!
To avoid class struggles, an assignment strategy tailored to the company's needs should always be based on an equitable and balanced organisation. Insightful management demonstrates clearly that workstations have been allocated thoughtfully, based on determined objectives for a SMART assignment (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound).
Managing assignment, in daily professional practice and in a somewhat simplistic but concrete manner, involves placing names on floor plans.
In (too) many companies, Facilities Management is still at the stage of makeshift solutions on this issue. Commonly encountered solutions include:
(and let's not even mention updates!)
Integrating data into your plans to manage assignments, taking into account organisations, project groups, attendance days, business needs, security, furniture, etc., necessarily involves the DIGITALISATION of the Work Environment, meaning the use of digital tools dedicated to Work Environment management.
Having a digital repository of plans and data, a digital twin for building management, interoperable with your HRIS, is what Surfy offers. How about becoming an agile Facilities Manager?
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