FEATURE ITS CLAIM from its professional echo chamber and reach a


erence was an opportunity for the institute to warm ce. Tomorrow’s FM reports.


wellbeing at work, the solution to these challenges lies in improving people’s experience at work. Control, variety, good relations, fairness, balance and positive emotions are just some of the factors that can lead to improved performance and innovation, she said.


Next, it fell to consultant in proptech Antony Slumbers handed delegates their paintbrush, as he described just how much technology continues to disrupt workplaces. Adding colour and depth to many of Carey’s earlier points, he bemoaned the real estate world’s inability to adapt to a new tech-rich world that is irrevocably changing how occupiers experience the workplace. “The real estate sector sells offices. But the customer wants productive workforces,” he said. “[Real estate] is a product industry in a market that wants services.”


Lucy Adams, a former BBC leader and founder of Disruptive HR, sought to find parallels with FM. She said that both professions are seeking to provide environments that foster four things: agility, productivity, collaboration, and innovation. But she warned that the HR profession is hampered by its adherence for policies and procedures – a message that surely resonated with an FM profession whose animus so often comes from compliance and risk management.


After lunch, former hostage negotiator Richard Mullendar showed how his set of specific skills could well be applied to the stiff world of business. In a funny and engaging session in which he revealed some basic tips for better listening, the ex-Met Police man reminded the FM professionals in the room that many of their problems begin and end with their lack of confidence and failure to communicate.


If facilities managers ever feel alone in their struggles, however, the next session gave hope. Digital marketing expert Daniel Rowles revealed the lessons that FM can learn from marketing, a discipline that has been plagued with similar worries about boardroom recognition and strategic relevance. Continuing a thread that had begun earlier in the day through Carey and Slumbers, Rowles explained that marketing’s fortunes began to change when it started to use data to tell a better a story and, more importantly, measure that story’s effectiveness.


In the last portion of the day, Carolyn Taylor, an expert on organisational culture, revealed the nine critical levers for developing a better and more cohesive culture at work. That workplace design was one must have been a relief to the IWFM.


Then came the final act with Jonathan Stebbing, from Olivier Mythodrama, who urged that whichever picture delegates decide to paint, it must tell a story powerful and compelling enough to motivate, persuade and inspire. In a totally original closing session, Stebbing gave an abridged


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Credit: Doodles by Simon Heath - @SimonHeath1


performance of Shakespeare’s Henry V, pressed the FM leaders in his makeshift Globe to be less like corporate dullards and more like the medieval king.


When it was IWFM Chairman Steven Roots’s turn to thank the speakers, delegates and sponsors, he joked that it was the first FM conference he had ever attended that had no mention of SFG20, the niche engineering standard for maintenance specification. Though he said this in jest, his point speaks volumes about the IWFM’s new mission be a positive force for change and progress.


TOMORROW’S FM | 23


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