Retaining quality staff and maintaining morale in facilities management can be challenging when most employees are spread out geographically and spend most of their working lives within another company.
When Rollright was founded in 2002, we had a small team of 34 employees and found that building a close-knit relationship between the leadership team and the service line staff was a natural product of our small size. Almost ten year’s later we have experienced year on year growth and now employ over 250 members of staff located at sites throughout the UK.
We are still dedicated to ensuring communication between the leadership team and service staff remains accessible, open and encouraged which is why we have developed our annual programme of campfire meetings.
This month marks the start of the 2011 campfires and Pinder, Clive, Charlie and Mark will be travelling to all our sites throughout the UK.
What are campfire meetings?
Campfire meetings are held in groups, chaired by a director and exclude direct line managers
- Campfire meetings are chaired by a director who is not involved in that part of the business
- Every employee attends
- The staff attending set the agenda
- Everything said in the meetings is confidential
Why are campfire meetings important?
- Staff have a chance to have an open discussion without their line manage present
- Helps foster a sense of company pride, something that can be difficult to obtain when staff spend their time on another company’s premises
- Senior management can learn and resolve issues they wouldn’t ordinarily hear about
- Gaining feedback from a group reassures staff that it is not a personal assessment of their performance and encourages honest communication
Tell a graduate about FM
Four years ago, I won a placement with Rollright Facilities Ltd. via the prestigious Shell STEP scheme. I was 21, hungry for re
al work experience and completely unfamiliar with the world of facilities management. Fast forward to 2011 and I am responsible for five of Rollright’s strategic accounts covering around fifty staff with a budget of £5 million to manage. The journey from internship to manager has been exciting, rewarding and of course, hectic. But perhaps most importantly, it was a journey that would be impossible to achieve in a less dynamic industry.
As today is World FM Day and June is the month final year students embark upon searching for work in a tough market, I would urge graduates everywhere to consider a career in Facilities Management. Unfortunately, despite FM being a multi-billion dollar industry, we are still under the radar when it comes to graduate recruitment. So do your bit for FM and tell a student about our industry!