Facility Manager Skills To Look For In Your Next Hire
By: Mike Bender, VP of Recruiting & CO-Founder
Facility manager, facility safety manager, facility systems manager — regardless of how your company designates the job title, these managers play an integral role in ensuring the smooth operation of buildings and facilities.
As the industry has evolved, so have the expectations for the talent fulfilling these roles. Discover the essential facility manager skills hiring managers should seek in candidates in today’s business landscape.
Facility Manager Functions and Responsibilities
Facilitation is at the heart of what facility managers do — hence the job title. While their full job description is expansive, the functions of a facility manager can be categorized into 4 core responsibilities:
- Building Operations and Maintenance: overseeing building and technology inspections, maintenance, and repairs to keep the facility clean and safe.
- Project & Team Management: defining project scopes and timelines, and delegating and overseeing the work of employees, external contractors, and/or service providers.
- Safety & Security: staying knowledgeable on compliance, industry standards, and building codes; developing emergency response plans; and overseeing the safety of all occupants and equipment.
- Financing & Budgeting: developing budgets, controlling costs, and managing the purchase of supplies and equipment.
As a whole, it’s the facility manager’s responsibility to make business processes easier and workflow more efficient.
10 Facility Manager Skills
The breadth of their day-to-day job functions requires facility managers to have diverse technical and interpersonal skills.
Guided by the proven experience of our facilities management recruiting division, here are 10 key facility manager skills that hiring managers should look for in candidates hoping to achieve long-term success in their next hire:
1. Technical & Operational Knowledge
While facility managers might not be operating the building’s equipment or machinery daily, it’s essential they understand how the technology works. They should have the skills to operate the equipment for routine maintenance and the expertise to troubleshoot issues when they occur.
Ultimately, it’s this technical knowledge that helps facility managers keep the machinery, and the employees operating it, safe under their supervision.
2. Knowledge of Industry Compliance
Hand-in-hand with operational knowledge, facility managers must have a solid understanding of relevant state or federal legislation that impacts the industry. As the controllers of safety and risk management, they should be up to date on standards relating to employee health and safety, environmental regulations, workforce labor codes, and building codes.
This facilities management skill is two-fold; it’s not enough for facility managers to stay informed about these regulations, but they must also be actively pushing for compliance. Failure to operate within compliance can damage your reputation, workflow, and your wallet.
3. Project Management
In addition to compliance, facility managers must be skilled in all aspects of project management. They’ll define the scope and timelines, and monitor the progress of multiple projects simultaneously to see that each is completed.
They’ll also be tasked with assigning teams and, if needed, coordinating with outside contractors for each project. When internal and external teams are sharing the workload, it’s important that facility managers can spot any lags in production that could delay timelines, so a strong attention to detail is key.
4. Budgeting & Cost Controlling
Financial literacy and efficiency are skills required for facility managers. In some cases, they’re responsible for determining the budgets, but in any case, it’s their job to monitor the division’s expenses and ensure resources are allocated appropriately between projects and teams.
When needed, they’ll implement cost controls and empower the facility team to meet financial efficiency goals, especially when budgets are tight.
5. Understanding of Evolving Trends
Having a pulse on the industry’s evolving tools and technological advancements is probably one of the most underrated facility manager skills. From AI to other smart building systems, these technologies are starting to reshape the ways the industry.
Good facility managers should stay educated on emerging software that can help streamline operations, cut costs, and make their employees’ jobs easier.
6. Relationship Management
Speaking of making employees’ jobs easier, part of the managers’ job description is staying connected with team members. A good facility manager will be a trusted advisor to team members, guiding them when they need extra support, but trusting them to do their jobs without micromanaging.
It can be hard for any manager to lead a team of differing personalities. But the ability to motivate and unite a team of workers to achieve a shared goal is a powerful facility manager skill that should be high on the priority list for hiring managers.
7. Communication
An efficient facility can’t operate without clear communication. As the relationship and project managers, facility managers must have unwavering communication skills. Open communication between all parties ensures that expectations are defined and goals are aligned.
8. Problem-Solving & Agility
As much as we try to refine processes to avoid missteps, occasional problems will inevitably occur. Equipment failure, supply chain distribution delays, and limited bandwidth are all unexpected issues that can impact operations and lead to escalating costs.
When these delays happen, facility managers should have a natural intuition to jump into problem-solving mode to reallocate budgets and resources, keep stakeholders informed, and determine the next-best course of action.
9. Flexibility
In our post-pandemic world, flexibility in the workplace has become an increasingly important retention strategy for companies. But that flexibility can be hard to come by in labor-intensive industries like manufacturing and facilities.
Technological advancements are helping open new doors for manufacturing facilities to operate using a hybrid model. Today, flexibility is a facility manager skill that shouldn’t be overlooked. If they can lead with empathy, they could be the catalyst for change that helps boost your employee retention, so you don’t lose valuable employees.
10. Humility
The final, potentially unexpected, skill hiring managers should look for in a facility manager is humility. Everyone wants to feel appreciated and recognized for a job well done. The reality many facility managers must face is that praise isn’t always given.
In fact, their indication of a successful project could be no feedback at all because they’re “doing well what so many others have no idea is even being done at all.”
Get Facility Hiring Support
Sourcing facility managers with the right blend of technical and soft skills is no easy feat. If you’re struggling to find talent, AllSearch Recruiting’s facility management recruiters are here to help. Led by Joel Ogle’s 2 decades of experience in executive recruiting, we’ve earned our spot among the top facilities management and property management recruiting firms in the US.
Contact Joel and his specialized recruiting headhunters, who are deeply rooted in the industry, to find success in your next hire.
Joel Ogle, Executive Recruiter