Professionals do not expect improvement soon

The facility management and building operations sector struggles with a persistent labour shortage, especially in skilled positions (cleaners, security guards, maintenance workers, etc.).

However, according to the managers of the member companies of LEO (National Association of Facility Management and Building Operations Providers), economx.hu reports, this shortage has decreased slightly in recent years.

In the case of skilled manual workers, however, the association’s member companies do not expect any improvement in the near future.

 The reasons are the ageing of good professionals and the lack of recruits, as the demand for manual work is declining in Hungary. Many people are going abroad and the professionals see the current vocational training system as very problematic.

“There are few credible vocational trainers, and there is a serious shortage of real, practical education. It would be a good opportunity for companies to provide practical training. Still, the bureaucracy and unrealistic expectations typical of the education system do not allow an average medium-sized enterprise to take advantage of this opportunity. It would be advisable to start a substantive dialogue between the companies concerned and the experts who determine the curriculum,” said Katalin Takács, head of the LEO HR working group and deputy CEO of FUTURE FM HR.

The reasons of high fluctuation

However, it is not only the labour shortage that is a constant challenge, but also the fact that a significant proportion of those available are under-motivated and in a difficult social situation, making it challenging to keep them in the labour market for a long time, and thus leading to high fluctuation. Another widespread phenomenon in these professions is second jobs, which employers manage with maximum flexibility according to their needs to retain workers.

Developing cyber security knowledge and digital skills

Intelligent building control solutions are also becoming increasingly prominent. Digitalisation has been significant in control systems, but also for maintenance staff; among others, work is issued and recorded, and fault records are managed on mobile phones and tablets.

Companies are investing significant energy and resources in education, including the development of digital skills and training in cybersecurity.

However, facility management is one of the few industries where the replacement of live work is not to be feared in the near future. This is partly because robotisation is a development- and therefore resource-intensive area, and it is also not uncommon for clients to resist digital devices that can transmit data due to fear of industrial espionage.

Thus, robots have appeared so far only for cleaning tasks, mainly in large, continuous areas, but there is no relevant saving of live labour here either. Artificial intelligence is still considered to be very far away, only after it has gained wider acceptance in other industries.

The thinking of Western European countries means less technologically modern solutions. Compared to the West, the domestic industry lags behind in terms of the role it plays in the life of domestic facilities. 

In Hungary, it is still more typical for clients to think of operational aspects as a step after the construction of buildings instead of using the experience of FM companies during the planning of facility management and the construction of buildings.

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