How to Manage Facility Closure without hampering Businesses.

As social distancing and work from home policies continue being enforced as a strategy to curb the spread of COVID-19, numerous facilities all across the world are being shut down for months at a time. Many organizations have now been forced to leverage remote work policies as a means of protecting staff members. But how do you manage facility closures without hampering businesses?

Create a Communication Strategy

The employees working from home may not be aware that there has been a lot of the deep cleaning and maintenance work that has been done throughout the facility. As such, it might be a good idea to create a communication strategy that will share with the building occupants what steps have been taken to ensure that the facility is virus and germ-free.

This is important as it will help employees understand that they are returning to a clean and fresh organization once the pandemic ends. One thing that you can do is to leverage the power of social media to show the employees some of the deep cleaning that is taking place as a way of boosting workers’ confidence in their workplaces.

Manage Your Suppliers

Facility managers will have to manage the relationship with suppliers and other stakeholders as a way of ensuring that business is not hampered. For instance, if your facility enjoys onsite food service, the facility manager should consider working with the foodservice director to create a plan of action that will see the proper disposal of perishable goods if a facility is closed suddenly.

In other cases, re-supply orders may not be canceled in due time, which means that facilities may be spending thousands of dollars on perishable food that they will have no way of utilizing or storing. Partnering with local food pantries and charity organizations ahead of time can prevent the problem from snowballing while helping to prevent valuable food from going to waste.

Supervise Deep Cleaning of the Facility

If an integrated facility management services is shut down due to a confirmed COVID-19 case, deep cleaning will be an important first step to take. But even without any confirmed cases, this pandemic period offers the perfect excuse for facility managers to ensure that their facilities are scrubbed down from top to bottom.

Beyond making sure that high touch surfaces are cleaned and disinfected daily, facility managers can also take the opportunity to start their spring maintenance ortackle any overdue items in the facility manager’s deferred maintenance list.