A tension sits at the center of facility management, one that workplace leaders know well.
83% say the workplace directly drives organizational performance. At the same time, cost optimization remains the dominant priority, and for good reason. Economic pressure is real, and the organizations navigating it most effectively are not choosing between experience and efficiency but rather finding smarter ways to deliver both.
That balance is difficult to achieve, and this dynamic is pushing organizations to think more strategically about how to deliver greater value with existing resources, reinforcing FM's role as both a steward of efficiency and a driver of smart, impactful workplace investments. But do clients have the right partner to help them navigate this?
ISS’ Facilities Management Outlook, based on a global survey conducted across 3,000 of our clients, offers a useful lens on what partnership actually looks like in practice.
Although leaders are broadly interested in reducing budgets, they’re not ignoring the importance of workplace quality and experience. In the U.S. market, 52% of leaders place a greater emphasis on employee experience than the global average of 43%.
Across our North American client base, the through-line in this year's feedback is partnership. Clients describe ISS as easy to work with, responsive, and invested in their outcomes. Customer satisfaction scores rose alongside Net Promoter Scores that outpace typical benchmarks for B2B services — but the more telling signal is what sits behind those numbers: a way of working that clients increasingly treat as an extension of their own teams.
The written feedback that accompanied the survey told a consistent story. Clients who scored ISS at the top of the range were not evaluating a vendor, but describing a working relationship, one defined by accessible local leadership, responsive communication and teams that felt integrated into their organizations rather than contracted to them.
As organizations work to balance cost discipline with rising expectations around workplace experience, the ones navigating that tension most effectively are the ones with partners who understand their environment deeply enough to help them make smarter decisions; the ability to deliver greater value with existing resources stems from strong relationships.
ISS is a self-performing organization. The teams delivering services on a client site are trained, managed and retained by us — not handed off to a subcontractor layer that absorbs institutional knowledge and then cycles out when contracts change hands.
That distinction shows up in the work. Clients in the U.S. market consistently tell us self-performance matters to them, describing trust built through transparency and regular engagement.
The self-performance model is also what positions ISS to be genuinely useful as workplace strategies grow more complex. Hybrid work has reshaped how organizations use their spaces, and most operating models are still evolving to keep pace. 68% of workplace leaders identify economic pressure as the most disruptive force they face, and the real work is helping clients find the right balance between cost control and experience quality. This problem calls for a partner with enough context to work through it together.
The balance between experience and efficiency is not a problem that organizations will solve once and move past. This is part of the ongoing work of FM, which grows more complex as expectations rise, space usage shifts and the pressure to demonstrate value with every dollar intensifies.
What the survey data reflects is that, for the North American market, the path forward is built on relationships grounded in accountability, continuity and a shared understanding of what clients are trying to achieve.
For more FM insights from across the globe, explore the 2026 ISS Facilities Management Outlook.