Picture this. You’re a new facilities manager. You have some idea of how to do this, but you know you could be better.
It all comes down to being a smarter manager.
The truth is, good workplace management can help reduce stress, improve your efficiency, and strengthen your bottom line. Here are four ways to improve your facilities management every single day.
The first order of business is a simple question: how is your building performing?
Is it underperforming? Is it overperforming? Is it right on target?
Many facilities managers focus heavily on underperformance, but overperformance can hurt you just as much. When you overperform, you’re not working as efficiently as you could be. And that means that in the end, your ROI isn’t as high as it could be.
Start by turning a critical eye to your building performance. Highlight areas that could do with improvement. If you’re not sure how to set this benchmark, start by taking a look at the metric of a similar competitor that’s performing slightly better than you. Plus, it doubles as motivation to do better.
Also, look at some ways you can improve your workplace safety program. Ensure you have the right safety gear given to your employees. PPE is another important factor that should be included in your day-to-day operations. Enforcing the use of hard hats in hazardous areas or even applying sneeze defense shields to your counters can help reduce the risk of incidents.
One of the easiest ways to boost your performance is by streamlining your workflows.
For example, you can automate processes to avoid the cost of human error. Basically, you’re cutting people out the process so that everyone can focus on important tasks–and you don’t have to worry about sneaky small errors adding up over time.
You can also find smarter ways to keep your team on track. Checklists are a good way to keep things lean.
If your team is ever unclear about what they’re supposed to be doing with their time, you’re not doing your job right.
To that end, scheduling is your best tool. Start by finding a centralized CMMS software solution that your whole team can use. Any given person should be able to check this central system and know exactly where they should be and what they’re supposed to be doing.
And on the flip side, you should be able to see when various tasks have been completed.
Preventative maintenance is a great example of scheduling at work. Your operation has a lot of moving parts, which means you can’t afford to slow down for a straggling machine. But if you don’t do preventative maintenance, you’ll spend too much time putting out fires.
Instead, proactively schedule your processes using preventative maintenance software. That way, you can stop the problem before it has the chance to become a problem at all.
Finally, don’t be afraid to proactively manage your inventory.
A centralized inventory system is the easiest way to handle this problem. You and your team should be able to pull up information on any given piece of inventory at any given time.
After all, you never know when you might need that information. Better to be over-prepared.
While you’re doing preventative maintenance, take the time to proactively check your equipment and the status of your inventory. Can you easily account for every item? Do you know what items need additional work done? Do you have the means to easily schedule that additional work?
If so, you’re doing a great job handling your inventory. If not, you know how to fix the problem.
If you need more facilities management tips to make your team lean and agile, you’ve come to the right place. CMMS Insight offers resources for managers just like you so that you can stop wasting time on small details and focus on the bigger picture.
Subscribe to our blog to receive more process-driven insights.