Facilities Management Salary Survey 2020
Resource type and category
Resource type: Salary survey / industry research report
Category: Facilities Management Salaries, FM Market Insights, Recruitment Research and Career Resources
Intended audience
Facilities Managers, Heads of Facilities, FM Directors, Regional and Multi-Site Facilities Managers, engineering and workplace professionals, HR teams, Talent Acquisition professionals and employers interested in historical UK Facilities Management salary and workforce trends.
Resource-card description
Explore the Maxwell Stephens Facilities Management Salary Survey 2020, based on more than 1,000 FM professionals and covering pay, benefits, qualifications, working life and career trends across the UK.
Full resource-page description
The Facilities Management Salary Survey 2020 provides a detailed picture of remuneration, careers and working life across the UK Facilities Management profession.
More than 1,000 FM professionals contributed to the research, making it Maxwell Stephens’ strongest survey response at that point and providing a substantial dataset for understanding the state of the profession.
The report examines salaries by region, industry and job role, but also goes considerably further.
It explores the demographics of the FM workforce, professional qualifications, employee benefits, working hours, experience, job satisfaction and the factors that influence career decisions.
Taken together, the findings show a profession in which salary levels were continuing to rise but where flexibility, meaningful work, career satisfaction and the overall employee proposition were becoming increasingly important.
More than 1,000 FM professionals took part
The introduction explains that this was Maxwell Stephens’ fifth Facilities Management Salary Survey and received more than 1,000 responses from FM professionals throughout the UK.
The report was created to give both employees and employers evidence that could support better decisions around career planning and recruitment strategy.
That combination of salary and workforce data makes the resource valuable as a historical record of the FM employment market at the beginning of the 2020s.
Gender representation in Facilities Management
The survey found that the profession was still predominantly male.
70% of respondents were men and 30% were women.
However, the report viewed the direction of travel positively because female representation had increased compared with previous surveys.
Women were also becoming more visible at senior level.
Among survey respondents, 25% of Directors or Heads of FM and 24% of Senior Facilities Managers were women.
The report interpreted this as part of a continuing trend towards stronger female representation within senior Facilities Management positions.
Gender and job role
The chart on page 3 provides a more detailed breakdown of gender representation across individual FM roles.
It suggests that women were increasingly represented in junior and mainstream Facilities Management positions, supporting the report’s view that more women were entering the profession and beginning FM careers.
Engineering remained noticeably different.
The proportion of women working in engineering-related FM specialisms remained comparatively low, and the report states that the ratio had decreased from previous surveys.
This makes the page useful as a historical benchmark for both gender diversity and the continuing challenge of representation within technical FM careers.
An experienced and ageing workforce
The age profile remained one of the sector’s biggest workforce issues.
55% of respondents were aged over 45, while just 15% were aged 34 or younger.
The survey notes that concerns around attracting younger professionals into Facilities Management had already been raised by industry bodies and experts in previous years.
Its 2020 findings suggested that this challenge had not disappeared.
For employers, the figures reinforce the importance of succession planning, apprenticeships, graduate recruitment and developing clearer routes into FM careers.
Permanent employment remained dominant
The survey found particularly high levels of permanent employment.
95% of respondents were employed on a permanent basis.
The remainder were predominantly temporary or self-employed professionals.
This represented an increase from previous Maxwell Stephens surveys and reinforced the picture of a relatively stable professional employment market.
Regional distribution
A large proportion of the respondent base worked in London and the South East, reflecting the areas in which Maxwell Stephens was particularly active as a specialist FM recruiter.
The report states that around 63% of respondents came from London and the South East.
It therefore correctly cautions readers that regional representation needs to be considered when interpreting the data.
Northern Ireland, Wales and the North East were among the least represented locations.
Facilities Management salaries by region
The chart on page 7 shows significant geographical variation in average salary.
The historical 2020 averages reported were:
National remit — £63,888
London — £55,602
South East — £55,282
Midlands — £50,770
Scotland — £49,194
South West — £47,817
North West — £46,147
North East — £45,050
Northern Ireland — £44,750
East England — £43,538
Wales — £43,000
Professionals with a national remit therefore recorded the highest average, while London and the South East led among individual geographical regions.
The report also highlights the broader North-South salary difference visible in its data.
Because respondent numbers varied substantially between regions, these figures should be treated as survey averages rather than definitive market rates.
Industries employing FM professionals
Facilities Management continued to operate across an enormous range of sectors.
Property and Real Estate remained the largest employer represented, accounting for 22% of respondents.
Finance, Banking and Insurance followed at around 13%.
Other respondents worked in Engineering and Construction, Healthcare and Pharmaceutical, Education, Charity, Retail, Legal, Professional Services, IT, Government, Hospitality, Transport, Energy and several other industries.
The report highlights the increasing breadth of sectors employing FM professionals as evidence of how widely Facilities Management capability had spread across the economy.
Salary by industry
Page 9 provides a particularly useful historical comparison of average salaries by sector.
The survey found that IT offered the highest average FM salary at £67,177.
That was followed by:
Media — £64,444
Legal — £63,544
At the other end of the survey, Energy, Utilities and Charity were among the lower-paying sectors represented.
This highlights how substantially the same Facilities Management profession could differ in remuneration depending on the environment in which an individual worked.
Overall salary levels
The survey identified continuing salary growth.
Only 3% of respondents earned below £25,000, while 17% earned more than £75,000.
The largest individual group was the £46,000–£60,000 salary band, representing 31% of respondents.
The report viewed this as another indication that more FM professionals were progressing into higher salary brackets.
Again, these should be treated specifically as 2020 salary figures.
Average salary by Facilities Management job role
One of the strongest pages for employers and candidates is the salary-by-role chart on page 11.
The survey reports the following average salaries:
Director / Head of FM — £76,141
Senior Facilities Manager (HQ/Trophy Site) — £58,176
Head of Engineering — £57,250
Engineering Manager — £55,808
Office Manager — £47,000
Regional or Multi-Site Facilities Manager — £46,718
Single-Site Facilities Manager — £44,114
Engineering Technician / Support — £36,750
Facilities Supervisor — £35,259
Facilities Assistant — £27,000
The clear pattern is that remuneration generally increased alongside seniority and responsibility.
Salaries increased from the previous survey
The report states that average salary had increased by approximately 4.2% since the previous survey, excluding Facilities Assistants.
Maxwell Stephens described that increase as slightly ahead of the national average after inflation adjustment at the time.
The chart on the following page also suggests that the gap between the highest and lowest earners was becoming wider, particularly because more senior FM and engineering professionals were moving into the upper salary bands.
Employee benefits became increasingly important
The report dedicates significant attention to benefits and bonuses.
56% of respondents said more than 6% of their total remuneration package was made up of benefits.
The survey interpreted this as evidence that employers and employees were placing greater value on the overall compensation package rather than basic salary alone.
Which benefits mattered most?
Pension provision remained the most important benefit when respondents considered a new role.
However, the chart on page 14 also shows strong demand for:
annual leave, flexible working, bonuses or commission, health insurance, life insurance and car allowances.
Flexible working is particularly notable.
The report connects its growing importance with longstanding work-life balance challenges within Facilities Management, where long and unsociable hours were often considered part of the profession.
This makes the 2020 survey especially interesting as a historical record of how flexibility was already becoming an important talent-attraction tool.
Education within the FM profession
Facilities Management respondents were generally well qualified.
The report states that 62% held at least an HND or equivalent qualification.
The page 15 chart includes qualifications ranging from school-level study through HNC/HND, undergraduate degree, honours degree and postgraduate education to MBA and PhD level.
The findings reinforce the broad nature of FM career routes: formal academic education played a significant role, but the profession also contained many highly experienced people who had developed through practical and professional routes.
Industry-specific qualifications
Sector-specific development was especially prominent.
The survey found:
59% held an IOSH qualification
38% held NEBOSH
29% held at least an IWFM Level 3 qualification or above.
More than 50 different industry qualifications were mentioned by respondents overall.
That breadth demonstrates the range of expertise involved in Facilities Management, from health and safety and operational management through to technical and specialist building disciplines.
How valuable were qualifications?
The report also returns to the longstanding question of experience versus qualifications.
Respondents generally believed qualifications had provided some value in both their first and most recent Facilities Management appointments.
However, the comparison on page 17 suggests that qualifications were viewed as more influential when progressing into later and more senior positions than when initially entering the profession.
This reinforces the idea that professional development can become increasingly important as responsibilities grow.
Working hours
Facilities Management remained a demanding profession.
The survey found that 70% of respondents worked at least 41 hours per week.
Although the report says this represented a slight improvement compared with the previous survey, the working week remained above the wider national average referenced at the time.
The findings help explain why benefits associated with work-life balance were becoming increasingly important.
Out-of-hours working
Page 19 goes further by examining how frequently respondents were required to work outside normal hours.
48% worked out-of-hours or unsociable hours at least several times per month.
A significant 17% said they were required to do so several times per week.
The report characterises irregular hours as a relatively normal part of Facilities Management.
For employers, this makes working practices, flexibility and appropriate reward particularly relevant to employee attraction and retention.
Job satisfaction remained high
Despite those demands, overall job satisfaction was strong.
81% of respondents said they were fairly or very satisfied with their current job.
The proportion describing themselves as very satisfied reached 29%.
This suggests that many FM professionals found their work rewarding even where the job involved significant operational pressure.
But almost half were considering moving
High satisfaction did not necessarily translate into long-term retention.
The same page shows that 48% were fairly or very likely to change employer within the following 12 months.
This apparent contradiction is one of the report’s strongest recruitment findings.
An employee can be satisfied with their work while still being receptive to an opportunity offering greater responsibility, career development, improved flexibility or better overall reward.
Facilities Management was an experienced profession
Experience remained strongly represented.
69% of respondents had more than ten years’ experience in Facilities Management.
The largest single experience category in the chart is people with more than 20 years in the profession.
This reinforces the value organisations placed on long-term operational experience.
Experience and salary were closely connected
The report identifies a clear relationship between experience and remuneration.
As years within Facilities Management increased, respondents became progressively more represented within the higher salary bands.
Among those with more than 20 years of experience, 35% earned above £75,000.
This provides another historical indicator of the importance of experience in reaching senior and higher-paying positions within FM.
Where professionals expected their next role to come from
Specialist recruitment agencies remained the leading anticipated route to a new opportunity.
31% expected their next career move to come through a recruitment agency.
A further 22% expected an internal move within their existing organisation.
Direct applications were another significant route, while headhunting also featured.
Social media accounted for only around 9% and word of mouth around 5%.
This reinforces the continuing importance of specialist recruitment expertise within the FM employment market.
Salary remained important—but not everything
Salary was the most frequently selected career priority.
74% of respondents said salary was important to them.
However, interesting and engaging work was the second-highest factor.
Work-life balance, job security, challenging work, company culture, responsibility, recognition, location, holiday entitlement, career prospects and training and development were also represented.
The wider conclusion is that FM professionals were thinking about their careers through a combination of financial reward, meaningful work and quality of working life.
Flexible working was becoming a significant attraction
One of the most useful conclusions concerns flexibility.
The final page identifies flexible working as one of the employment benefits becoming increasingly valuable to FM professionals.
Considering the survey’s findings around long working weeks and out-of-hours responsibilities, the connection is understandable.
The report therefore provides a valuable historical point of comparison for understanding how the employee proposition within Facilities Management was changing by 2020.
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