Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to recommend strategies for designing facility management (FM) workers’ jobs so as to boost their work outcomes. FM operatives/workers form the backbone of the labour force in property maintenance. Work outcomes are determined by: internal work motivation; quality of work performance; job satisfaction; turnover; absenteeism; and stress level. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a questionnaire survey. Data were collected from FM workers via face-to-face interviews. The data were subjected to t-test and correlation analysis using SPSS software. Findings – It was found that FM workers have significantly high work outcomes, which are measured as internal work motivation, quality work performance and job satisfaction. They have significantly low absenteeism. FM workers whose jobs have the following characteristics – using a range of skills to execute a variety of challenging activities; freedom to carry out activities with discretion; and opportunities for doing interesting work, leadership, promotion, training and upgrading – are likely to have higher-quality work performance, internal work motivation and/or job satisfaction. Research limitations/implications – The sample size is relatively small. Additionally, given the diverse nature of the work that FM workers do, the job characteristics identified may not be exhaustive enough. Practical implications – Recommendations are made to improve the work outcomes of FM workers through job design. These include ways to increase FM workers’ sense of accomplishment and to provide them with job stability. This will help to ease the labour shortage, and address the low-productivity issues faced by employers in the FM industry. Originality/value – This paper contributes to knowledge by identifying the job characteristics that significantly affect the work outcomes of FM workers. Employers may use the findings to redesign their FM workers’ jobs so as to boost their work outcomes.