If you are at the point of no return and you feel that your relationship with your incumbent FM contractor cannot be resolved and you are desperate to “change” then perhaps you might want to think before you press the button for transformation.

With TUPE the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations, sometimes change doesn’t equate to the change you might to been hoping for. In 2006 TUPE was extended to cover nearly all outsourcing arrangements and it’s a very effective piece of legislation for protecting the rights of employees, quite rightly so. Therefore, we need to ask ourselves the question – when a contract is terminated and awarded to another contractor, what actually changes?

The existing staff TUPE across, as do the management along with anyone else who can legally demonstrate that 50% or more of their time was dedicated to working on the previous supplier’s contract. The client invariably terminated the original contractor, because they wanted change and they do not want to be disappointed by the performance of the new contractor the new contractor then finds themselves on a business transformation exercise. Transformation is a very specialist skill set that should be delivered by change relationship and transformation specialists.

FM professionals and contractors try to deliver transformation in house and, as this is not an internal core skill set, there is a real danger that change doesn’t happen as smoothly or as effectively as the client expected.

The TUPE process can take a minimum of 90 days before change can commence. During this time if the change is not conducted correctly, then the only likely outcome of change will be a new uniform, some new equipment, and a new pay master. The chance of the client being satisfied at this point is low.

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