POSITIVE ABOUT PERIODS
Better support for people with periods boosts inclusivity
PFI HANDBACK HANDBOOK
How both the public sector client and service provider can win
ON SUSTAINABILITY’S WAVELENGTH
The factors influencing major project decisions in 2025
Addressing the unavoidable demands of this critical activity may involve looking at it through a different lens
Excellent pest control begins with first-class customer service, delivered by highly trained professionals. We use all the latest pest control techniques and technology, keeping the use of chemicals to a minimum.
Whether you have problems with pest birds, rodents, cockroaches, wasps, bedbugs or ants, for effective and discreet pest control or pest management services, call Cleankill.
"Excellent response and service from this company and my issue was resolved from first contact to completed job within 24 hours!"
Shirley via Trustpilot
06 All eyes on the year ahead Sector experts share their predictions for 2025
10 Doing it for the youth Tentative praise for government’s work proposals for young people
12 Women’s health declines Roughly 1.5 million women are off work owing to ill health
16 All in Our ‘all things inclusivity’ page, inspired by activity in the sector
20-25 Compliance in focus
49 Safety first
Addressing the many challenges involved in conducting and demonstrating compliance
26-29 Handback handbook
The PFI handover needs to be smooth for FM service providers and public sector clients alike
30-34 Sustainability challenges Will organisations and WFM departments have the bandwidth to address sustainability in 2025?
36-39 All you need is light Workplace lighting needs to balance energy management with end-users’ wellbeing
42 Perspectives
Four FM professionals seek to influence your insight agenda
How to mitigate the fire risks of stored lithium-ion batteries
51 Eyes on the prize
FM software improves visibility for multisite catering through AI and automation
52 Tick, tock, light
Circadian lighting systems replicate natural light to entrain our internal clocks
53 Heating up
EPC updates signal to businesses to reconsider heating strategies
55 Infinite loop
Lead your team to success with regular, intentional and thoughtful feedback
57 Positive about periods
Support those who have periods to make workplaces more inclusive
63 Occupiers seek to sustain CRE growth in evolving market
Grade A office space leasing is amongst upward indicators suggesting a positive start to the year despite occupier uncertainty 12 36 30
46 A bit about you Behind the jobs of Becky Clifton and Mark Grover
My problem with the C-word Too often, we label workplace stakeholders as “customers” or “clients.” But what if we focused on “consumers” – the employees who ultimately use these spaces? asks Audiem’s co-founder Chris Moriarty.
b.link/FacilitateA25-007
Designing for every mind
At a recent workplace design summit in Amsterdam, I was introduced to how neurodiversity – and it has transformed how I see workplace inclusivity, writes Tony Hormiz of EBA CLEARING.
b.link/FacilitateA25-008
Food is the social glue that binds As hospitality providers, our role is not just about offering exceptional food and drink, it’s also about creating experiences that address clients’ deeper goals and aspirations, says Peter Champain, growth director at Restaurant Associates.
b.link/FacilitateA25-009
My predictions for flexible working By 2025, the flexible workspace industry is expected to have an even greater impact on how we work, including serviced offices and coworking spaces becoming a larger part of the mix, says Jane Sartin, executive director of Flexible Space Association.
b.link/FacilitateA25-010
Women are suffering
The number of young women being discriminated against at work is on the rise, according to research from the Young Women’s Trust charity.
b.link/FacilitateA25-011
Gen Z is burning out Generation Z workers want more focus on “personal wellbeing, inclusivity, and achieving a healthy balance between work and life.
b.link/FacilitateA25-012
ISG collapse drives up costs
Tender prices increased by an average of 0.8% between Q3 and Q4 of 2024 in the wake of ISG’s demise, according to data from the Building Cost Information Service.
b.link/FacilitateA25-013
SMEs need support
The number of young people taking on apprenticeships is decreasing, with SMEs experiencing the sharpest drop, research from the Social Market Foundation reveals.
b.link/FacilitateA25-014
Facilitate, incorporating FM World, is the publication of IWFM, the professional body for workplace and facilities management. For information on membership, qualifications and training contact us:
Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management
Suite 15, Thremhall Park, Start Hill, Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, CM22 7WE, UK
+44 (0)1279 712 620 • admin@iwfm.org.uk • www.iwfm.org.uk
Redactive Publishing Ltd
Fora, 9 Dallington Street London EC1V 0LN www.facilitatemagazine.com
EDITOR Martin Read 020 7880 7664 martin.read@facilitatemagazine.com
DEPUTY EDITOR Bradford Keen 020 7880 7615 bradford.keen@facilitatemagazine.com
NEWS EDITOR Herpreet Kaur Grewal 020 7880 8544 newsdesk@facilitatemagazine.com
SUB-EDITOR Deborah Shrewsbury 020 7880 6223 deborah.shrewsbury@redactive.co.uk
SENIOR DESIGNER Joe McAllister 020 7880 2747 joe.mcallister@redactive.co.uk
PICTURE EDITOR Akin Falope 020 7324 2713 akin.falope@redactive.co.uk
CONTENT ASSISTANT Prithvi Pandya 020 7880 6229 prithvi.pandya@redactive.co.uk
SALES — DISPLAY, DIGITAL, EVENTS 020 7880 6206 display@facilitatemagazine.com
SALES — RECRUITMENT 020 7880 6212 recruitment@facilitatemagazine.com
PRODUCTION MANAGER Aysha Miah-Edwards 020 7880 6241 aysha.miah@redactive.co.uk
PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Joanna Marsh 020 7880 8542 joanna.marsh@redactive.co.uk
Subscriptions
IWFM members with Facilitate subscription or delivery queries should call the IWFM’s membership department on +44 (0)1279 712650.
Facilitate is sent to all members of the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management and is available on subscription to non-members. Annual subscription rates are UK £110, Europe £120 and rest of world £130.
To subscribe call 01580 883844 or email subs@redactive. co.uk – alternatively, you can subscribe online at www.facilitatemagazine.com/about-us/subscribe/
Editorial Advisory Board
Simon Ball, market director, EQUANS UK & Ireland
Rob Greenfield, regional health & safety consultant, Croner
Ian Jones, director of workplace services and estates, ITV
Kate Smith, executive director, consulting, CBRE UK
Liz Kentish, managing director, Kentish and Co.
Simone Fenton-Jarvis, group director of workplace consultancy and transformation, VPOD Smart Solutions
Facilitate is the magazine and online news content resource of the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management (IWFM). We inform members and others about the latest thinking around workplace and facilities management. In 2019, we were judged Best Magazine (1032,000 members)
described as ‘a stellar example of how a digital transition driven by deep understanding of the audience’s needs can future fit a professional body’s content strategy. At the same time opening commercial opportunities for new revenue streams’ Got a story? email editorial @ facilitatemagazine.com FACILITATE
at the Association Excellence Awards, the body which assesses the media brands of trade bodies, membership organisations and associations. In 2023, Facilitate and IWFM were judged to have conducted the best association digital transformation at the same awards, the work
Printed by Warners
Average net circulation
10,977 (July 2022 to June 2023)
Facilitate (Print) ISSN 2752-5171
Recycle your magazine’s plastic wrap – check your local LDPE facilities to find out how.
2025 not only offers workplace and facilities managers (WFM) the chance to grow and progress, but also to reflect on the decade’s midpoint and consider the next few years ahead.
Sustainability, digital transformation, changing ways of working, strengthening recruitment and retention: these trends show no signs of abating and are at the top of IWFM’s new year agenda.
Expect impactful initiatives for CPD, such as research and best practice guidance – starting with our leading Market Outlook Survey, and new training courses with IWFM Academy.
IWFM For Organisations will support workplaces like yours to deliver their ambitions with first-class WFM.
We will engage more of the community through the Experiential Route to CIWFM and growing networks such as our Veterans in FM and the Strategic Leaders Forum. We look forward to backing the Deborah Rowland Scholarship as it enters its second year.
New and updated courses, including bitesize learning, will demonstrate our focus on skills, with upskilling, reskilling and continuous learning key to enhancing our community.
It is the community – from newcomers to the C-suite – that we stand up for. Increasingly it will be WFM’s responsibility to drive positive organisational, sectoral and global change in key areas. We saw how our sector led on and responded to Brexit, Covid-19 and the rise of automation in recent times, and we recognise that change remains the only constant.
Our support is unwavering. With IWFM, maximise your potential and get to grips with opportunities and challenges. I wish you the very best for the year ahead.
LINDA HAUSMANIS is CEO of the IWFM
MARTIN READ
The compliance conundrum.’ It’s such a good headline that you’re likely to have seen it many times in the past to headline an article about this biggest of facilities management challenges.
Sure, it has a certain, ahem, alliterative allure – but it’s what the headline conveys that remains so salient. Compliance is indeed a conundrum, a puzzle, a tricky box of tricks, a difficult topic. And yet in theory it’s so simple too: are you, are you not, in a state of compliance? Yes or no?
Alistair Scott of IEM makes a key point in our feature, I suspect. Scott thinks that FMs typically tend to focus more on helping others and are thus less likely to have the kind of process-driven mindsets that compliance strategy demands. Compliance requires setting aside time, disseminating process knowledge to others - things that are “absolutely converse to process delivery, paperwork and a compliance mindset.”
Well, 2025 could and should be the year in which the acceptance of this status quo is taken on. Because this is where compliance overlaps with sustainability, another feature theme for us this issue, in significant ways. Both are increasingly demanding wider organisational input if said organisation is to demonstrate to the market for its goods or services that it can be reliably traded with. Investors and customers alike are gaining access to performance metrics up and down organisations’ supply chains that they can no longer ignore. What’s more, this year should see us further down the road to more compliance interdependence between organisations.
Compliance is indeed a conundrum, a puzzle, a tricky box of tricks
Our feature breaks down the issue of compliance into people and process issues, but it’s market incentives that really make c-suites sit up and take notice. What does this mean for the WFM sector? Arguably the need for greater
professionalisation, but with it the benefit of a wider acceptance and acknowledgment of what WFM has always done on organisations’ behalf.
There may be multiple components to the compliance conundrum, but it’s the biggest issue of them all, economic self-interest, that’s likely to see that conundrum solved.
READ is the editor of Facilitate magazine