Words: Gareth Marriott
A facilities services tender used to tell you what the customer needed done: clean these areas, maintain these assets, meet these service levels, provide this reporting, price it properly. While those requirements remain central to good service delivery, what’s changed is the set of questions customers ask around the specification.
Who’s doing the work? How are they trained? How stable is the workforce? How are subcontractors checked? Where does modern slavery risk sit? How are emissions measured? Can the data be relied on? What happens when something goes wrong?
For cleaning and facilities management providers, these questions are reshaping the industry. Customers are no longer assessing only the service they can see, they’re looking more closely at the business behind the service, and that changes how contracts are assessed, how suppliers are compared and what good delivery looks like.
In sectors like healthcare, aviation, manufacturing, education, government and commercial property, customers are under increasing pressure to understand the risks, impacts and dependencies across their own operations. Facilities services providers sit inside that picture, working on customer sites, employing frontline teams, managing subcontractors, purchasing goods, operating fleets, handling waste streams and supporting critical environments.
The quality of that work depends on more than task completion. It depends on systems, quality of supervision, workforce capability, data and governance that works in practice, not just on paper.
Why ESG is now part of service delivery
That’s where ESG becomes relevant. Not as a separate corporate exercise or as a label attached to an annual report, but as part of how cleaning and facilities services are delivered, measured and improved.
Take emissions. A customer doesn’t simply want to know whether a supplier has reduced its footprint. They want to understand how emissions are measured, what’s changed from year to year, what’s being done about the largest sources, and how it impacts their own Scope 3 emissions.
In our industry, fleet is often one of the greatest sources of emissions. Reducing fleet emissions sounds straightforward until you’re servicing regional or remote sites, carrying equipment, meeting response times or working in areas where suitable vehicles and charging infrastructure are still limited. The answer isn’t a slogan. It’s better data, better planning, better route optimisation, better procurement decisions and incremental changes to improve performance.
Waste is similar. A diversion result is only useful if the underlying data is clear. Who owns the waste? Where is it generated? How is it sorted? What can be influenced by the service provider, and what depends on customer behaviour or site systems?
The people behind the numbers
Modern slavery risk is another example. A policy isn’t enough. In labour-intensive sectors, especially where subcontracting is common, risk needs to be managed through supplier due diligence, onboarding, training, audits, grievance pathways and escalation processes.
The same is true of people. A stable workforce isn’t just a social outcome. It affects safety, consistency, customer relationships and service quality. Leadership development, succession planning, training and employee feedback all sit close to operational performance too.
When colleagues are well-supported, sites run better. When supervisors are capable, customers notice. When people feel respected, retention improves. These are business issues.
Turning scrutiny into an opportunity
At OCS Australia and New Zealand, our 2025 ESG Report is the summation of those factors. It showcases how well we’re doing – and where we can improve – across the entire business and demonstrates how we can deliver safely, responsibly and consistently while supporting our customers’ own ESG and procurement goals.
It also shows the direction of the industry as facilities services providers are being asked to demonstrate the strength of the business behind the contract. Arguably, that creates more work for providers, but it also creates an opportunity.
For too long, parts of our industry have been judged mainly on price and visible output. The changing expectations around ESG, risk and governance provide a better way to show value – through evidence, verified data, stronger systems and people who understand the sites they support and the standards customers expect.
While the future of facilities services will still depend on reliable delivery, the best will be those that can show how that delivery is supported – by good governance, capable people, responsible procurement and practical environmental management. The questions customers are asking have changed, and our industry needs to keep changing with them.
