The 2022 CMM In-House/Facility Management Benchmarking Survey Report, brought to you by Cleancode, offers a snapshot of how the second year of the global pandemic affected facility managers (FMs) and in-house service providers, how they’ve adapted, and what trends they’ll see for the rest of 2022.
For the second year, in addition to the usual questions about operating budgets and labor, we asked FMs questions about how the coronavirus pandemic has affected them, such as how has staffing changed, if they purchased more disinfecting products, have they increased cleaning frequency of high-touch surfaces, and what types of health and safety measures have they implemented in their facilities as a result.
This year, we also asked about how the pandemic and employment trends have impacted the occupancy levels of the buildings they service as workers returned to offices and students returned to schools and campuses.
Here are some snapshots of the responses we received:
Facilities are mostly occupied—About 44% of respondents said their facilities are 100% occupied while 37% said they were 70 to 99% occupied. People leaving their jobs during the pandemic looks to have affected building occupancy—28% of respondents report a decline in building occupancy due to the “Great Resignation.”
Staffing levels are improving—The good news is more than two-thirds (70%) of respondents said staffing has remained the same or increased in 2022, compared to only 54% in 2021. Only 17% had to reduce or eliminate staff, and 13% reduced or furloughed staff with plans to bring workers back.
Budgets are better—Overall, 2022 operating budgets have improved since 2021. Last year, 71% of respondents reported either a flat or decreased budget, but that number fell to 48% this year. In fact, the number of respondents who report their 2022 operating budget has increased doubled from 20% in 2021 to 41%.
Disinfection purchases are steady—The largest group of respondents (38%) said their disinfection product purchases increased 1-20%, slightly up from last year (34%). Slightly more than half (55%) expect to purchase the same amount of disinfection products in 2022, while 14% expect to purchase more. Electrostatic sprayers, which are commonly used to apply disinfectants, are again the top choice of new technology that FMs report they will adopt in the next 12 months.
Health and safety are the top concern—Even before the pandemic, “health and safety” ranked highest when FMs were asked to rate the most important issues affecting their operations. This year, 80% of respondents said health and safety was important “to a large extent.” Improving facility image, improving productivity/efficiencies, training and education of staff, and security rounded out the top five most important concerns.
Thanks to all who participated in this year’s survey. With your input we were able to conduct this annual checkup on the facility management sector of the cleaning industry and report how real-world facilities across the country are meeting today’s challenges and moving ahead.
This year’s survey is sponsored by Cleancode.
