Facilities management and workplace management are two different categories, let us learn how these categories differ from each other.
a) Facilities Management:
In a broad spectrum “Facilities” is referred as buildings, complexes, or any other physical entities. A facility may be a building or a group of buildings, or structures, or space etc. Facilities management involves, managing these facilities where business activities are done and making plans according to the needs of those businesses to run the business effectively. These services are considered to be divided into ‘Soft services’, ‘Hard services’, ‘Staffing solutions’, and ‘Hospitality services’.
Soft services involve human skills such as housekeeping services, garden & lawn maintenance, pest control, waste management, vendor management, mail room services, and security services etc. Hard services are involvement of electrical and mechanical equipments with human skills. Hard services includes mechanical & electrical services, water management & plumbing, HVAC (Operation & Maintenance) and energy audits, etc.
The term facilities management is similar to properties management but often applied only to larger and/or commercial properties where the management and operations is more complex.
b) Workplace Management:
Advanced Workplace Management embraces much of the definition of Facilities Management, but is much more ‘user’ focused. Workplace management is about focusing on improving professional and team performance by providing workplaces that help people and organization perform better, whereas, facilities management focuses more about building and its infrastructure, furnishings cleaning and maintaining etc. Workplace management is about making sure that the workplace is designed and managed on an ongoing basis with a single focus to enable people and teams in doing their best work.
Workplace management embraces the idea that the workplace is summarized with the physical practices like space utilization, desks, layout of the office, etc; logical practices such as IT hardware and software, printers, booking systems, telephoning services like reception, cleaning, catering, etc and other practices like time, place, way, etc adopted by staff. It also recognizes that the workplace is only the part of ‘the office’.
Conclusion:
Workplace management and facilities management differ from each other. Facilities management focuses more about building and its infrastructure, furnishings, cleaning and maintaining, etc. Whereas, Workplace management is focused on the operational and the strategic aspects i.e., making sure that the workplace is evolved to meet the needs of the volatile business world our clients live in.