Luckily, some companies are finding success easing their facilities management burdens by allowing employees to work from home. According to Business Management Daily, the Council of Better Business Bureaus is a shining example of this practice – the organization's employees now spend 30 percent of their working hours at home, and that figure is expected to rise to 50 percent within two years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this is an ongoing trend across America – as 23 percent of workers "did some or all of their work at home" in 2012.

The effects of this trend have been tremendous. The 114-employee nonprofit was able to move out of the building it had used since the 1980s and transition into a new one that's half the size. Rather than supply each worker with a desk, computer and phone, the BBB group instead allowed workers the flexibility to use their own.

Working from home isn't without its drawbacks – there are skeptics who consider remote workers less efficient, notably including Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. But for facilities managers, work-from-home policies can work wonders for easing the burden of managing a workforce.

iOffice is proud to announce that this year they are sponsoring two divisions of the conference, the Social Media Lounge and the World Workplace Mobile App.  The Social Media Lounge will be a designated area inside the convention center intended to help blend social media within the conference.  Attendees will have the opportunity to take photos, follow the live twitter stream, and network within the lounge.  iOffice will also provide reading material and fun additions to the photo booth for participants.  The conference's mobile app is free to download, and provides useful information for attendees including keynote speaker descriptions, available education classes, and a convention center map and interactive floor plan.

At their own booth, iOffice will also be introducing their newest module to attendees.  OpenSpace, the new room reservation and scheduling application, will be available for demonstrations along with their additional IWMS software modules.

If you are attending the conference, be sure to stop by booth 731 and demo their software.  For each demo, iOffice will include the participant in a drawing to win one of many giveaways, including an iPad!

Let’s say you have five small printers, but recently you acquired one large printer to replace the five smaller printers. You can use the Asset Replacement feature to make these changes in your database. This also makes it easier to see how one item is performing, and we can then report to you the difference statistics between the old asset and the new asset replacing it.

To access this feature, please go to Asset –> Inventory and then –> Edit the item you want to replace.

Then select the last button on the top tab bar labelled Replacement.

You may then search for the replacement in the Asset Replacement Search bar.

You will see this screen, which notifies you that the old asset will be deactivated upon saving. Once you click ‘ok’ the asset will be replaced with your chosen item.

We hope you enjoy this new feature, which is available to all customers.  As always, please let us know if you have any questions.

This week's post is covering Facebook groups for facility managers. Although often labeled as the most "informal" site, Facebook is currently the largest social media platform. About 95% of Americans have an active account with a total of 600 million average daily users.

There are over 50 million company pages on Facebook, some that are designed to share information and content with facility managers.  Facebook pages can range from business accounts to news profiles and everything in between.  Pages are different than profiles in the sense that they may not "friend" people, but rather people with profiles can "follow" or "like" them to receive their posts.  Here is a brief list of Facebook Pages that provide information any facility manager would like to know!

Buildings
4,000 likes | Joined June of 2010
As an extension of their online, monthly publication, the Buildings' Facebook page posts links to articles and related content on energy management, maintenance of commercial buildings, life and fire safety, sustainability, project management and more.

Building Operating Management
600 likes | Joined May 2009
The Building Operating Management page is the extension of the leading magazine of the same name. The page posts articles from their site in addition to content from other sources including survey results, infographics, and webinars across energy efficiency, fm strategies, facility technology, and executive management fields.

Facility Management Journal
650 likes | Joined July 2010
The Facility Management Journal is the bimonthly publication from IFMA. This company page posts relevant articles, FM job openings, and links to their online publication.  This is a great resource to anyone who is a member of IFMA or is interested in the association.

International Facility Management Association
3,300 likes | Joined
This association page posts articles directly from the IFMA site, along with member events, conference registrations, and links to content their members would benefit from.  This is also a great resource to access photos from IFMA sponsored events and to find sponsorship opportunities within the organization.

iOffice, Inc.
1,800 likes | Joined April 2012
On our own Facebook page we like to mix it up! We post relevant industry articles, company events, webinar registrations, new client information, along with fun posts with pictures and content about what is happening here at our headquarters! We encourage engagement, and always welcome your comments and suggestions.

myFacilities Net
400 likes | Joined May 2009
The myFacilities Net community allows facility professionals to connect with their colleagues, discuss management strategies, and to share resources. The page encourages engagement, and allows for member posts.  The majority of the page's posts include links to their website forum and industry articles.

Technology in Business
14,000 likes | Joined January 2010
Technological advances in the past few decades have greatly increased the competitive nature of business. This Facebook page's aim is to continue this trend by providing the latest information and best technologies to help you stay ahead of your competition

Today's Facility Manager
500 likes | Joined December of 2008
The TFM Facebook page is designed to offer a social media tool to FMs that provides insightful content while encouraging engagement. The page frequently posts articles from their site, along with content from other sources. The TFM page focuses on facility management, facility safety, new industry products, and research findings.

Use this list as a starting point toward increasing your engagement on Facebook!  As you begin to explore Facebook pages, the insights will begin to recommend pages for you based on your previous follow history.  It can also be beneficial to follow companies you work with to increase communication and to show support.  If you want to use Facebook as a platform for your company, try it out and begin connecting with your followers just as you connect with other pages.

Gathering data is vitally important when you manage space for a large office. If you have a wealth of information at your fingertips, you can accomplish any number of things. Real-time data collection can help you make improvements to your budget, rearrange your offices and make smarter decisions about big changes like moves.

The best facility management software solutions these days make data mining easier than ever. FM software monitors every change you make in real time, and in doing so, it helps you adjust your strategies on the fly. That doesn't mean that working with data is necessarily easy. According to E-Business Strategies, it requires a lot of critical thinking. E-Business Strategies' Richard Jordan advises that people should be willing to question themselves when they begin using new facilities management resources.

"One of the critical steps in moving forward to a new technology solution is assessing what you have – the current state," Jordan wrote. "Too often organizations fall into the trap of setting a future state without really understanding what they currently have in place. This isn't just about technology. It is important to look at the big picture – what we are accomplishing with what we have now?"

If you ask yourself the right questions, you'll be well on your way to success with data collection. For example:

Where are you getting information?
It's important that you have a good handle on where your data comes from, who enters it and who controls the collection process. You want to make sure your data is accurate, complete and being entered into your system in a timely fashion, and that begins with knowing your source. Are you collecting information from employees, supervisors, outside clients or someone else entirely? Does the collection process run smoothly?

What are you learning?
Ideally, you begin collecting data because you want it to improve your everyday operations, but first, you need to ask a more fundamental question – what information are you getting? Is it information directly tied to your buildings themselves, such as energy consumption or security data, or more indirectly relevant information, like data on your workers' productivity? Software solutions can measure a lot of different things, so make sure you're paying attention to the details that matter.

Are you using it in real time?
Anyone can gather information about their facilities slowly and analyze it later, after the fact, using a bunch of paper documents. That's nothing new. But the reason facilities management software works better is that it enables you to take in data instantly and apply it in the moment. For example, if you want to know how much space one of your departments had last month versus this month, you should be able to pull up it instantly on your dashboard.

What's the result?
Chances are that if you've begun using a new facility solution, you've done so with an end goal in mind. Maybe you want to decrease your budget. Maybe you want to raise office morale. Perhaps it's a matter of drumming up more productivity, security or eco-friendliness. Whatever your intentions, always be willing to ask yourself – what's my goal?

Collecting data in facilities management is a laudable pursuit, but it's not the be-all and end-all. Begin with the true end in mind, and you can accomplish more.

One potential facet of your office that might warrant your attention is its "cliquiness." Some workplaces are remarkably similar to junior high schools – people tend to band closely together with their groups of friends, and they stick with them day in and day out. This might have a positive effect on your workplace or a negative one – having groups of friends can bring people together, but it can also leave outsiders feeling neglected or ostracized.

Let's go over some numbers. According to a new survey from CareerBuilder, 43 percent of workers in the United States say their offices are populated by cliques. These groups tend to have some kind of common factor uniting their members – watching the same movies and TV shows (21 percent), disliking the same people (19 percent), having similar tastes in foods (17 percent) or sharing smoke breaks (9 percent).

Clearly, these groups vary in their influence on office productivity. If it's just a group of friends discussing last night's TV lineup, that's no big deal, but if a clique begins to harbor ill will toward another group, it might be a problem.

"Thirteen percent of workers said the presence of office cliques has had a negative impact on their career progress," said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder. "While it's human nature to associate with peers who possess similar personality types and characteristics, cliques can be counterproductive in the workplace."

Much of the burden of monitoring office cliques falls on supervisors or human resources executives. But as a facilities manager, you can play a role as well. Here are a few ideas.

Allow for some socializing (but not too much)
If workers want to engage in healthy dialogues with their friends on a daily basis, there's nothing wrong with that on the surface. It's probably a good idea to give people open, collaborative work spaces that allow them to carry on conversations, as this will keep them happy and engaged throughout the day. On the other hand, if you let people socialize too much, it might make the office environment too loud and distracting. It's important to find the right balance here.

Provide suitable break rooms
If cliques of workers are becoming a distraction, it might be wise to give them break rooms where they can take a few minutes out of the day to socialize in another setting. This gives them a healthy outlet to speak without having to worry about impeding other employees' progress.

Where's the boss?
If cliques are too loud, or they lead employees to gang up on other co-workers (either socially or professionally), it might be necessary for a supervisor to step in and mediate the situation. Make sure your office layout is one that enables bosses to look over their subordinate workers.

Be willing to change
If the cliquey office culture gets to be too much, it may be time to make a major change, rearranging your office so that cliques don't become too much of a distraction. Keep an open mind about this possibility, but don't jump to conclusions too quickly, either. You only want to make a major realignment if it's absolutely necessary.

To access this new feature go to Asset –> Inventory –> Add Asset

Then click the “add model” button under the “general information” pop-up as you would do to add any item.

In the “add new” pop-up, you will notice a plus sign next to the manufacturer drop tab, select the plus sign to add your manufacturer.

You then can fill out the requested information: vendor name, address, and postal code. Then select the “vendor type” button to categorize the specific manufacturer from the options. If you wish to add multiple “vendor type” titles to your entry you may select the plus sign at the end of the bar to do so.

If you select the “contact” button next to the vendor type button, a pop-up will open allowing you to personalize the entry even further with your contact name and information.

We hope you enjoy our latest update! The ability to add manufacturers” should be available to all of our Asset users within a few weeks.

First go to Space –> Building –> Floor-plan –> Open Space Manager. You will see your normal space manager tab bar, choose “Text Options”.

You will then see that a drop-down bar has appeared. Choose “Asset Mouse Over”. This allows you to add asset properties to your view.

You can also change the color and text size just as the room mouse over options does. You will also see that the “Add a Property” tab opens up to allow you to add the following options. In the future, we will be adding more properties, so keep a look out for those!

When you are in the text options you will see that there is a preview section that shows you the changes and how they will eventually appear in your hover section for that asset. This is helpful to see how changes will look before they become permanent in the system.

We hope you will enjoy this new feature to add customized information to your Space floorplan asset icons. The final installment of this update will be available over the next two weeks.

Our topic this week is LinkedIn Groups. LinkedIn is the fastest growing social media platform, with two new users joining every second, and over 80% of users belonging to at least one group.

There are many groups on LinkedIn that are designed for facility managers! Here you can find links to educational articles, promotions from FM providers, and posts from FM thought leaders. You can even post articles you want to share with other group members. Here are a few of our favorites that we think every FM should follow.

Critical Facility Management
3,500 members | Created July 2008
If you are involved in Building / Facilities Management for data centers, this group is for you.  CFM members post anything from outdoor maintenance tips to sustainability measures.

Facilities Management Association
9,500 members | Created October 2009
The purpose of FMA's group is to conduct polls, along with director general blogs and to create a general discussion area for the FMA members.  FMA also notes on their group profile that they want to foster relationships with other councils, associations, institutes and the media. The group strives to provide a young managers recognition program to encourage university / high school students to pursue a career in facilities management.

Facilities Management Group
30,000 members | July 2008
The Facilities Management Group serves the professional needs of Facility Management professionals. It promotes the common interests of its members, exchanging of thoughts and ideas, continuing education, and seeks to improve understanding of the role of facilities management professionals.

Facility Space Planning and Space Management
500 members | December 2011
This open forum and networking group is intended to provide a means for the discussion of policy, processes, best practices, designs, and technology for maximizing facility and real estate portfolio space utilization, productivity, and cost efficiency.

IFMA Group
26,000 members  | October 2007
IFMA is the largest, most widely recognized association for facility management, with more than 22,500 members worldwide. Members are represented in 130 chapters and 17 councils. The IFMA group is designed as a sharing platform between members for interesting industry news, credential information, product announcements, webinars and thought leader posts.

Integrated Facility Management
10,000 members | October 2008
This group is for exchanging Integrated Facility Management knowledge, tips, jobs, career, questions and answers on a Global level. 
The group's noted keywords are: Integrated Facility Management, Real Estate, Cleaning, Catering, Energy, Maintenance, Pest Control, Landscaping, Janitorial, Health Safety & Environment, Security, Reception, Office Supplies, Property Management, Waste Management, and Security.

Integrated Workplace Management Systems
1,500 members | December 2008
IWMS is the #1 online community for Facility Management and Real Estate professionals who are passionate about Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS) and Computer Aided Facilities Management (CAFM). This group is designed for networking, sharing of articles, and beginning discussions in the field of IWMS. 

Property and Facility Management Innovators
7,000 members | March 2009
Property Manager and Facility Manager Professionals and the vendors that serve the industry are welcomed by this group to share innovative ideas on methods, practices, products, technologies, web tools, software ad new innovative concepts for the professional Property Manager and Facility Manager. The group is a grassroots effort to pull people together and promote discussion. The group leaders believe members can "join forces".

Workplace Technology Solutions
1,500 members | January 2010
Workplace Technology Solutions' group combines the dynamic Corporate Real Estate / Facilities Management sector and the technology required for it to be successful. The focus of the group is to provide an environment for expert collaboration that aid members in creating sustainable relationships and valuable results. They also recommend members join their subgroups specific to their interest including: Effective Reporting, Process Engineering, AutoCAD Management, Business Strategy and IWMS/CAFM Solutions.

iOffice News
31 members | March 2013
We have just started our own group for FM professionals! We post news articles from our site, upcoming webinar registrations, product updates, and industry topics for discussion. We encourage engagement and submission of postings, as we would love to hear what you have to share!

This is just a brief list of groups that can provide facility managers with essential tips and industry information that can help them succeed in their field. There are many more groups and subgroups (a smaller platform off of one group) that are designed for specific building types and pertain to various industries. Use this as a starting platform to find groups that you find the most value in.

As it turns out, quite bit. You may not realize it, but indirectly, your space management decisions can have a real impact on the day-to-day happiness of the people in your office building. According to the International Facility Management Association, this is something that FMs should keep in mind as they proceed.

IFMA defines a company's "morale" as "the spirits of a person or group as exhibited by confidence, cheerfulness, discipline, and willingness to perform assigned tasks." The organization notes that low morale is a serious problem among professionals in the United States – citing a Gallup survey, IFMA estimates that about 22 million workers in the U.S. are "actively disengaged," and the productivity they squander causes $350 billion per year in damages.

Stephanie Fanger, facilities planner for General Dynamics C4 Systems in Scottsdale, Arizona, told IFMA that companies should take a closer look at how their facilities influence their employees' well-being.

"It is advantageous to investigate the ways employees function within their office environment to ensure occupants are able to be productive and morale is high," Fanger said.

With that in mind, it's good to take a moment and consider a few key questions that might have an effect on morale within your office.

Do people have the right workspaces?
Some people require quiet offices in order to focus and get their work done. Others are the exact opposite, preferring to work in collaborative spaces where people can communicate freely. Which do your employees prefer? If you're out of touch with workers offices of choice, then you risk alienating them. Employees who are unhappy with their workspaces might become less productive, putting a damper on the entire company.

Do their offices have the right layout?
For one thing, you want to make sure that people who work on the same team or within the same department are located near each other – this way, they can easily collaborate on projects without having to waste time navigating around the building. For another, workers like to sit near their friends. If an employee is disappointed because one of his or her closest allies in the office is far away, this is an easy problem to fix. Make sure workers are happy with where they're located within your facilities.

Are they secure?
It's difficult for employees to get anything done at work if they're worried about the safety of their office buildings. Luckily, advanced facilities management solutions make it easy to monitor any and all security risks. Whether it's unwanted intruders, fire hazards or even cybersafety, there are many different types of threats that could potentially disrupt someone's work day. Your job as a facilities manager is to protect your office against all of them.

Are they getting their mail?
We may be living in an increasingly paperless world, with paper documents being replaced every day by emails and shared cloud data, but that doesn't mean old-fashioned snail mail is dead just yet. Millions of Americans still rely on the mail for bringing important information to their desks – as an FM, part of your job is to cater to people's needs and make sure mail is delivered properly.

You might not be an HR rep or a psychologist, but as an FM, you still do play a role in enhancing employee morale within your building every day. Don't let that power go to waste.