Time structuring begins with a schedule one follows for each day of the week. However, work-time analysis reviews how someone spends the time set aside for work. Work time analysis can take a short amount of time but allows managers to better understand how long employee tasks actually take.
Work time analysis can find inefficiencies in the workplace that can be eliminated, improving productivity.
• How much time at work is actually spent working? Time labeled as work should be spent as productively as possible. When breaks creep into work time, someone will end up working later into the day, cutting into planned free time. Setting aside specific break periods and sticking to them improves productivity.
• How much time at work is wasted? Meetings are a common culprit of wasted time at work. A communication meeting is necessary in large organizations and for complex projects. However, it is easy for a communication meeting to devolve into a social session. An extra half hour of time spent socializing can require overtime to make up and cut into family time and free time later.
• Time structuring in the work place should include a time study as to how people think they are spending their time and how it is actually spent. By keeping a detailed log for a few work days, employees may find that they spend more time in meetings than actually working or more time on non-value added tasks. Managers should then seek to eliminate non-value added tasks from anyone’s schedule to improve their productivity. When more time is spent on productive activities, employees should then be able to get more work done in a standard work day. This reduces the need to demand overtime or work on weekends.
• What are the requirements of the job? What tasks must be done during work time? It is reasonable to ask what someone should do and should not do as part of their job. Asking a female drafter to fetch coffee seems like a simple request until it is realized that the intern can be paid half as much do to the same job. Demanding that a configuration manager review drawings because of a checker’s mistake could be a performance verification for the checker’s quality.
However, making this a routine part of the configuration manager’s job makes the checker redundant, wasting the time of one or both of those involved. When reviewing the requirements of the job, delegate authority as often as is practical and always delegate low skill tasks to the lower level (and cheaper) personnel in the office.
