Will HR and Facility Management integrate? These companies are already doing it!

Hybrid work raises new issues and challenges for HR and Facility Management in their continuous quest to best serve employees. “The best employee experience is achieved when support departments collaborate intensively,” says Heleen Mes, employee experience expert. Or perhaps even better: those departments should completely merge. Is this HR’s future? ABN AMRO and VGZ have already taken that step.

HR and Facility Management (FM) are already known to collaborate at certain times, like when dealing with mobility: if for example HR wants to roll out a plan promoting bicycle use, FM must upgrade the building’s bicycle storage facilities. Vitality is another common subject, requiring for example collaboration to improve the menu in the company restaurant and promote healthy living. Now however the collaboration between HR and FM has been given a boost by the rapid introduction of hybrid work. With hybrid work here to stay, HR and FM may have to integrate. What benefits would this bring?

Workplace Management

Aashna Pancham, Innovation Manager at ABN AMRO, made the switch from HR to FM in mid-2021. “At ABN AMRO, Facility Management is associated with HR, and the department was renamed Workplace Management. Our own employees are our customers for both FM and HR, and we strive to also give our employees the same comprehensive, high-quality service. It makes no difference to employees which department is responsible for what. They just want to be able to do their jobs well. Behind the scenes, the support departments must arrange a good, seamless service.”

Pancham and her colleagues work in multidisciplinary teams to innovate the service. In addition to HR and FM, IT and Brand Marketing & Communications are also involved. “This is because in addition to a physical component, every innovation also has a cultural and technical component. And to reach the employee, every innovation must be communicated. At ABN AMRO, we’re very ambitious with regard to sustainability. You can then say that separating waste is FM’s responsibility, but for it to be successful you also need the employees to behave accordingly, and that’s where HR comes in.”

At ABN AMRO they are currently working on an office concept for their new head office, and Pancham says that this is also where the overlap between HR and FM becomes even clearer: “When for example it comes to inclusiveness: facilities for the disabled and a prayer room. We’re also discussing gender-neutral toilets and signing: should the illuminated signs feature a male or female figure.” Because no one can precisely predict how hybrid work will develop, the office benefits from being flexible. “We must be able to convert rooms quickly, preferably on the fly if, for example, employees subsequently need concentration workspaces after attending a meeting held in the same room. We must also be able to deal with square meterage flexibly, because the office is not occupied by the same number of people each day of the week. This remains quite a complex issue.”

One of the Workplace Management department’s goals is to ensure that the workspace contributes to giving colleagues the feeling that they are connected. To this end the office concept must incorporate the organization’s vision, core values and logo, among other things. “On the one hand we have a clear idea of what we stand for as an employer and what we want to convey, while on the other hand there are the employees’ needs. We want those two sides to match as much as possible,” Pancham explains. “HR and FM take the same approach in everything we do: we work with personas, create journey maps and ask employees what they need and want. We work with sounding board groups and validate the steps we take.” Pancham has no regrets about the switch to FM: “After nearly a year I can say that FM is a complex and ambitious subject area. I still have much to learn.”

Human Facility Management at VGZ

Richard Helmus, Facility & Real Estate Manager at VGZ, was selected as Facility Manager of the Year 2022. In 2016, VGZ’s HR and FM departments merged into Human Facility Management, and now, as of mid-2022, it operates under the name of People & Sustainability. “We celebrated this as if we were getting married,” Helmus recalls. “VGZ’s strategy is to work together towards a healthier Netherlands. As such, our own work environment must also be a best practice. Our office is now recognized as the healthiest office in the Netherlands, earning the highest distinction. At VGZ, ‘people first’ is one of our four strategic objectives. Moreover, two of the company’s values are ‘human’ and ‘awareness’, and this already connects HR and FM.”

Helmus explains that the coronavirus pandemic served to further integrate the collaboration between HR and FM: “After all, when it comes to hybrid work, you not only have to take care of the hardware, the physical matters, but also the cultural side: the connection, collaboration and psychological care. It’s no longer enough for FM to focus solely on operational excellence. We want to give employees the space they need to be themselves, and not simply offer them a standardized product or service. Teams determine how they use the workplace. We focus on activity-based working with the 3 Cs: Concentrate, Collaborate, Connect. We see opportunities for more inclusion, such as for employees facing disadvantages on the labor market, for example.”

According to Helmus, when it comes to hybrid work the coming period will be one big experiment. How do you ensure that the office remains seamlessly connected to the latest developments? “We’re letting this play out and later will see what makes sense and what doesn’t. Now’s the time for progress, which is something that never quite happened in the past with ‘The New Way of Working’. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the general feeling was that the office garden was debilitating, because you couldn’t concentrate there. But now this is completely reversed: you come to the office due to the right incentives. We want an office where employees say: that’s where I want to be, instead of that’s where I must be.”

Do Pancham and Helmus have any advice for integrating HR and FM? Pancham: “Break out of the silos and start collaborating. Use each other’s strengths and see what this yields. Collectively transcend the everyday issues and look ahead to the longer term. Innovation is not a cost element.” Helmus: “You must invest in taking a joint approach to the workplace, also financially. A business case is sometimes difficult to substantiate. You must believe in it and be courageous. I’m convinced that it will be very beneficial indeed.”