Facilities Management Salary Survey 2022
Resource type and category
Resource type: Salary survey / Facilities Management industry research
Category: Facilities Management Salaries, FM Market Insights, Recruitment Research, Careers and Workplace Trends
Intended audience
Facilities Managers, Heads of Facilities, FM Directors, Regional and Multi-Site Facilities Managers, Engineering and Estates professionals, HR teams, Talent Acquisition professionals and employers interested in UK Facilities Management salaries, workforce trends and historical recruitment data.
Resource-card description
Explore the Maxwell Stephens Facilities Management Salary Survey 2022, covering FM salaries, benefits, qualifications, experience, working patterns, management responsibilities and career motivations.
Full resource-page description
The Facilities Management Salary Survey 2022 provides an in-depth picture of pay, careers, responsibilities and working life across the UK Facilities Management profession.
Produced following several years of major workplace disruption, the report explores how the FM sector was responding to changes triggered by the pandemic, flexible and hybrid working, shifting employee expectations and greater organisational recognition of the role Facilities Management plays in keeping businesses operational.
The survey analyses much more than remuneration.
Alongside salary levels by job title and industry, it examines gender and age demographics, employment status, academic and professional qualifications, years of experience, employee benefits, working hours, work-life balance, budget responsibility, people management, job satisfaction and career mobility.
It therefore provides both employers and FM professionals with a valuable historical benchmark for understanding the employment market in 2022.
A profession changed by the pandemic
The opening of the report places the findings firmly within the context of the COVID-19 period.
It describes how the pandemic accelerated change in where and when people worked, challenged traditional office-based working and forced Facilities Management professionals to adapt rapidly alongside the organisations they supported.
At the same time, the report argues that these challenges helped increase recognition of Facilities Management.
Keeping workplaces safe, functional and adaptable during unprecedented disruption placed FM more visibly at the centre of business continuity and operational resilience.
This context is important when interpreting many of the findings that follow—particularly the increased importance of flexible working and work-life balance.
Gender representation
The survey found that Facilities Management remained predominantly male in 2022.
69% of respondents were male and 31% female.
Female representation had increased by around one percentage point compared with the previous survey.
The report also identifies progress at senior level.
Approximately 27% of senior positions represented—including Director/Head of FM, Regional FM and Senior FM roles—were occupied by women.
That was an increase from the previous survey and was interpreted as evidence that the gender gap was gradually narrowing.
Gender by job role
The chart on page 3 provides a more detailed breakdown.
Female representation was comparatively strong among Assistant Facilities Managers, Single-Site Facilities Managers, Regional or Multi-Site Facilities Managers, Facilities Supervisors and Senior Facilities Managers.
One particularly interesting result was Office Management.
The survey found that women represented approximately 65% of Office Manager respondents, making it the first Maxwell Stephens survey in which women clearly outnumbered men within that category.
Engineering remained much more male dominated.
The report notes that women represented only a small proportion of Engineering Technician, Engineering Manager and Head of Engineering respondents, making technical FM one of the areas where the gender gap remained most pronounced.
The age profile of Facilities Management
The age data continues a theme identified in previous Maxwell Stephens surveys.
56% of respondents were aged 45 or over.
The breakdown on page 4 shows:
18–24: 1%
25–34: 16%
35–44: 27%
45–54: 32%
55–64: 19%
65–74: 5%.
The report notes a small increase in younger respondents compared with previous surveys but still identifies the relatively low number of young people entering FM as a significant industry issue.
For employers, the findings highlight the continuing importance of succession planning, apprenticeships, early-career recruitment and clearer routes into the profession.
Permanent employment
The survey found very high levels of permanent employment.
95% of respondents were permanently employed, with much smaller proportions working on a temporary, self-employed or unemployed basis.
The permanent-employment rate was unchanged from the previous survey.
This provides useful context when combined with the later findings around employee mobility: the FM workforce was largely permanently employed, but a significant proportion remained open to changing employer.
Regional distribution
London and the South East continued to dominate the respondent base.
The report states that 60% of respondents worked in London and the South East, although the proportion working specifically in London had declined compared with previous surveys.
Maxwell Stephens suggests that increased working from home and flexible working could have contributed to this change by making it easier for professionals to live further from central London.
The report also records an increase in professionals with a national remit, representing around 7% of respondents.
For the webpage, it is important to note the London and South East weighting when presenting the wider data.
Overall Facilities Management salary levels
The salary distribution on page 7 shows a wide range of earnings across the profession.
The survey found that 51% of respondents earned below £45,000.
At the same time, 12% earned more than £75,000, while 37% earned between £45,001 and £75,000.
Only around 2% earned up to £25,000.
The largest individual salary band was £35,001–£45,000, representing 30% of respondents, followed by £45,001–£60,000 at 19% and £60,001–£75,000 at 18%.
These figures provide a valuable historical picture of the 2022 market but should not be interpreted as current FM salary benchmarks.
Salary by Facilities Management job role
Page 8 provides one of the most valuable charts in the report.
Average 2022 salaries were reported as:
- Director / Head of FM — £79,976
- Head of Engineering — £72,411
- Account Manager — £64,875
- Senior Facilities Manager — £58,237
- Engineering / Technical Services Manager — £58,000
- Estates Manager — £49,850
- Project Manager — £48,750
- Regional or Multi-Site Facilities Manager — £47,839
- Single-Site Facilities Manager — £45,445
- Office Manager — £41,596
- Engineering Technician / Support — £40,500
- Facilities Supervisor — £36,235
- Facilities Assistant — £29,692
The results show a clear relationship between seniority, responsibility and remuneration.
The report also states that, with the exception of Office Managers, average salaries increased across the positions tracked between the previous survey and 2022.
For roles represented in both datasets, the average increase was approximately 5.2%.
The widening senior salary gap
The following page breaks each job title into salary bands.
The report interprets the distribution as evidence that the difference between lower and higher earners continued to widen, particularly at the senior end of the market.
Positions such as Director/Head of FM, Head of Engineering and Senior Facilities Manager were increasingly represented in higher salary brackets.
This reinforces the financial value associated with senior leadership, specialist engineering capability and broader organisational responsibility.
Facilities Management across industry sectors
The 2022 survey again demonstrates how widely Facilities Management operates across the economy.
Property and Real Estate remained one of the largest employers of FM professionals.
The report also identifies increasing representation within sectors including Finance, Banking & Insurance, Healthcare & Pharmaceutical, Management Consultancy and Gaming & Entertainment.
Other represented sectors ranged from Government, Education and Legal Services to Engineering, Manufacturing, Transport, Technology and Hospitality.
The breadth of the data reflects an important characteristic of FM: almost every organisation with people, property or operational infrastructure requires some form of Facilities Management capability.
Salary by industry
Average pay varied considerably according to sector.
The page 11 chart records the following 2022 averages:
Healthcare & Pharmaceutical — £65,133
IT — £64,923
Professional Services — £60,236
Management Consultancy — £59,527
Wholesale & Retail — £58,416
Finance, Banking & Insurance — £57,736
Central Government — £56,888
Property & Real Estate — £56,219
Leisure, Hotels & Catering — £55,700
Manufacturing — £54,322
Engineering & Construction — £52,791
Energy — £51,312
Local Government — £50,525
Legal — £49,510
Training & Development — £49,400
Charity & Not For Profit — £47,434
Education — £47,003
Electricity, Gas & Water — £46,750
Transport & Logistics — £45,212.
Healthcare & Pharmaceutical therefore led the survey, narrowly ahead of IT.
The report notes that sectors such as Charity, Education, Transport and Utilities remained towards the lower end of the salary data.
Academic qualifications
The survey found that FM remained a relatively well-qualified profession.
57% of respondents held at least an HND or equivalent qualification.
The highest-qualification chart includes school-leaver qualifications, HNC/HND, ordinary and honours degrees, MBA, City & Guilds and PhD-level study.
The report connects this with the wider increase in participation in higher education and expects qualifications to remain an important part of the future FM workforce.
Salary and academic qualifications
Page 13 compares average remuneration with educational attainment.
The report gives the following historical averages:
School-leaver qualifications — £49,887
HNC/HND — £59,123
Ordinary degree — £55,138
Honours degree — £56,489
Master’s degree — £68,837
MBA — £77,583
PhD — £70,244.
MBA holders recorded the highest average salary within the survey.
Although the figures are not perfectly linear, the report identifies an overall positive relationship between higher qualification levels and remuneration.
As with all survey findings, correlation should not automatically be interpreted as qualification alone causing the salary difference, as seniority and experience are also likely to influence earnings.
Industry qualifications
Professional and sector-specific development remained prominent.
Nearly 63% of respondents held an IOSH qualification, while just under 20% reported a NEBOSH qualification.
IWFM qualifications across several levels also featured, alongside NVQ, ILM and Construction and Built Environment qualifications.
The results demonstrate the range of professional development routes available within Facilities Management.
Salary and IWFM qualification level
The salary-by-industry-qualification chart provides one of the more interesting findings.
Across many qualifications, the report found no simple relationship between holding the qualification and salary.
However, IWFM qualifications showed a much clearer progression.
Average salaries reported included:
IWFM Level 3 — £38,000
IWFM Level 4 — £54,250
IWFM Level 5 — £61,125
IWFM Level 6 — £76,333
IWFM Level 7 — £83,020
The survey therefore identifies a strong positive relationship between progressively higher IWFM qualification levels and respondent salaries.
This again needs to be interpreted with seniority in mind: professionals completing higher-level qualifications are also likely to be progressing into positions with greater responsibility.
How valuable were qualifications?
The report also asks respondents how important their qualifications had been in securing employment.
For the first FM role, the breakdown was approximately:
25% not valuable, 32% somewhat valuable, 30% valuable and 13% extremely valuable.
For the most recent FM role, the proportion considering qualifications not valuable fell to 22%, while 33% considered them somewhat valuable, 29% valuable and 16% extremely valuable.
The report concludes that qualifications may become more influential as professionals progress into increasingly senior positions.
Salary also increased according to the degree of value respondents placed on their qualifications, providing another indication that education and professional development can form part of longer-term FM progression.
Experience in Facilities Management
The survey shows a highly experienced workforce.
58% of respondents had more than ten years of experience in FM, while 27% had more than 20 years.
Only 3% had fewer than three years in the profession.
This reinforces both the longevity of FM careers and the challenge identified earlier in the report around attracting sufficient numbers of younger professionals into the sector.
Experience and salary
The relationship between experience and remuneration is particularly clear.
Average salaries increased from:
Less than three years — £36,208
3–5 years — £40,120
6–10 years — £47,174
11–15 years — £56,241
16–20 years — £56,931
Over 20 years — £72,080.
The report therefore describes a direct positive correlation between years of experience and salary.
Professionals with more than 20 years in FM earned almost twice the average recorded for respondents with less than three years of experience.
Benefits and bonuses
Employee benefits continued to form an important part of total remuneration.
53% of respondents said benefits represented 0–5% of their package.
However, 47% received at least 6% of their overall remuneration through benefits or bonuses.
The remainder were spread across bands ranging from 6–10% through to more than 25%.
The findings reinforce the importance of assessing total reward rather than basic salary alone.
Which benefits were most attractive?
Page 19 provides a particularly useful employer benchmark.
The benefits respondents considered most attractive when looking for a new job were:
Pension — 77%
Annual leave — 70%
Flexible working — 65%
Bonus scheme / commission — 59%
Health insurance — 56%
Life insurance — 41%
Car / car allowance — 34%
Paid overtime — 26%
Share incentives — 25%
Gym membership — 14%.
The increased importance of flexible working is one of the most significant changes highlighted by the report.
Following the pandemic, flexibility had moved much closer to the traditional core benefits of pensions and annual leave.
Working hours and work-life balance
Working patterns also changed.
The report states that 61% of respondents worked between 31 and 60 hours per week and notes that working hours appeared to have declined compared with the previous survey.
In the 2020 survey, 70% had reported working at least 41 hours per week.
Maxwell Stephens suggests that greater home working and increased flexibility may have contributed to the change.
The survey nevertheless continues to treat work-life balance as a major issue within the profession.
Unsociable hours
The findings on out-of-hours working reinforce that point.
Only 11% said they never worked unsociable hours.
The chart shows:
21% — several times a week
11% — once a week
21% — several times a month
14% — once a month
22% — several times a year
11% — never.
This means 53% worked unsociable hours at least several times per month, while 89% experienced them at least occasionally during the year.
That helps explain why flexibility and work-life balance feature so prominently elsewhere in the survey.
What were the biggest challenges in FM?
Page 22 introduces a useful addition to the salary research: respondents were asked about the challenges they had experienced during their FM careers.
The visual word cloud places “Heavy Workload” overwhelmingly at the centre.
Other recurring themes include:
working with contractors and external supply chains, feeling that the role or department is underappreciated, enforcing organisational policies, lack of senior-management support, insufficient budgets, inadequate staffing, management structure, lack of control and limited training opportunities.
The report therefore presents many of the profession’s biggest difficulties as being connected not simply to buildings, but to resources, organisational support, workload and stakeholder relationships.
Budget-management responsibility
The 2022 survey also explores the scale of responsibility held by FM professionals.
79% of respondents had some form of budget-management responsibility.
Among those managing budgets:
26% managed up to £1 million
51% managed £1 million–£10 million
11% managed £10 million–£20 million
4% managed £20 million–£30 million
7% managed more than £30 million
The report therefore notes that 22% managed budgets above £10 million.
This provides strong evidence of the commercial responsibility involved in modern Facilities Management.
People-management responsibility
People leadership was even more common.
84% of respondents had people-management responsibility.
The team-size breakdown shows:
27% managed up to five people
43% managed 6–20
15% managed 21–50
10% managed 51–100
5% managed more than 100
Overall, 73% managed more than five people, while around 30% were responsible for teams of at least 20.
The report uses this to reinforce the increasing importance of leadership, communication and people-management skills, particularly as professionals move into senior FM positions.
What FM professionals valued most
Salary remained the strongest career priority.
78% of respondents identified salary as something they valued highly.
However, it was followed closely by several non-financial factors:
Work-life balance — 65%
Interesting / engaging work — 61%
Job security — 57%
Recognition — 52%
Challenging work — 49%
Responsibility — 49%
Company culture — 49%.
Holiday entitlement, training and development, benefit packages, location and career prospects also featured.
The data therefore gives employers an important message: salary gets attention, but the quality of the working experience influences attraction and retention too.
Work-life balance became a major priority
One of the defining findings of the survey is the increased prominence of work-life balance.
At 65%, it was the second-highest career priority after salary.
Maxwell Stephens notes that it increasingly encountered professionals prepared to sacrifice some salary in return for an opportunity offering a better balance.
Combined with the results on flexible working and unsociable hours, this provides a particularly valuable historical record of how employee expectations were changing following the pandemic.
Job satisfaction
Overall satisfaction remained relatively strong.
The chart on page 26 records:
5% very unsatisfied
13% unsatisfied
26% neutral
42% satisfied
15% very satisfied.
The report notes that fewer than 20% described themselves as dissatisfied.
However, one important change was the decline in people describing themselves as very satisfied.
That figure fell from 29% in the previous survey to approximately 15% in 2022.
This makes the data especially interesting for employers considering employee engagement and retention following a period of major disruption.
How many professionals expected to change employer?
Career mobility remained high.
45% of respondents said they were fairly or very likely to change employer during the following 12 months.
A further 26% were undecided.
Only 29% described themselves as not very or not at all likely to move.
For employers, that creates a significant retention challenge: even relatively satisfied employees may remain open to stronger external opportunities.
Where did FM professionals expect their next role to come from?
Recruitment agencies strengthened their position as the leading anticipated route to a new role.
The chart on page 28 reports:
Recruitment agency — 34%
Internal move — 21%
Direct application — 21%
Headhunted — 11%
Social media — 10%
Word of mouth — 2%.
The recruitment-agency figure increased by three percentage points from the previous survey.
For Maxwell Stephens, this provides particularly relevant historical evidence of the importance FM professionals placed on specialist recruitment support when considering their next career move.
What the 2022 survey says about the future of FM
The report concludes that Facilities Management had emerged from several difficult years with greater recognition but also with changing employee expectations.
Salary levels were continuing to improve, although the pace of increase had slowed.
The profession remained predominantly male and relatively mature in age, but female representation was gradually increasing, particularly in mainstream FM roles.
Perhaps the biggest shift was in the way professionals thought about work.
Flexibility, work-life balance and quality of working life had become substantially more important, reflecting wider workplace changes accelerated by the pandemic.
For employers, the implication is clear: attracting and retaining strong Facilities Management professionals requires competitive pay, but also flexibility, meaningful work, development, recognition and sustainable working expectations.
Our expertise is narrow by design and deep as a result.