FEATURE STAKING I If one of the IWFM’s objectives is to break free f
wider audience in UK plc, its 2019 national confe its muscles and find its voic
Organising a facilities management conference without any facilities management – and very little workplace – might sound like a risky strategy, but it felt like a very deliberate move from the Institute of Workplace & Facilities Management (IWFM) this April.
Having ditched the ‘Think FM’ name for its annual symposium following the rebrand last year, the institute’s 2019 National Conference provided it with an opportunity to start afresh and demonstrate to members the kind of professional body that it wants to be in the years to come.
FM has long been lambasted for operating in a bubble, with an endless succession of insular, parochial and self- serving arguments about definitions hardly challenging this narrative. It’s hard to ignore the feeling that nobody outside of FM much cares for the profession’s on-going existential crises.
Yet the decision to incorporate ‘workplace management’ into its strategic vision is proof that the IWFM is at least attempting to change all that. Bar conference chair Chris Moriarty, the institute’s Director of Insight, the programme featured no facilities management experts whatsoever. Moriarty said the thinking behind this was to “weave a golden thread of thought challengers by bringing in best-in-class ‘outsiders’ to help us see beyond our own immediate landscape”.
With that in mind, Marcus Child’s keynote speech was a fitting opener. A slick, seasoned entertaining motivational speaker, Child asked delegates to paint a picture of their destination and work out how they are going to get there. Though he was speaking to the audience, this wasn’t the last time the words of someone on stage would feel like a direct challenge to the IWFM. The institute has already sketched an ambitious picture of where it wants to be, outlined in a published 10-point plan that includes a new website, new professional standards, creative campaigns, a market information index, and plenty of future research projects.
If Child were the muse, the Work Foundation’s Heather Carey provided delegates with the canvass. She laid out the current business climate and pinpointed the reasons behind the UK’s longstanding productivity problem, which included the slow adoption of new technologies, a lack of investment in skills and poor management practices in general. But Carey also noted that FM professionals have a vital role to play in turning much of this around. Those familiar with the 2016 ‘Stoddart Review’, a sprawling study for which the IWFM was a founding partner, will have already learnt how workplaces can be used as tools to boost employee productivity.
For Nancy Hey of the What Works Centre for Wellbeing, an independent public body that is committed to the study of
22 | TOMORROW’S FM
twitter.com/TomorrowsFM
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