Companies Turn to Facilities Professionals to Stop Staff Sweet Rations and Beat the Recession

 Facilities professionals reacted quickly to the economic doom and gloom by saving their companies, on average,  £660,625 in 2008 thanks to clever cut-backs and contract negotiations.Interesting reductions, aside from the usual changes to reprographic, telecom and vendor management contracts, included:

• Cancelling free chocolate (a saving of £56,000!)
• Issuing Oyster cards to encourage public transport, rather than Taxis
• Introduction of bio-fuel manufacturing
• Charitable management

Whilst one facilities manager admitted to "stopping the mailroom manager delivering his wife's Avon orders to the PAs - not a popular saving but poor use of resource." And, with 2009 seeing little sign of a v shaped upswing, facilities departments at Britain's biggest blue chips are predicting a further 10-15% in cost savings this year.

 According to the Joslin Rowe recruitment consultancy survey, sent to over 300 facilities managers and heads in London and the South East, even smaller companies (with under 500 employees) enjoyed average cost reductions of £291,667. This demonstrates the enormous value facilities professionals can bring to the bottom line, especially as the average salary of respondents from these companies was around £50,000.

 However, opinion was split amongst respondents as to whether facilities professionals are valued more highly since the credit crunch. 50% saying yes and 50% saying no. Although, importantly, 80% did feel their profile had been enhanced specifically amongst their company's senior management team since the advent of the recession. Because of this 20% predict staff numbers will actually increase over the year and 31% believe numbers will remain stable. Unfortunately, for the remaining 49% headcount is still expected to decrease by the end of 2009.

 Paul Soothill, Associate Director, of Joslin Rowe's property and facilities division remarks, "Despite the recession's hold on UK plc, we're still seeing a steady flow of FM jobs from clients keen to hire at the more senior level. They realise that investing in facilities departments will help companies become leaner and more able to hit profit targets. Where redundancies are occurring these tend to be amongst bigger departments where workloads can be soaked up by those remaining. We've seen very few instances of facilities departments being disbanded."

ENDS