We entered the experience economy long ago and today there’s a growing demand for experienced-based facilities. So, the new way of gaining a competitive advantage as a facility service provider is by offering experiences that clients, employees and other facility end users will remember and be loyal towards.
Knowing this, there is a great deal of talk around the important role that sustainability can play in supporting the experience of building environments. Sustainability contributes towards improved energy use management, improved indoor air quality, and healthy buildings.
What is less well known, however, is how sustainability can deliver a competitive advantage to facility service providers. Even with this uncertainty, for facility service providers, sustainability is no longer seen as a ‘nice-to-have’ - it is essential. To stay ahead of their competitors, facility service providers are expected to produce new sustainable services to support their customers with achieving objectives, such as net-zero targets or experience-based sustainability objectives like improved comfort and healthy buildings. For many facility service providers, meeting these client requests is a tactical exercise instead of a strategic initiative. But this can change.
For a facility service provider focused on customer experience, sustainability can play a key role in the development of a building’s Total Experience strategy. Delivering Total Experience can help with the creation of a positive brand reputation - and the advantage that this creates is particularly noticeable when recruiting and retaining talent.
Increasingly, an organisation’s sustainability and ESG credentials are huge draws for job-seekers and potential clients. Among younger cohorts, this is even more pronounced. According to a recent Deloitte survey, ‘Climate change/protecting the environment’ is the top concern for Gen-Z workers and remains listed in the top three worries for millennials. Facility service providers generally have a hard time finding good personnel and as the desire to work for a sustainability-focused company increases, integrating sustainability into your business strategy could help with retaining talent.
But talk of ‘concerns’ can immediately lead recruiters and facility service providers into negative territory. This mindset needs to undergo a drastic shift. Sustainability is about much more than simply preventing an environmental apocalypse, and recruitment shouldn’t be thought of in similarly pessimistic terms either. Employee experience is a key element of a Total Experience strategy. Use sustainability to show your ‘Love for Talent’ and attract the 89% of organisations seeking to work with likeminded organisations.
Using sustainability to reposition your organisation in terms of a ‘Love for Talent’, means re-thinking how you talk about attracting employees. Don’t frame your recruitment in terms of box-ticking and meeting set criteria. Make it explicit that you are looking for workers that can truly add value - in all parts of the business, but particularly in terms of your sustainability and ESG credentials.
Analyst firm Gartner predicts that by 2026, 60% of large corporate firms will use Total Experience to transform their business models to achieve better customer and employee advocacy levels. Facility service providers can start planning now for how they will support client sustainability objectives such as improved comfort, health, and productivity within a Total Facility Experience strategy. By engaging employees, encouraging them to add value and go beyond their minimum requirements, businesses can unlock new innovative approaches to achieving sustainability and ESG goals.
In the future, facility service firms that provide a Total Facility Experience will have an advantage with supporting clients and maintaining engaged employees. In its ‘The Future of the Workplace: Designing the Experience’ report, the workplace consultancy of Gensler highlights a JLL corporate employee survey that finds 69% of employees believe a work environment should facilitate a happy experience, it’s a top priority for them. For many client employees and other building users, a company’s office space is the physical manifestation of its corporate culture and identity and helps determine whether it is a company worth doing business with. Providing an environment to support happy experiences will strengthen employee satisfaction, make clients happy, and build facility services provider brand loyalty.
Embracing sustainability delivers significant benefits that are sure to make potential employees and clients stand up and take notice. In pursuing a Total Facility Experience strategy, businesses will make themselves as attractive as possible to employees, customers and end-users, and sustainability is an important component of doing so.
Providing a Total Facility Experience is about more than technology. At its core, it is a people, technology, and process strategy to flexibly meet evolving facility service delivery requirements, such as sustainability and ESG objectives.
Are you ready for the next competitive battleground for facility service providers. This white paper explains how technology can support facility service providers in the transition to a Total Facility Experience strategy that enhances both client and employee satisfaction.
