Compliance is king when managing multiple facilities. It can ensure your business is protected and ready for the unexpected, while also creating a consistent customer experience and maintaining the most effective workforce. Establishing consistent compliance measures across every facility can help identify weak points, scope of work issues and budget shortfalls while rewarding good performance.
But ensuring everyone at every facility is using the same best practices to manage the brand and protect your business is difficult. One big part of managing risk and brand compliance is knowing your service providers and what their qualifications are.
Risk management can take many forms, starting with protecting company assets. Protecting and managing your facility and all of the related assets can save a lot of money.
One way to minimize loss is to rely on the most qualified service providers to fix problems when they arise. Adequately insured providers that know your business and their craft can help you address problems soon after they arise, solve the problem the most appropriate way and avoid headaches, legal issues and financial losses that can come from working with a service provider that doesn’t have enough (or any) insurance coverage.
Here are some examples of risk management and brand compliance in action.
Preventing loss with compliance
Damage to your assets is the elephant in every business’s room. Facility managers can put standards in place to protect those assets, but there’s no way to prevent all possible mishaps.
Consider this example: One company noticed a severe spike in water use—a telltale sign of a water leak. It was important to have a plumber on-site as soon as possible to diagnose the problem and repair it. A plumber was quickly dispatched, but while operating an excavator they damaged the main water line, causing additional flooding on the site.
Fortunately, the service provider’s insurance was confirmed before they were assigned to the job, and staff worked with the plumber to complete a claim and have the property restored quickly and without incident. Had the service provider not had insurance, the company could’ve faced a steep loss.
If the service provider hadn’t been adequately insured, the company would have been forced to spend even more time and money resolving plumbing issues and repairing the water line.
Maintaining customer trust with a well-maintained and secure facility
Customers notice even the tiniest of details when they enter your building. Companies become known for the brand they present, whether it’s in the form of good customer service, décor or product.
Take the example of a financial institution. Security is paramount, and customers must have a feeling of confidence in the institution’s security measures, even as it extends to third party service providers. NEST helped one well-known bank with dozens of branches establish a system of practices to manage risk and give customers peace of mind.
Together with an FM team, the bank implemented a security protocol where key codes were created for each service provider with access to the branchbuildings. Service providers were educated on the individual codes tied to their card, and the importance of not sharing those access codes. The bank and its FM team regularly rotated key codes to maximize security and kept up-to-date background checks on-file in order for any service providers to begin their shift for added protection.
Without this system, it would have been difficult for the bank to keep track of who entered the building to maintain the facility each night, increasing risk and putting the brand in danger.
Frequently reviewing compliance measures and educating employees and service providers leaves no unanswered questions or unfinished jobs—and can ensure your brand remains untarnished.
When engaging an FM partner, it’s vital to make sure they understand the importance of brand compliance and risk management specific to your business. Work closely with them to clearly define the risks and develop protocols for managing them in your contract so that together, you can monitor and protect your brand.
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