Retaining Employees and Your Building’s Facility Management Knowledge

Facility management is demanding work. Employee turnover can only make it harder. Luckily, with these practices, you can retain critical information about your building to make necessary transitions easier than ever.

Establish Key Processes

Losing a rockstar worker can be a confusing time for your team. Ease the transition by building, creating, and implementing detailed process documentation for each aspect of your business.

Proper process documentation improves efficiency and empowers any employee to perform their job to the best of their abilities. Here are 4 simple steps to get started:

1. First, have a worker perform a common task and document each step.

2. Then, review the process as if you did not know any other information about it and identify the gaps.

3. After you have one process documented, make a list of every process that would be beneficial. Examples are: how to order cleaning products and what brand is traditionally used; changing an HVAC filter; or even a business managerial process like annual taxes and payroll. If your facility has one point of contact at a facility management company, it should be documented how to contact them. You can even get a name of those you regularly chat with!

4. Once you have finished documenting all processes, create a binder or online library for both outsourced and in-house employees to easily view during their onboarding and training time.

Create Necessary Policies

While process documentation provides detailed step-by-step instructions for routine tasks, policy documentation builds the framework behind a process and how it correlates to overall business values and goals.

Policies are general, broad statements. Procedures are incredibly detailed and are performed day to day. They also can change frequently. Both are critical to business growth and long-term success.

Responsibly Store Your Documentation

After you spend time documenting procedures and policies, make sure they are safely stored to find them when you need them most.

If you haven’t already, this is also a great time to ensure you have digital versions (saved to the cloud, not just a device) of your employee records and tax documents. These steps may seem tedious but are critical to effectively and efficiently running your business.

Discover the OpenWorks Difference

OpenWorks has been defining and documenting policies and procedures for 40 years. With unparalleled service to thousands of facilities across North America thanks to 700 successful franchise owners across the nation, OpenWorks understands and implements specific needs at individual sites.

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