Improving Employee Productivity: Accessibility
In the post about improving employee productivity seven key factors were proposed for increasing employee productivity (Cummings, Donovan, et al., 3rd ed. Toronto. McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 2006). In this series we extrapolate these 7 key factors to the Workplace Domain. This week key factor Accessibility will be discussed.
Accessibility
If Facility Managers want to improve the productivity of employees the accessibility of services plays a in addition to the availability of services an important role. Tradionally, Facilties Services were accessible to those individuals who knew the Facilties Management Professionals or when calling a centralized service desk. Since the Facility Management Professionals and service desk(s) are limited available so are their services.
As a result every employee looses on average 6 minutes per day as it is not clear where a particular service should be requested or whenever it needs to be requested from whom. Although this seems not much it is.
Example:
Company X has 20.000 employees
They work on average 48 weeks per year
They cost on average $35 per hour
By losing a 30 minutes per week Company X looses: 20.000 x (48 x 30/60) x $35 = $ 16.800.000 per year!!
Besides the financial loss mobility issues play an important role The rapid development of webbased - and mobile technologies thrives the workforce to become more virtual and spending less time inside the office building. Blackberrys, PDA’s and other mobile devices are evolving within the bounderies of the organization impacting the service delivery / accessibility methodology.
Modern Facility Managers increasingly embrace mobile / webbased accessibility challanges as part of their service portfolio. Enhancing the accessibility of services throughout the organization seems to gain momentum in the Facilties Management arena.
Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS) can support Facilties Managers to improve the accessibility of Facility Management products and services by:
- Allowing easy single-point access through the local intranet
- Supplying multiple technological interfaces (web/mobile) for end-users with separate organizational roles (e.g. intranet access for Finance Employees to request services, a mobile device (Blackberry, or Smartphone), for the technical maintenance work force to pickup and dispatch maintenance work orders)
- Enabling access for the (visually) impaired / disabled by providing different screen layouts adaptable to users’ requirements.
By improving the accessibility of products and services to employees with different organizational roles and characteristics Facility Managers will not only decrease the time loss in requesting products and services but simultaneously increase the quality of service as the services are tailored to the employees requirements.
Next issue: Reliability
