Does your workplace have targets where the target becomes more important than the thing it was meant to measure?

[Chesterk]

NHS waiting lists.

Schools where being present when the register is called is given priority over missing lesson time if a pupil has a medical appointment for example.

I worked for a consultancy where internal cost structures meant it could be cheaper to outsource work to other companies (luckily it often just took a quick chat with a department head to show how ridiculous this was and to keep the work inhouse, so maybe not the best example).

I never had understood the logic behind a department being penalised if they didn’t use all their budget (not my company).

No but a friend of mine has just left a job where meeting targets was more important than doing the right thing for the people that they were meant to be helping. Basically they were meant to help clients find course for them to do. She was told to basically put people in any course that had spots even if unsuitable to reach her targets and get them signed off the books.

Where I work the internal accounting system means that departments put time and energy into competing over who gets to deliver something because then it is their income, but it makes absolutely no difference to the institution as a whole in terms of income. It wastes time, means often two departments are doing the same thing which is duplicated effort (but neither will give up doing it because from their point of view they've then lost income) but also means that the often actually best solution of them working together to deliver it is almost never done.

Civil Service: office attendance overrides productivity and ability to do your job well. Despite the fact during Covid people were happier, more productive and willing to do more to help.

We have this from time to time and it totally drives the wrong behaviour.
People put anything into a data field to get around that it must contain a value otherwise it is reported on for being incomplete. Then they wonder why their reporting is not accurate …
Rubbish in, rubbish out!

Oh yes many "performance indicators" change people's actions.

I have to make requests to senior staff to clarify things. They can use the number of requests to explain their workload. One person in particular prioritises short unhelpful answers but then classes each further clarification as a new request. It probably makes it look like he's dealing with loads rather than not actually resolving things properly first time.

There's lots of other stuff like that too, because we're under constant pressure to justify our existence.

Where I've worked the 'penalty' for not using all your budget has always been that you're likely to get a smaller budget going forward - is that what you mean, OP? I do agree it encourages unnecessary spend but I also see that you don't want to set overinflated budgets year after year so kind of see both sides to it.

I had a summer job as a student in a call centre for airport car parking. There were prizes for the person who answered the most calls on a shift.

The absolute last thing you wanted was an actual booking as that would take about 10 minutes and reduce the number of calls you could take. A quick query was far preferable but resulted in no income for the company.

If we received a call on a mobile phone and the customer wanted to make a booking we would claim they were breaking up and cut them off so that we could answer more calls!

These are brilliant examples. @purplecorkheartthats really sad.
@TheRealMagicit was a bit like that in the workplace I described earlier. There was an hourly rate that it cost company to employ you taking into account all cost centres etc, there was a proposed charge out rate which was based on being charged out a proportion of your work week. If someone from department a worked for a client on a project managed from department b, they would charge department b the same as an external client, rather than seeing it as one company.

@Caledoniadreamingnot just civil service. Some firms with blanket rules have put people and the organisation into ridiculous positions. There are people who are allocated to offices miles away (due to headcount budgets) with a team serving a different function sitting there with headphones on all day to work with a team there is no space for them to sit with, there are plenty of others who worked predominantly remotely for years pre-covid now having to go in, there are others who want to be in the office more who can’t be due to space. Where someone is more efficient or productive doesn’t seem to come into it.

B2B call centre for a training company. Had a client who wanted 15 staff members enrolled on our training. He had all the details that I needed. Our personal target was 5 enrollments per week. New manager wanted us to make 55 calls per day. My call took 1 hour 43mins. New manager reprimanded me because my call rate was down for the day. Luckily the business owner was onsite and a reasonable human being so I got her involved.
Bonkers.

A few years ago I read 'the tyranny of numbers' by David Boyle, which is a good insight into where the counting fixation came from. Once you know about it you start to see it everywhere.

While this is not exactly what OP asked its just a box ticking exercise. I sell online and on some of the platforms I use there are boxes that have to be filled in even though the item I am selling has no relevance. For example a jewellery item must have a "brand" but most of what I sell are unbranded vintage costume pieces. On one platform you can insert your own wording but on the other you just have to choose the least irrelevant description in order to list it.

Agree about non-spending of a budget. Leads to those who use the roads being greatly inconvenienced in March every year.

In 38 years I never worked for a company where this wasn't the case.

Really successful managers know this and can game the system.

Yes, that’s what I meant. I understand not wanting to overinflate budgets too, but often it leads to wasteful practices.

Such a good example.

God yes. Practice nurse. Target city. If you know you know.

Ex practice manager. I feel your pain!

Agreed - but so does having a budget that you know is consistently bigger than you need. One of the budgets I manage used to be like that and looking back we were spending money on unnecessary things because we knew there'd always be enough. Really want you want is thoughtful budget setting that looks at actual likely costs across the year etc, and then good and proactive processes for in-year variance but that's a lot more work all round!

Yes

ex teacher
it was insane. Targets for every child for every year for every subject.

In hospitals, one department can’t refer an outpatient to another department whose opinion they would like, as only GP referrals attract funding. So the <neurologist> has to write to the GP to request referral to the <cardiologist> whereupon the patient sits on however long a waiting list the <cardiologist> has, no matter how urgent their symptoms are - no priority is given to the fact that another specialist has sought the opinion. And the GP doesn’t have all the detailed info that the <neurologist > has. It’s quite bonkers, affects patient care, and is 100% due to funding streams.

I don't work there but my DD passing her phonics test was more imporrsnt than her acrually leanring to read.

Yes. In our case because the current boss doesn't really know what we do, so something that looks pretty on a graph becomes key.
More seriously, friends in health and education say they would agree with this.

Utter madness - we should all write to the health minister about this. It's costing our money and our health.

Yep. I work in the charity sector supporting those with addiction issues. The obsession with data is driving me mad. There are performance targets every month and if we don’t do every single minute task that is irrelevant to the actual job then we are chastised. My manager is obsessed with data, previous one was much more focused on the actual work we do helping the service users. I feel like my job has become a tick box exercise and that is not why I went in to it. Boils my piss tbh.

I briefly worked for a govt funded employment agency to support people on benefits back to work. We had targets for how many people we got into work per month. If you didn't hit your target for the month, you immediately went on a support programme which could ultimately lead to you losing your job.

Well, the inevitable happened where some employment agents set up links with companies to hire clients on a temporary basis, so that they could hit their targets, without telling the clients they were hired short term. It meant the agent hit their target each month, meanwhile the clients (often vulnerable people) found themselves unemployed and back on benefits a few months later after being let go by the company.

Totally immoral behaviour which still makes me angry when I think about it. I left very soon after starting there.