How to Include Facility Management in Your Private K-12 Community

Now more than ever, consistency is key. Facilities management can provide that, but only if it fits in with your school.

In a private K-12 environment, community is everything. Administrators, staff, teachers, parents, and students are all connected together in a unique way — fostering cohesion and belonging, making school feel like a second home for everyone.

That distinctive feeling is more important now than ever before, as we navigate through so much uncertainty. It’s also why the right facilities management team can make such a big difference. A team that handles cleaning, disinfection, maintenance, operations, and more, can heighten the sensation of safety that comes with community. But not every facility management (FM) team is the same.

Here are the two major elements that are important to determine if your FM can fit into your private K-12 environment:

• Low turnover, if any. In an office building, seeing familiar faces for facilities management is nice, but in a school, it’s crucial. Staff, students, and parents love getting to know “their” people.For example, at the private K-12 schools handled by UG2, students often practice their Spanish language skills with our cleaning crews, or wave to them in the hallway. They know our FM people as well as they do the school secretary, cafeteria employees, or bus drivers. One school even dedicated two yearbook pages to their favorite team member. That’s the kind of connection that builds trust and community.That’s simply not possible when you have high turnover, because not only are students and staff unfamiliar with these employees, but they also don’t make the investment of effort and time — automatically assuming that FM workers might be gone soon.
• School pride. Related to low turnover, FM employees will feel like part of your campus, and tap into that distinctive cohesion that makes your school special. They’ll feel a sense of pride, just as much as alumnus, staff, teachers, and students do. And when you feel proud to work somewhere, you care more. You work harder.That’s what we see at UG2 with our FM teams that handle private K-12 schools and their campuses. They use the phrase “our school” because there’s ownership and a sense of responsibility not just to UG2 or their managers, but to the whole school community.

Facilities management is an important part of every private K-12 campus to ensure that buildings are cleaned and running well. But that should be the foundation, not the endpoint. The right team will fit into your community, not operate outside of it.

Value of an Experienced Partner

For more insight, check out our last post, Why Private K-12 Has Unique Needs for Reopening and in an upcoming post, we’ll discuss how a proactive approach to facilities management can help your private K-12 campus in ways you may not have anticipated.

As you think about how to keep your campus and your community safe and healthy, don’t hesitate to talk to UG2 about how we can help. Our new UG2 ReNew^SM Cleaning4Health and Engineering4Health^SM programs are designed to ensure you have what you need, no matter what return-to-school strategy you’ve chosen. We have experience being part of private K-12 environments, and we take great pride in being part of the schools we serve.