If you read this blog, you’re familiar with terms like “employee service management” and phrases like “every department is a service provider.” These are important mentalities in creating a positive work environment, where employees feel enabled to do their best work. Recognizing the importance of employee experience is a great start, but now it’s time to create specific practices that make life easy for employees. In this series, we’ll travel department-by-department throughout an organization to look specifically at services that can be automated and improved for maximum efficiency, and ultimately, maximum employee satisfaction.
In this post we’ll focus on the facilities and maintenance department.
Also see -- 20 Employee Services to Automate: Human Resources
Companies depend on service from facilities for employee retention, allocation, space planning, operational efficiency, and business sustainability. These needs can manifest in common instances like the temperature of the office, or through interdepartmental services like employee onboarding. You can prepare for a variety of work orders with prebuilt workflows in the service catalog. Automated tasks and approvals can help make this department proactive instead of reactive, giving your employees a clean, safe, comfortable, and energy-efficient place to work.
Use Cases for Automated Service Management in Facilities and Maintenance
Let’s take a look at some specific services we can prepare in facilities:
Personnel Needs
1. New Chair
New employee? Specific seating requirements? Create a dropdown of options within a service catalog item. This way, requesters know exactly what their choices are.
2. New Desk
From standing desks to executive desks to cubicles, there’s a perfect fit for every department in the organization. When employees know what they can order, and you’re notified when to order it, they’ll get what they need faster.
3. Desk Move
Moving departments or just eyeing that spectacular window seat? Either way it’s an upgrade, so don’t make employees wait for it.
4. Office Move
Did someone just become head of a department? Is one team moving to another floor? Collect all the information on who’s moving and who needs supplies with a service catalog item.
5. Contract Review & Approval
Before you sign on the dotted line, have the experts give it a quick glance to ensure you’re not signing away your life, or the company. This is a perfect place for automated approval processes.
6. Lost Key
It’s easy to forget that the doors to the office lock every day until you need to get in before or after hours.
7. New Key
New employee? Lost key never found? Get the building access needed with the right security approvals completed.
8. Reprogram Door
Locked out, locked in, or no lock at all, it could be a technical issue. Let's prepare this workflow ahead of time.
Though it’s a bit cliché to “expect the unexpected,” that’s what we ask of the facilities department.
Workplace Safety
9. Recurring Fire Extinguisher Check
Make sure you never forget to check that fire extinguisher! Keep it up to date for when you need it most.
10. Monthly Water Filter Inspection Scheduling
Nobody wants to find floaters in their water. Create recurring notifications to change the filter.
11. Equipment Move
Just need someone to move around a few desktops or office chairs? This should only take a minute. But if it’s a generator or a copy machine, it’s officially time to bring out the big guns...
12. Monthly Air Filter Inspection Schedule
No one wants to breathe in dirty air. Help remind the right people to change the filters.
13. Snow/Ice Removal
Winter weather can be a major liability. Ensure those sidewalks are salted (or close the office… just sayin’).
Workplace Maintenance and Cleanup
14. Monthly HVAC Maintenance Schedule
Finding the perfect office temperature is harder than it sounds, but it’s manageable if you’re on top of your regular HVAC maintenance.
15. Unscheduled HVAC Maintenance
Broken A/C? Get the right people involved faster and easier. There’s no debate that this is a high priority issue, especially in the winter or summer, so treat it that way.
16. General Cleaning
Don’t wait until AFTER the office Super Bowl party to schedule a cleanup. Schedule a vacuum and a kitchen cleanup for first thing Monday morning.
17. Urgent Spill Cleanup
We’re going to need someone to clean up aisle three… This is why we can’t have nice things.
18. Bathroom Attention Needed
Need a description here? Automate who needs to get involved, and use custom fields to collect information on any supplies that need to be replaced.
19. Kitchen Attention Needed
Whose turn is it to do the dishes? No need to hunt them down. Create automatic notifications for tasks like dishes and refrigerator cleanings.
20. Unplanned Carpet Cleaning
Sharp elbows, coffee mugs, and morning cobwebs form a dangerous recipe for those clean carpets. Get the experts involved before the stain has time to set.
You’re familiar with all of these basic services. Every company relies on a team of professionals to get these things done, but if they aren’t using automated notifications, tasks, and approvals, they might not be completed as quickly and effectively as they could be. Every employee in the company should know how to submit a work order to the facilities department, as these needs could pop up unexpectedly. Though it’s a bit cliché to “expect the unexpected,” that’s what we ask of the facilities department. The service catalog will help them do just that, building out workflows with automated tasks, approvals, data collection, and notifications, helping them deliver some of the most important day-to-day services within the organization.
