3 Reasons Employees in Facility Management Industry Resist Change

As long as soft and hard facilities require different solutions when they develop faults, facility management industry cannot do without constant change. It is one of the industries that need to embrace change for effective solutions delivery. Change could evolve because of the need to enhance solutions delivery within short, medium and long term periods.

Employees need to understand that built environment is not static because the users of various facilities are dynamic. They cannot be predicted. Besides, people have different knowledge or information on the use of facilities, especially those in workplaces.

Despite the benefits associated with change, our experience has shown that employees in facility management companies always afraid of change. This surface, mostly, when the affected employees lack the required skills, there is a tendency of blocking illicit financial sources for personal benefit and the threat to the team lead, head or director. The threat to the leadership is being resisted when the new ideas towards process, people or solution is being suggested by junior employees.

Out of the three reasons, according to our model, lack of skills and blocking of illicit financial sources could be addressed when managements of the FM companies appropriate Constant Training Programme (CTP) and Bonus Reward (BR) approaches. Threats to existing processes and technologies must be mapped always to discern the areas where the employees need to be trained. Quarterly salary review in addition to special bonus to deserving staff will go in a long way of resolving the resistance to change in the industry. Senior employees need to be equipped with fundamentals of change management and its impact of business profitability. This equally requires special training, focusing on ideation to innovation management.