The story of FM over the past 20 years has been grow, diversify, extend and grow more. But below the headline-catching stuff has been a trend favouring small businesses, ones that focus on a region or market area, or that just don’t feel driven to be big.

Unconscious bias has been common parlance in the business world for some years, and it continues to be one of the most important issues for business to recognise and manage.

If there is one thing that FM knows a lot about, it's change. Change has been the story of facilities management since its earliest days.

Sunil Shah looks at the current practice of responsible business in the built environment and explains the collaborative approach that RICS is taking to create the new model necessary to transfer knowledge of sustainability through the property lifecycle.

On exactly the same day that yet another key supplier of services to the government ran into financial problems, last week saw a speaker from the Cabinet Office tell the Workplace Futures conference that "we need significant cultural change on all sides".

The FM industry does a lot of things really well. What if we added one more to the list that could lift our perception, our value, our reputation?

And that is what's stopping our future talent from joining what one student called a 'hidden industry'. Sienna Emanuel asked a group of students what we need to do.

"May you live in interesting times" is a Chinese curse that we would do well to consider long and hard right now.

A new year is traditionally a cause for celebration, marked by optimism, determination and positive thinking. How long all that lasts, of course, is another matter. And this year there's a question mark over whether any of it even gets started.

Wednesday December 19th will see a debate in the Commons, pushing for the implementation of a mental health first aider in every workplace to help bridge the gap between mental health and physical health care legislation in business.

Last week Mace Macro launched a new report analysing our work environments and uncovering a series of problems, along with associated opportunities for improvement. That set me thinking.

Carl Webb reviews the importance of considering whether a hired climate control arrangement makes more sense than a traditional purchase.