The intent of this article is to guide Facilities Management (FM) leaders on charting direction for your FM team in responding to the current pandemic and in preparation for the future challenges, in the next normal workplace.

The business environment, consumers, and legal requirements have changed due to COVID-19. Thus, organisations must change in order to stay relevant and competitive. As such, the practice of facilities management must keep pace and support the organisational change. FM leaders must be able to identify, respond and lead with agility to organisational change and the unexpected challenges impacting the practice of FM.

For FM leaders to successfully lead their team through this pandemic and to prepare for future next normal workplace, FM leaders need to:

• Help the members to understand the organisational change and articulate the shift in the organisation’s strategic objectives;
• Identify and mitigate risks;
• Identify opportunities, to increase productivity, improve quality and implement innovation that deliver competitive advantage to the organisation;
• Build trust among team members and the leader be approachable and accessible;
• Hold accountability in each team member and the leader for their contribution toward the Key Results;
• Equip team members with knowledge and skills to face the challenges in their works.

Most FMs, during this time of COVID-19, are currently focusing on the safe measures management, on social distancing, contact tracing and facilities “fire-fighting”. What do you and your team member be possibly be thinking and feeling right now? Are you and your team feeling:

• Frustrated over being under staff, due to the need to work from home, being quarantine, not able to cross boundary, due to compliance with the Local legal requirements?
• Curious whether the organisation can tide through this pandemic?
• Worried about the job security?

The uncertainty brought on by COVID-19 requires FM leaders to recognise the team members’ sentiment, and to deliver facilities services that matter to the organisation.

Generally, this COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the People, Business, and FM Operations. To tide through this pandemic and crisis situations, there is a need for FM leadership to adopt and implement agile change management approach, to support their organisation-recovery strategies, to transit the workplace to the required future state and to enable the people to adapt to the new working environment, in supporting and enabling their organisations to remain relevant and competitive.

FM leaders need to adopt and implement an agile performance management approach in this uncertain time. The traditional goals setting approach may no longer be effective or relevant. Having research through the wide and varied approach of goals setting and performance management approach to find that the OKRs, Objectives and Key Results, to be most relevant and effective to be adopted and contextualised for the practice of FM.

The OKRs, Objectives and Key Results, approach was originated from the Silicon Valley, and proven to be effective by organisations such as Intel, Google, LinkedIn, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung and many others dynamic and competitive organisations.

OKRs can be adopted as a performance management tool, in establishing clarity, alignment with the organisation’s strategy shift and breaking down the organisation’s objectives into achievable and time-based actions Key Results. OKRs can be adopted by FM to focus on how the team members are performing, in relative to the expectations set for their respective positions. It focuses on the results and how a team member progress and perform in their jobs.

In developing and implementing OKRs for FM, every member in the FM team has a manageable number of clearly defined objectives which help them in prioritising their efforts and results, to ensure team members to work together, focusing their efforts to make measurable contribution to the organisation. The OKRs practice weekly and quarterly review of Key Results progress and development of new or alteration to the current Objectives and Key Results.

In brief, the adopting OKRs in FM helps to promote continual anticipatory planning, review of progress and providing help to enable team members to overcome their problems.

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