Office Maintenance: How And Why To Outsource
We work for almost a third of our lives. Office maintenance and office maintenance outsourcing is a key component of making the workplace more comfortable and, as a result, more productive, whether it is a large open area with break rooms and conference rooms or a collection of tiny cubicles. In other words, effective office maintenance outsourcing management is crucial for the long-term success of a company.
Join us as we discuss what office upkeep includes and present the best strategies for success, and office maintenance outsourcing.
- The Scope Of Office Maintenance Services
- The scope of office maintenance outsourcing
- How office maintenance outsourcing impacts organisational success:
- Increased staff productivity
- Lower operational costs
- Better business reputation and brand image
- Should you outsource office maintenance or handle it in-house?
- Office Maintenance Outsourcing
- In-house office maintenance
- Managing basic office maintenance tasks in-house
- Understand your maintenance needs
- Create a preventive maintenance plan
- Support your maintenance efforts with a mobile CMMS
The Scope Of Office Maintenance Services
The scope of office maintenance outsourcing:
Over the years, facility management has seen significant change, going from a minor cost centre to one that is today seen as a crucial business enabler. Office management is a crucial service for managing a variety of office buildings and workplaces since it is a crucial component of facility management and building upkeep.
Nevertheless, the variety of used building systems and equipment as well as the size and complexity of the infrastructure can all affect the cost of office maintenance services.
The more frequent office maintenance outsourcing tasks that you may anticipate being carried out behind the scenes in the typical corporate workplace include the following:
- General cleaning/janitorial services
- Furniture inspection and repair
- Office equipment servicing and repair (photocopiers, printers, shredders, water coolers, etc.)
- HVAC inspection and maintenance
- IT equipment maintenance
- Firefighting systems inspection and maintenance
- Water treatment and supply services
- Security and physical access control
What impact, if any, would proper execution of the above tasks in an ideal scenario have on business operations? Next, let’s review that.
How office maintenance outsourcing impacts organisational success:
Office maintenance outsourcing affects three key ways, as well as multiple smaller ones. Here are the important ones.
1) Increased staff productivity
The productivity of employees is impacted by various little things. Poor lighting, a stuffy office, broken office equipment, a disorganised workspace—all of these things have a negative impact on productivity.
Employers may improve employee happiness, minimise absenteeism, and lessen fatigue by taking proactive measures to ensure a balanced interior temperature, lighting, and clutter-free workplaces.
People are free from unnecessary distractions in such a workplace to concentrate on the calibre of their work and how it contributes to organisational goals.
2) Lower operational costs
According to the Building Owners & Managers Association (BOMA) International’s 2018 benchmarking study, private office buildings in the US spend $2.15 per square foot (or $23.24 per square metre) on maintenance and repairs.
Organisations must stay away from three things in order to control maintenance running costs:
- Very costly contractors.
- Failure to perform preventative maintenance on equipment and infrastructure results in future wasteful costs.
- Excessive maintenance, which wastes labour, time, and replacement components.
Simply said, being able to measure and manage your office maintenance outsourcing expenditures is an essential skill for controlling operational costs.
3) Better business reputation and brand image
They say you only get one chance to make a first impression, so make it count. Imagine a client or business partner entering the office, tripping over a bucket that is meant to catch the AC leak’s drips, and then being forced to sit on a squeaky chair while wondering what the strange smell is.
We’re not sure what that conveys, but it most certainly doesn’t convey the idea that your company is organised and prepared to take on new challenges.
Should you outsource office maintenance or handle it in-house?
You’ll need to make a number of important decisions in your effort to guarantee that every office maintenance outsourcing task is completed accurately and on time. One of the key decisions is whether you’ll hire experts to handle your office maintenance outsourcing or try to do it yourself.
Remember that you will still need to collaborate with some contractors and service providers to handle specialised tasks like plumbing or electrical repair even if you have a small in-house team of maintenance specialists.
Office maintenance outsourcing or handling it in-house, both options have advantages as well as disadvantages.
Office Maintenance Outsourcing Pros:
- Improved delivery of maintenance services.
- A qualified FM company can help you increase your business and boost your market share and competitiveness.
- Access to specialised resources for office maintenance outsourcing and best practices.
- A rise in effectiveness.
- Focus more on your primary business.
- You are not required to consider personnel issues for maintenance.
Cons:
- Decrease in operational control.
- Increased danger of security breaches and problems with confidentiality.
- Errors made by the office maintenance outsourcing company may harm the client’s reputation.
- Can cost more than creating a small internal staff.
In-house office maintenance Pros:
- Maximum possible control over procedures and processes.
- A better understanding of your maintenance costs and your choices for reducing them.
- Equipment problems can be resolved more quickly.
- More information about the general condition of your infrastructure and equipment.
Cons:
- Building an internal team to handle a situation you are unfamiliar with takes time and effort, in relation to office maintenance outsourcing companies.
- Smaller businesses will simply not have enough work to support employing a facilities manager and maintenance workers on a full-time basis.
- If you intend to give some of the upkeep duties to your current staff, that may lead to a variety of organisational and productivity problems.
Managing basic office maintenance tasks in-house
The setup of a maintenance department takes
time. Planning ahead is still beneficial even though office maintenance is not
nearly as complex as industrial maintenance.
1) Understand your maintenance needs
Create an in-depth physical asset record that includes all of your workplace furniture and appliances if there isn’t one already. Using simple asset inventory management software, you may achieve this. This will make it simpler for you to keep track of the whereabouts of all of your inventory and equipment.
The next step is to determine your real maintenance requirements. Which of your equipment, in other terms, might benefit from preventative maintenance. Mark that equipment on the list you just created.
With regard to IT equipment, large organisations will have IT help. If you are only renting a floor or office space, the building owner will typically hire a team or a company to manage the property. This team or firm will be in charge of things like grounds maintenance as well as key building systems like elevators, plumbing, fire safety systems, and electrical work.
Usually, your business will need someone to focus on tasks like:
- Cleaning services and garbage removal
- HVAC upkeep (frequent inspections, filter changes, etc.)
- Periodic inspections of office furnishings, tools, and equipments (PAT testing)
- Assisting in the installation of new furniture or equipment
- Cleaning rugs and furniture
- Cleaning of internal and/or external windows
- Making little fixes around the office
It’s up to you whether you’ll accomplish it via maintenance contractors, a full- or part-time handyman, staff involvement, or all of the above.
In any situation, having a maintenance strategy is beneficial.
2) Create a preventive maintenance plan
A preventive maintenance strategy is in place to ensure important routine maintenance operations are completed on time. Since you are scheduling the work in advance, you should have plenty of time to set aside the tools, spare parts, and labour that will be required to complete those jobs.
We strongly advise reading our article on creating a preventive maintenance plan if you have a lot of preventative maintenance to schedule.
3) Support your maintenance efforts with a mobile CMMS
Work scheduling is merely a component of the jigsaw.
A team member needs the required tools, spare components, and safety gear in order to complete the work. In certain situations, that person might also require access to SOPs, operating instructions, maintenance checklists, and other documentation.
You will require some form of storage place for parts and tools. Your best option for documents is to keep them in CMMS software like Limble.
As a tool for managing your asset inventory, you can utilise Limble CMMS. You add the device to its database. You can add information about each piece of equipment, such as its make and model, manuals, troubleshooting guides, vendor information, the spare components it requires, etc.
Conclusion
On top of everything mentioned, as with every solution, Boardwalk India offers a robust reporting system so you get a detailed insight in the performance of your assets, the performance of your office maintenance outsourcing team, the performance of your maintenance vendors, as well as detailed cost breakdown for each of the above-mentioned categories of office maintenance outsourcing.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Ans. The office maintenance outsourcing is the practice of using external, contracted personnel to fulfill some or all of a facility’s industrial maintenance needs — both planned and unplanned.
Ans. Yes, office maintenance outsourcing is useful.