Communicating "Upwards"

A key part of a facilities manager’s job is communicating important information to upper levels of management. These communications provide an opportunity to demonstrate the connection between the work of the facilities team and the strategic goals of the organisation.

Facilities management is imperative to the success of organisations. Strategic goals may vary between organisations, but all organisations require safe, functional spaces in which to operate.

Business continuity, and the achievement of those strategic goals is often dependent on the facilities team identifying and managing risks within the business. Facilities managers need to be able to communicate effectively with decision makers about identified risks, and make the case for the resources required to manage these risks.

What can go wrong?

Concerns go unheard

Facilities managers excel at day-to-day problem solving and have a detailed understanding of the operations of the facilities under their care. This equips facilities managers with a lot of context around trends and abnormalities in facilities data.

When communicating with management, facilities managers can sometimes tend to provide an overwhelming amount of detail, impairing the effectiveness of the communication.

Ineffective communications to management can result in resource requests being denied, or in some cases, problems being neglected due to a lack of understanding. If this continues over time, it can leave the facilities team feeling frustrated and unappreciated, and the organisation exposed to excessive risk.

Reports aren't useful

When communicating upwards, it is important to consider that these stakeholders likely receive a multitude of communications from various parts of the business. To get the attention you need, ensure you connect the information to the strategic goals of the organisation.  

Stakeholders in managerial positions are often looking for a big picture, rather than detailed information. Attaining this kind of information relies upon information being available to the facilities team in a format that can be analysed effectively.

For example, your stakeholders might not necessarily need a breakdown of cost for every job a trade has done. They would likely be more interested in the total cost of outsourced trade jobs, vs the cost of hiring that trade in-house.  

This is a challenge for teams relying on spreadsheets to store and access data. Identifying trends over time for example, would require sourcing information from multiple spreadsheets, collating them, and translating to a graphical format.

Improving communications with management

Consider the strategic perspective

To improve the level of information included in communications up the chain, consider the strategic impact of the information you’re sharing.

The work facilities teams do every day helps to manage risk, and keeps the organisation open for business. These factors mean that there is almost always a connection to be found between that work, and the strategic goals of the organisation.

Sometimes it is easier to start by thinking about the potential impacts of inaction when looking for these connections. For example, most businesses need some sort of licence to operate, and will undergo periodic audits.

If the organisation is unable to prove that critical systems compliance requirements have been met, the likelihood of a failed audit, and subsequent shutdown, is increased. In some industries, an inability to produce this proof could result in a loss of funding from governing bodies.

Get your data right

Improving the accuracy and accessibility of the information you are communicating to management starts with good data practices. Think about how easy it is to collate and analyse data to identify trends.

When presenting the information to stakeholders, consider the context those stakeholders are likely to have. While you might be dealing directly with day-to-day operations, they’re less likely to be “in the weeds”.

These communications should allow stakeholders to quickly understand key concepts. By using visual aids such as graphs, you can provide information in context. Leveraging this format makes it easy for stakeholders to understand the information without being involved in the day-to-day.

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