Resource Projection Best Practice 4 – 80 Percent Efficiency Estimate

StrategyDriven Resource Projection ArticleHuman beings are social creatures having both emotional and physical needs. Businesses able to satisfy these needs will be better positioned to attract and retain talented personnel; giving these businesses a much needed advantage in the increasingly knowledge driven marketplace where human resources are increasingly limited. Such organizations will further benefit from increased worker engagement because employees feel more connected and valued.[wcm_restrict plans=”40916, 25542, 25653″]

Meeting these very personalized needs requires an ongoing time investment, social time to build and maintain co-worker relationships, to connect with customers and clients, to contact family and friends, as well as time to physically relax, refresh, reflect, and rejuvenate. This time investment varies day-to-day and person-to-person making it extremely difficult to measure. Time studies, project management research, and this author’s managerial experience suggest that knowledge workers, on average, require a twenty percent time investment in these personal activities. Stated another way, professionals spend about one and a half hours of an eight hour workday on non-productive but personally necessary activities. Hence, professionals, those whose breaks are ill-defined, can be assumed to work at eighty percent efficiency when fully engaged.

To most executives and managers the forfeiture of a whole eight hour workday per employee per forty hour workweek seems a huge and unnecessary waste of precious time that should be recovered. Consider for a moment, the activities that comprise this one and a half hour per day expenditure:

Social
Organization Related

  • reviewing personal mail and email for items coming from company sponsored professional organizations
  • reading general intra-organizational handouts or emails and listening to broadcast voice-mail announcements *
  • engaging in friendly, social interactions with co-workers, peers, managers, and subordinates

External to the Organization

  • reviewing personal mail and email from family, friends, and organizations of personal interest
  • responding to phone inquiries from family, friends, and organizations of personal interest
  • engaging in friendly, social interactions with clients, suppliers, and regulators

Physical
Environmental

  • waiting for one’s computer to turn on and boot up at the beginning of the workday *
  • waiting for one’s computer to shutdown at the end of the workday *
  • waiting for computer updates pushed out by the organization’s IT Department to complete *
  • deleting spam email
  • transiting to and from meetings *
  • waiting for meetings to start *
  • losing time because of meetings that don’t end on time *

Personal

  • getting one’s morning coffee and snack
  • getting one’s afternoon soft drink and snack
  • taking one to two restroom breaks per day
  • reflecting on work completed or tasks to be started

Note: Items followed by an asterisk are driven by an organization’s business operations and are outside of the control of the individual employee. These items are simply a cost of doing business.

To some, this list raises the question as to whether or not the estimate of an hour and a half per day spent on non-productive activities should be raised. Most will realize that a great many of these activities are simply a cost of doing business; driven by processes or that we are all, in fact, human. While some time wasters, such as meetings that start or end late, can be eliminated, the majority of these activities is needed and should be managed for the benefit of employees and the business.

It is important to remember that employees who feel connected are more engaged and are therefore more productive and less likely to leave the organization. Not planning for time to enable this connection to be forged, positions an organization for the realization of increased costs associated with lower productivity and higher attrition. Thus, the 80 Percent Efficiency Estimate helps organizations account for needed, organizationally valuable, non-productive time.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”40916, 25542, 25653″]


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