The workplace and beyond

Open-access content Tuesday 11th March 2014 — updated 1.53pm, Tuesday 5th May 2020

James Sutton, chief operating officer at BIFM, believes that FM sits at the heart of the workplace evolution.

11 March 2014

There are numerous conversations taking place in a variety of forums about the changing nature of the workplace.

It's something that came through strongly at the Workplace Futures conference in early February and a subject that isn't going to go away soon.

We believe that FM sits at the heart of this evolution, but if we are going to begin to demonstrate our true value to organisations and wider society, we need to be sure that we are involved in the broader conversations that take place outside of our profession. And we need to follow this up with tangible evidence demonstrating FM's impact.

This is something that we were keen to reflect when we launched our updated strategy last October. If we are going to position FM as being essential for business, economic and social prosperity, then we need to be involved in broader conversations rather than talking to ourselves.

At BIFM we are keen to demonstrate that FM touches so much in everyone's daily lives and therefore has a huge influence on the wider world. It is when you take a step back and assess the environment in which we all live our lives that you realise how far-reaching and important our profession is. But it is not FMs we need to convince of this impact.

At BIFM we want to support the profession in the broader conversations that are taking place within industry. To highlight the impact FM has on a company's productivity, efficiency, risk management, employee engagement, customer experience and how it represents its brand inside and out.

Nowhere will this be more evident than at our ThinkFM conference on the 13 May 2014. In the past we have focused on bringing the leading thinkers in our industry together to talk about best practice and latest trends in FM. But this year we are taking a slight change of direction and have worked hard with our headline sponsors, Workplace Law, to bring you a cross-section of people from different sectors, specialisms and backgrounds so that we can view FM from a number of different perspectives.

We'll hear from those who can discuss FM's impact on people management, finance, energy, diversity, inclusion and social mobility. We'll discuss the future of our profession as the lines blur between different functions in an organisation and we'll still have a healthy dose of our peers talking about how they do what they do. ThinkFM will also play host to the premiere of our FM TV programme, created in association with ITN Productions.

It will be a day that not only helps us do our jobs better on a daily basis but also discusses, digests and celebrates the contribution our profession makes to the bigger picture.

I'm certainly looking forward to it and I hope to see as many of you as possible there on the day.