A mall facility manager runs a building that opens before the shops and closes after them. Security, housekeeping, parking and engineering staff work long, staggered hours, and festival weekends bring a crowd every one of them must handle.
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Share your requirementsA mall facility manager keeps a shopping centre safe, clean and cool for shoppers and tenants. The team covers entrances and parking, escalators and lifts, washrooms and food courts, air-conditioning and power, and customer help desks. The building opens early for cleaning, closes late after the last show, and is busiest on weekends and festivals. Hundreds of shop staff pass through each day beside the facility team, and thousands of shoppers. Many facility staff are supplied by vendors, and a good number are hired only for the season. The facility management hub covers what the wider sector shares.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
Early cleaning, a long trading day and late closing leave staff on split or long shifts, and weekly offs are hard to place.
Crowds rise sharply, the building needs more guards, cleaners and parking staff for a few days, and the extra hands arrive untrained.
Shoppers notice a dirty washroom at once, and cleaners are blamed though the roster did not allow for the crowd.
Guards and desk staff face arguments over parking, bags and queues, and they need to stay calm in public view.
Shop staff, delivery boys and facility crews share corridors and lifts, and small clashes arise over cleaning, noise and access.
Cleaning and maintenance after closing work unseen, and supervision, meals and transport are thinner than in the day.
The mall trains people for a month and starts again at the next festival.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Recruitment and Talent Acquisition; HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for facility management, not in general.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a mall facility managers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
List festivals, sales, school holidays and events for the year, with expected crowd and the extra roles needed.
What this coversHideList festivals, sales, school holidays and events for the year, with expected crowd and the extra roles needed. The workforce planning work builds this with operations.
Recruit before the peak, give a half-day briefing on the building, the crowd flow and the help desk script, and pair each with a regular.
What this coversHideRecruit before the peak, give a half-day briefing on the building, the crowd flow and the help desk script, and pair each with a regular.
A pattern that covers early, trading and late hours, rotates the late shifts and gives weekly offs on a published plan.
What this coversHideA pattern that covers early, trading and late hours, rotates the late shifts and gives weekly offs on a published plan.
What to say, what to refuse and when to call the duty manager, taught through short sessions in the staff's own language.
What this coversHideWhat to say, what to refuse and when to call the duty manager, taught through short sessions in the staff's own language.
A supervisor on the night floor, meals, safe transport and a regular visit by the duty manager.
What this coversHideA supervisor on the night floor, meals, safe transport and a regular visit by the duty manager.
A desk and a log for shops to raise cleaning or access issues, and a routine to reply, so clashes do not grow.
What this coversHideA desk and a log for shops to raise cleaning or access issues, and a routine to reply, so clashes do not grow.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A seasonal hiring plan with early sourcing and a list of returning staff for each festival.
Short sessions for guards, cleaners and desk staff on conduct, appearance and calm in public view.
Late-hour and festival allowances set clearly, so peaks are not paid by argument.
A calendar-based view of staffing across peaks, vendors and permanent staff.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in facility management, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Housekeeping, technician and security staff at client sites leave for reasons head office rarely hears. How to ask, what to look for and how to act on it.
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Sources beyond the neighbouring gate for setters, turners, inspectors and leak test hands, plus a one-hour bench trial built from your own rejected parts.
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Hiring decisions made one request at a time, in the month the pain is worst. What a workforce plan contains and why a twelve-month view changes what you hire.
7 min readRead article
How to design incentives for operators, setters and inspectors in fastener, gear, spring and valve units so that accepted lots, not piece counts, earn the bonus.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Plan from the calendar, recruit early, brief everyone at the building and pair new hands with regulars. Late hiring in the last week leaves untrained people facing the biggest crowd of the year.
Pay fairly and on time, treat them well, and keep contact between festivals. Note who did well and invite them first. A returning person needs far less training than a stranger.
Teach staff what to say and when to call the duty manager, and show that you will support them in fair cases. Staff who know they are backed stay calm and avoid escalation.
Rotate late shifts, state the allowance in writing, provide meals and safe transport. People accept hard hours when they are shared fairly and the conditions are decent.
Set up a single desk and log for tenant issues, reply promptly and brief both sides on access and cleaning times. Most clashes come from surprises and silence rather than from bad intent.
We would ask for your event calendar, last year's seasonal hiring record and the shift pattern for late and night teams. A peak-season hiring plan with a returning-staff list is a natural first job, and scope is written for your sign-off.
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