In 2001, Scott Koloms became President of FMS when his father, Jerry Koloms, passed away unexpectedly. Jerry believed in being kind and was always quick with a joke and a smile and he instilled these values in his son, Scott. From 1998-2001, Scott taught writing while working towards his MA and Ph.D. at the University of Louisville and Kent State University, respectively. His passion for teaching and developing people didn’t leave as he began leading the 30 people that made up the FMS team in 2001. Without really knowing it, Koloms and a core group of FMS leaders, including Cathy Russell, Wendell Parks, Shirley Bean, Don May and Mae Bray, began to develop a culture of enrichment, access, and opportunity for all FMS employees: many of whom relied on government provided services for help and didn’t see many opportunities for professional and personal development.

For nine years, primarily relying on instinct and a strong belief that all people have strengths and room for improvement, FMS leaders created an inclusive work environment where folks from all walks of life sat at the FMS decision-making table. FMS challenged those folks to think bigger and FMS challenged itself to learn how to engage people coming from diverse educational, economic, and social backgrounds. In hindsight, the sometimes bumpy path allowed for the creation of the undeniably strong foundation FMS has now: a foundation that includes clear values, a core group of wise, experienced leaders, and loads of mutual respect and love.

By 2011, FMS had 350 employees and our growth put a strain on the cohesiveness of our team. The addition of so many new people in such a short time allowed us to see the need for a more formalized conceptualization of our values and strengths. We realized that we could no longer place more and more burden on the same core group of people. And we realized that in order for us to continue our growth, while retaining the values that made us so successful, which were still instinctual—not formalized, we needed to make those values and ways of doing business clear. We needed to reflect in order to move forward. In the Fall of that year, FMS held its first Leadership Retreat with the goal of determining what it was that allowed us to grow and succeed so rapidly. Specifically, we asked ourselves “What is so special about FMS?” “Why are we succeeding where others aren’t?” “What things do we need to make sure we hold on to as we grow in the future?”

The weekend retreat produced the FMS Core Values. Our leaders were unanimous in deciding upon our number one core value: “I care about the people working with me.” Our other 7 core values, modified over time, were all derivative of the number one core value.

The FMS Core Values are:
CORE VALUE #1: I care about the people working with me. I am compassionate.
CORE VALUE #2: I stay positive!
CORE VALUE #3: I always get better.
CORE VALUE #4: I am available and responsive.
CORE VALUE #5: I keep my word.
CORE VALUE #6: I know face-to-face communication is a key to success.
CORE VALUE #7: I get it done right, today.
CORE VALUE #8: I know we will succeed as a team.

So, how does all this translate into a successful Business Model?

Talking about values and living your values are two different things. FMS spent considerable time teaching our people what our core values meant and how to enact our values while working. We also made sure to recognize the folks that consistently displayed our values through their actions. The more time we spent talking about, teaching and modeling our values, the more we saw people acting them out. Once we felt that we were on track when it came to teaching and recognizing our values, we began to think about how we could fit these values into the way we did business.

We set out to create a clear, simple and effective business plan grounded in our values. Simply put, our line of thinking was as follows:

• The greatest difficulty in the janitorial business is employee turnover. Low wages, lack of opportunity and development, the way many people treat janitors and the exclusively profit-driven mentality of so many janitorial businesses leads to unhappy employees that feel like their work isn’t important and that people don’t value them as people.
• At its root, a janitorial company is in the people business. Upwards of 85% of every dollar a janitorial company brings in goes to or at least should go to, its people.
• Unhappy people, people that aren’t given training, people that don’t have the opportunity, people that aren’t cared for, and people that don’t want to be doing the work they’re doing don’t give their best effort.
• We asked ourselves a simple question: Would we rather have employees working for FMS solely because they have to, because they need a paycheck or would we rather have employees working for FMS, at least partially, because they want to work for FMS? The common sense answer is that we would rather have people that want to work for FMS. So, the next question became “What are we doing to encourage people to want to work for FMS?”
• With these facts in mind, FMS decided that the fundamental question should be “What can we do for our people?”
  We decided to survey our employees in order to identify what they want from an employer.
• To work with our customers to allow for higher wages and bonus opportunities for our janitors.
• To work with outside groups in an effort to provide opportunities for our janitors.
• To think of programs that would show our folks that we, as an organization, as leaders, truly care.
• To formalize our development processes in an effort to promote as many people as possible from within FMS.

One of greatest challenges in the janitorial industry, much like many service-related industries, is dealing with employee turnover and we feel strongly that people will respond to our social efforts by showing allegiance to FMS and its customers. And our efforts have worked. FMS reduced company turnover by 15% from 2015-2016 and year to date turnover for 2017 is at 40%.
According to BSCAI (Business Services Contractors Association) the janitorial industry average upwards of 250% turnover.

FMS: A Public Benefit Corporation and a Certified B-Corp

Facilities Management Services, Inc. (FMS), became Louisville’s first certified B-Corp on November 10, 2016. FMS is the first janitorial service in the world to become a certified B-Corp.

Certified B Corporations are leaders of a global movement of people using business as a force for good™. They meet the highest standards of overall social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability and aspire to use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. There are more than 1,800 Certified B Corporations in over 120 industries and 50 countries with 1 unifying goal – to redefine success in business.

Becoming a certified BCORP has been a great experience of validation for our folks at FMS who have worked hard for so many years to create the FMS culture.  The tenets of BCORP are not new to our organization.  We have been an employee-centered business since our inception and our folks have always had a heart for service to their communities.  BCORP gave what we are doing a name, gave us the language to explain our business model to others. It has also offered us the opportunity to share our business model with like-minded businesses in understanding how utilizing our own resources helps our employees and our communities.  It pushes positive social change forward, it lessens the financial stress of social issues on government and nonprofit programs that struggle with resources and sustainability, and it’s just good for business.  People want to partner with other people who are doing the right thing.

Our new model of service is serving our communities, our people, our customers and the well-being of our own company.

Our Business Model

What began as an intuitive, employee-centered approach to running a janitorial service has developed into a sophisticated, cutting-edge way of doing business. Simply put, FMS believes that by successfully executing a clearly defined social mission, designed to help the folks that work for us and the communities where they live, we’re more likely to get and keep the best cleaners which result in cleaner buildings, happier customers and the success of our business.

We measure and hold folks accountable for the execution of our social mission the same way we measure and hold folks accountable for employee engagement, successful operations, and profitability.

Positive Social Impact

FMS is intentional about executing our social impact programs and we recognize our responsibility to the communities in which we work. We partner with community-based organizations and support programs for clean environments, personal health and welfare, and neighborhood development. FMS keeps its employees involved through a volunteer program where team members get paid to serve in their communities.

Innovative

FMS continuously develops and implements programs designed to make the experience of our front-line workers better by providing opportunities, incentives, recognition and making the work easier.

Company Information

FMS Mission Statement: FMS will use its financial, human and physical resources to ease suffering and promote the well-being of our employees and the citizens of our communities by providing people with educational, wellness, cultural and developmental opportunities and by being responsible environmental stewards.

What is the FMS Mission?

FMS embraces a mission-driven business model unique to the janitorial industry. Our mission is to use our resources to serve our employees by providing educational and professional development opportunities, as well as access to cultural, social, and volunteer experiences, in order to build a manageable and supportive path towards individual growth and community engagement. FMS and FMS’ customers will receive the benefits of a happier, more motivated and committed workforce and the gratification that accompanies contributing to the well-being of others. By successfully executing our mission, FMS will continue to thrive as a viable, successful for-profit business.

What is a Mission-Driven Business?

A mission-driven business is an organization for which the pursuit of growth and revenue naturally produces mission-related benefits. The financial success of FMS allows us to provide more and more educational and development opportunities for our employees and allows us to pursue initiatives to benefiting our community and environmental causes. Our profit and our social missions go hand-in-hand.

By MELISSA CHIPMAN | February 1, 2017

In just a few weeks, a trailblazing company by the name of Facilities Management Services will move into a brand-new headquarters in the Portland neighborhood.

It is the kind of business that is happy to thrive in the background, which FMS has done since it was established in the 1990s as a contract cleaning company, then based in Shelbyville, Ky. These days, though, its president, Scott Koloms, is pumped to be making headlines. FMS said it recently became the first janitorial services company in the world to earn a B Corp designation and the first company in Louisville, second in Kentucky, to do so.

Now Koloms is on the front line of the push to make B Corp designation a legal status in the state of Kentucky.

So what is a B Corp?

It’s a designation for mission-centered businesses, for businesses for whom profit is not always priority one. The public benefit corporation designation protects the company’s mission against shareholders objecting to its path to profit, and it protects companies from new owners who may change the mission.

“We measure our social mission the same way we measure our finances and operations,” Koloms said. Every year the company leadership decides on what their social goals will be. If they do not reach at least 75 percent of those goals, no leaders will get a bonus, including Koloms.

“We have happier and better workers,” he said. “Our core value is that we care about the people we work with.”

Scott Koloms | Courtesy of FMS
“Who’s going to solve social issues? The government?” said Koloms. He thinks business as an institution may be the answer. “Business has a position of power.” If more businesses became socially conscious and active, he reasoned, the government and underfunded nonprofits would have less work to do.

Sarah Davasher-Wisdom, COO at GLI, said that the chamber is “very favorable” toward the legislation and that members of GLI have been “advocating for it for several years.” She noted that neighboring states have B-Corp legislation in place and that more than 30 states do overall.

Davasher-Wisdom said that having B-Corp status available would “motivate companies to bring their business to Kentucky.” Both Davasher-Wisdom and Koloms said that young workers prioritize working for a business that has a social component.

When asked about why there would be any opposition to the bill, she said that it was a matter of education because it is a “difficult concept.” Rep. Jerry Miller (R-36), who is putting the bill forward on Feb. 9, almost voted against it last year, but after a conversation with B-Corp advocate Access Ventures‘ CEO Bryce Butler, he came on board, Davasher-Wisdom said.

It’s not just a challenging concept, one of the reasons it didn’t pass in the past is that some politicians conflate the social mission with environmentalism and reject the notion out of hand.

“Three times in the past it died for various reasons,” Miller said. This time it has an excellent chance of passing, he said.

Miller said that the millennial generation wants to “do good” while making money and that “certain investors want to invest in entities that have a dual purpose.” The latter includes Butler, whose Access Ventures invests only in social entrepreneurship enterprises.

A new headquarters

On a recent private tour of the new headquarters, Koloms explained that the well-preserved and faithfully renovated 1880s former home of A.L. Ball Moving & Storage, on the corner of 15th and Lytle, was built as a furniture company and showroom.

The giant brick edifice is huge: 90,000 square feet in total. He enlisted the services of the award-winning Lexington architecture firm Nomi Design to carve out 25,000 square feet for the headquarters; the rest will remain storage.

Koloms is jazzed about the revamped office space, which includes a workout area and a recreation area (and requisite Ping-Pong table); a co-working-style office called The Nest, where desks and computers will be made available to employees who are on the road a lot; plus, an outdoor patio.

As he continued the tour, Koloms proudly noted that wooden features in the offices – tables and counters and such – were made from reclaimed wood from the renovation.

The new home pairs nicely with the company’s already robust wellness program, which includes smoking cessation and nutrition programs for all staff members and financial literacy classes. There’s a five-minute meditation session before meetings. In those meetings, Koloms often talks about mindfulness.

FMS offers paid maternity leave for all employees for six weeks.

“Everyone will be making a living wage by the end of the year,” Koloms said.

In 2015-16, the company reduced turnover by 15 percent. Koloms also said that companies like Bellarmine University, Yum Brands and the Nelson County School System, have hired FMS because their values aligned.

The company employs around 800 people, about 400 of them full time.

For Koloms, FMS’s mission is its people. When he took over the business after his father’s sudden death in 2001, Koloms knew that the greatest challenge in a janitorial business was employee turnover.

“Without the people, we couldn’t run a business,” Koloms said. He knew he had to create a work environment that not only gave people a paycheck but also a reason to want to work for FMS.

Company leadership set up relationships and partnerships with agencies in the neighborhoods where FMS workers live. Working with KCTC, the company co-funded a leadership class that was specifically designed for FMS. Fifty-six workers graduated and received college credit.

In 2017, the company’s goal is to fund 2080 hours of volunteer work. Each worker will be paid a regular salary for up to 20 hours of volunteer work. “This is not a giving program,” he said. “This is embedded in our business model.”

What does it mean to be mission-driven?  How do you take a philosophy for how to do business and make it tangible, so that, the leaders and team members of FMS understand, feel and experience what it means to be a part of something greater than themselves?  Employee engagement events are part of our story and even more importantly, crucial in the culture that we have created.  In line with our 3rd core value, “I always get better,” embedding our mission into everything, even the FMS FUN, has been an evolving process for us.

Our annual FMS Leadership Retreat is a great example.  It began as a simple concept: once a year, take all of the leaders of the company out into nature for a weekend, away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and create space for deeper relationship building and team bonding.  In the beginning we focused on being a part of the story. Story-telling is such a big part of FMS – it’s how we engage people, learn from each other, and honor each person’s experience and ideas.  That first year, our small group of 35 leaders, shared experiences of how they came to be a part of FMS and what FMS means to them.

Over the years this model has evolved and become more sophisticated as we have grown as a company.  2017 marked our 7th year for our Leadership Retreat and now we have a planning committee, a theme for the weekend, an agenda, and group activities that are all designed ahead of time to cast the vision of FMS for the next year.  We are intentional about designing activities that inspire our leaders to remain true to our roots and culture and find ownership in their role and future at FMS.

Amazing things can happen when you simply create space.  Folks from every walk of life spend 3 days together in the middle of the woods.  We share transportation, we share lodging, we share meals and we share lots of ideas.  We create the experience of the “we” and bring the mission to life.

Out of the discussions at our retreat, came an idea about how to the share the spirit of our Leadership Retreat with the entire company: an annual Appreciation Day for all of our employees and their families as a way to celebrate and thank our folks who clean buildings day in and day out.  The idea has evolved from a few carnival games and activities for kids into a full-fledged Family Festival complete with food, games, inflatables, arts and crafts, and even health screens and information booths on community resources.  Just like our Leadership Retreat, the Family Festival has grown in size and scope and the focus has become more intentional, again bringing the mission to life and creating that experience of true community, the “we.”

Louisville based non-profit, New Roots believes, “Just like air and water, everyone has a right to fresh food.”

In June 2017, Facilities Management Services pbc and New Roots, an organization that works with food insecure neighborhoods to create sustainable systems to access farm-fresh produce, worked together to pilot a program for our front-line workers.

We are a mission driven business that listens to our community and our employees. In 2016, FMS team members completed surveys and indicated that education around healthy living and eating is a need and want. FMS President Scott Koloms and New Roots Executive Director Karyn Moskowitz saw this as an opportunity to partner and drive the food justice movement.

Moskowitz is very passionate about food justice and has been running the New Roots Fresh Stops since 2009. There are 15 Fresh Stop Markets that serve several communities around Louisville and Southern Indiana. Anyone can become a shareholder with New Roots and pays for their produce on a sliding scale. Depending on your income, you can either pay $6 or up to $40 for a share. Each share comes with ten varieties of seasonal, locally farmed and organic fruits and vegetables. Each Fresh Stop is unique to the neighborhood and offers community, information on the produce and even a chef who cooks with the food in the share.

At FMS, we decided to pilot a new program with our front line workers to offer these shares at a deeply discounted price. We paid $21 of a $26 share and our employees paid $5 out of their paycheck for six weeks this summer. Our goal was to reach 20 people and we had 30 sign up!

Each week, our team members were exposed to familiar and unfamiliar vegetables and new ways of cooking. Not only were they bringing the food home for themselves and their families, but some of our employees shared with neighbors, friends and family members. It was a beautiful example of paying it forward.

Feedback is really positive and everyone who participated this year really wants us to do it again next year. We recently attended a meeting with other neighbors, including Heine Brothers Coffee, Louisville Grows and the Louisville Free Public Library, to discuss the possibility of opening a Fresh Stop Market right here in Portland.

The neighborhood really needs a Fresh Stop and we hope that we can help get this off the ground running based on our pilot program’s success!