Digital facilities management: Measuring social performance

What is the role of buildings and facility managers in delivering social value? Here we share five points highlighted by our panel of experts.

Making buildings people-centric

Occupiers are placing greater emphasis on the social aspect of ESG, with the pandemic having led to a permanent shift in the importance of well-being, says Savannah de Savary, Founder & CEO of Built-ID. ‘When we leave our homes, we really want to see a return on investment in terms of how it makes us feel’, she says. She feels that property managers and asset owners are lagging some 12–18 months behind occupiers in their adoption of the ‘S’ component of ESG.

There is a more open-minded view from organisations now about where they put people, with HR becoming much more involved, says Mark Tyson, Head of Asset Services, Real Estate, Legal & General Investment Management. ‘The challenge for the landlord is creating experiences in their assets that are unique from each other’, he says. Mark explains that five years ago a lot of our offices looked very similar, but we've learned over the years, accelerated by the impact of COVID-19, to listen to our occupiers and create distinctive spaces that people want to use and which in turn become a USP.

Defining social value

Social value is about doing something meaningful and can range from skills and job creation to working with charities, believes Mark Tyson. Savannah de Savary describes social value as ‘aligning what you do with the preferences and priorities and needs of the people impacted by your work.’ This is the wider community as well as the tenet community, employees and those who work with you, she says. Social value is very situational and varies depending on demographics and needs, she explains. There is often a synergy between social value and sustainability, where environmental initiatives and people’s priorities combine, she says citing examples of her work with local communities for whom sustainability is a top priority.

A bottom-up approach in tandem with leadership is essential in delivering social value, says Chris Jeffers FRICS, Projects Director, Head of Facility Management Advisory, at Mott MacDonald. It’s important that it’s not just a tick-box exercise, otherwise the intent will fail, he says. ‘Meaningful social practices need to be meaningful at scale’, says Mark Tyson. ‘Lots of people can do good stuff in isolation, the problem is how do you move the dial in a big way?’, he says.

Aligning social value with commercial goals

While some companies may see social value as an additional cost, Chris Jeffers suggests the commercial impact of not implementing it can result in higher costs in the future, for example, in relation to employees, the cost of recruitment, staff shortages and agency fees. He is currently working on ways to calculate the estimated cost benefits of social value to provide a clear business case of doing the right thing. ‘Social value needs to be aligned with the commercial case, and not isolated, because otherwise money will always trump it.’, he says.  Therefore, it is important for a deep-dive into the numbers to articulate the impact on the business, its customers and on the local community, he stresses.

Savannah de Savary also believes separating social value from commercial objectives is a mistake and can lead to the ‘rolling of the eyes’ by some stakeholders, and pronouncing they are a business and not a charity. A great example of social value aligned with commercial goals, she says, is insurance tech companies using gamification to improve well-being and mental health and lower the number of claims.

A project involving Legal & General aims to tackle health inequality issues at work, particularly sick pay, for hidden workers such as cleaners and kitchen porters, builders and security guards working in real estate. The report Working well: Delivering better health outcomes for hidden workers makes a number of recommendations, including sick pay with without waiting days and at the same level as standard pay. Employees who, for financial reasons, feel unable to take time off when unwell are likely to suffer stress, take longer to recover and may develop long-term health conditions, which ultimately adds to NHS expenditure.

What makes a social building

A big advocate for micro-placemaking, Savannah de Savary believes this does not need to be expensive and can simply be offering free space to local charities, she says. Looking at local social initiatives and engaging the local community results in an outpouring of constructive feedback and the creation of a social building that brings the community together, she adds.

 ‘There isn’t a particular design or blueprint for a great social building, it’s much more about how that building is managed and the people who manage it’, says Chris Jeffers. Buildings, he says, are designed to a set of standards, regulations and guidelines and cannot keep up with how people want to use the space, so it’s more about how we reach out to communities. The human element is important and whoever is responsible for managing the space must understand the needs of the community and giving them the time and authority to act, he says.

Understanding outputs

When it comes to data, it is not necessarily new technical skills that are needed but rather knowing how to make the most of the technology. It is the appetite to use technology to drive decisions that is most important, says Savannah de Savary.

Real estate encompasses a wide range of skills and services and the purpose and the point of FM is to manage all of those, says Chris Jeffers. As the industry becomes more digitalised, whether it's social value, maintenance or energy programmes, the key data skill is making effective decisions based on the data, which is more about behaviours and culture than the technical side, he says. 

Mark Tyson agrees and doesn’t expect facilities managers to be experts in analytics because ultimately, he sees it as a people business. He envisages a time when buildings will be run like Formula 1 teams, with offsite data analysts providing the numbers and tools for facilities managers to make the decisions.

Likewise, we don’t need facilities managers to become experts in ESG, especially the S component, says Chris Jeffers. What facilities managers need to understand is the outputs so we can make decisions for the benefit of local communities.

The role of a facility manager is becoming more complex and demanding, and with regulation driving a relentless focus on the E in ESG, it is easy to forget that the built environment exists for the community it serves. As the S has remained opaque, the panel will discuss what the role of the FM is with regards to social performance: how do we drive and measure it when managing buildings? Who is responsible and accountable? What tools do we have to drive performance?

Fundamentally, as facility managers face ever greater demands from owners, tenants, and the broader community, and the advent of new technology, we debate whether we are at a crossroads or a cliff edge for the FM sector. Do we survive or thrive?

Moderated by Andrew Knight, Global Data & Tech Lead, RICS, the panel brings together a broad spectrum of views from FM practitioners to tech providers, to asset owners.