Your organization’s assets make up a large and costly financial investment. Now more than ever, organizations are challenged to track and maintain assets, especially in this time of highly mobile workforces. A rapid shift has compounded this challenge to large portions of the traditional office workforce working from home (WFH). Many employees utilize corporate and institutional assets such as computers and office furniture as part of their WFH.
New questions are rising for corporate asset managers and facility teams, such as how to manage company assets outside of our facilities environments and maintain health and safety standards relating to items such as ergonomics when employees are not on-site? Before you can get a handle on your fixed and moveable asset inventories, you need to ask yourself if your organization has the tools to track them effectively? If you manage your assets proactively in your facilities, can you do the same for owned or leased assets in employee’s home offices? Maintaining your assets’ condition can extend their overall life and reduce the total cost of ownership while providing your employees with the resources they need in these challenging times regardless of whether or not they are working in the office or from home.
Below are three of the top question’s facilities teams should be asking about how to manage company assets in and out of the organization, as well as answers, which can help you maintain control of this critical function.
1.) Are you able to make a successful business case using available data to justify needed funding for your facilities and for your employees regardless of where they are working?
Ensuring that enough money is allocated during your yearly budget cycle to procure and properly maintain your assets, so they effectively serve your organizational needs throughout their expected life is critical for successful operations.
Asset Management Systems enable your organization to closely tie your budgeting process to your procurement and operations process. This includes having a clear understanding of headcount projections and employees in an office versus WFH ratios so that your organization can maintain the appropriate level of operational assets to keep your employees engaged, productive, and well.
Understanding your asset inventory’s true costs as can inform proper in-depth pre-planning for black swan events such as COVID-19. This can help you to be prepared to serve your organization, which can better shield you from these types of potential budget-busting events.
FM:Systems’ Asset Management Solution
2.) Are you able to account for the location, assignment, and condition of your fixed and movable facility assets?
An accurate inventory of fixed and moveable facilities assets, including status and condition, is necessary to plan for and manage effective assets that support your workforce. Without an accurate enterprise-wide view, facilities teams are likely to make critical mistakes, especially at times when access to up to date information matters the most. Effective capital planning, for instance, relies on a long-term understanding of the assets that are contained within your asset portfolio, what their current conditions are and if they are meeting the needs of the employees and infrastructure needed to support your organization.
Now more than ever, it is critical to understand the location of costly assets such as furniture, computers, and supporting equipment, which is often being deployed in rapidly evolving WFH environments. Asset Management Solutions can ensure that your organization can accurately track your critical assets, such as IT equipment and furniture, at all times.
3.) Are you able to ensure that assets that are placed in service for use by your organization adhere to internal standards that ensure consistent quality, cost, and safety standards are met?
A lack of true transparency and understanding of your organization’s asset needs, regardless of where employees are working, can lead to challenging situations. These issues can include impacted productivity and can even have a bearing on employee wellness. Without a clear understanding of your employee’s needs, they could use whatever they can find to help them accomplish their job. This could include them having less than ideal conditions to work in and could cause long-term impacts with health and wellness issuing arising such as repetitive stress injuries and emotional stress. An accurate asset management solution, which includes the ability to track and manage organization standards, could greatly assist in limiting these types of problems. This solution should have the ability to consider the very real chance that employees are not working within the traditional office environment.
Capabilities should include tracking asset location and selection standards that ensure that WFH employees have the proper approved equipment to help them to perform their roles effectively regardless of where they are working.
