To be pissed off at this? (Work related)

[OneNightInParis]

I work in administration, office based. In our team there is me (full time) and 3 other members of admin staff (part time). We used to have another full time member of staff who was also our team leader and line manager. This team member has another role in the company.

Senior management haven’t backfilled this role. So myself and the other 3 team members have taken on more work and are struggling to balance it all.

I raised my concerns to management in that the team is struggling and we need another full time member of staff. They basically said that there wasn’t the budget to hire someone else.

Management are now wanting myself and my colleagues to log every single task we do, the start time, how long the task takes and any interruptions. We must log all phone calls, the nature of the calls, and how long the calls took.

Apparently this is so management can have a full view on what we do and how to improve efficiency.

Is it just me or is this completely unreasonable?

If cuts need to be made they need to know what to prioritise and what to drop from your teams workload. Or if might highlight processes that can be improved/made more efficent.

What is you issue? Do you have an alternative suggestion?

Well you opened up the can of worms. Nothing wrong with managements request at all.

I've had colleagues who have had to do this in the past.

It's PITA to do, however, it did result in change! Some of their workload was routed to other teams as it was quickly realised their workload was unrealistic.

You are pissed off because management are responding to your concerns by trying to find out what you do so that they can make a management decision?

Without seeing precisely what is being done they can't make a decision how to redistribute work or whether indeed an extra person is needed.

You seem very annoyed by the consequences of your own actions.

Im very annoyed because my team is short staffed and we’re struggling.

We have had multiple meetings to discuss and distribute workload. However we are still struggling to meet demands due us being one full time team member down.

Myself and other members of the team all agree that the only solution would be to back-fill for the empty full time role.

They won’t do that. So of course I’m pissed off.

I agree I would be pissed off as it can feel like being micromanaged.

However from a management perspective they need to understand the workflow and where staff time is being spent and how long tasks are taking, in order to identify where efficiency savings could be made, where work could be redistributed or where extra capacity is needed.
The only people that should be worried about this are those that are not working to capacity or not working efficiently.

My role isn't admin, but this level of detailed timewriting and call logging has been standard everywhere I have worked.

It is a pain, but it is needed to be able to plan future resourcing.

This has happened in my previous place of work and come before a load of redundancies.

A time in motion study is the best way to understand the exact tasks that are taking place, how long they take and where efficiencies can be made.

It's easy, though annoying, to implement and results are quick.

Agree with management how long the exercise will last, a full week should be enough to understand what daily tasks look like.

I think the recording of tasks is fine if it’s for a short period of time to gather data to make decisions etc.

Did you think they were just going to hire someone because you said the team where struggling?
Of course they are going to see if you time is being used efficiently before considering hiring a new person

You and the other team members are wrong, probably why you aren't managers.

Cutting out unnecessary work or improving efficiency is a preferable option to hiring more staff.

Sounds like a simple time and motion study to understand workload volumes and where efficiencies can be made. It may also work in your favour if it shows that the workload is unmanageable and you do need another full time member of staff.

Fill out their time recording as they have asked an pretend to be happy about it. However you and the team must not try and compensate for being one person down. Work at the same pace as you were before.

When performance drops they will get another member of staff when their bosses start asking questions.

If you work flat out and bust your arse then they will expect it all the time and the vacant post will be deleted. Seen it time and time again.

Err, no, recruiting someone else isn't the only solution, even if yourself does believe that... Stopping doing some things is another possible solution, and is something that I've had to do as a manager when I've had too few people for the workload. You have to understand what people do, why, and how it's necessary/important/useful - so you can decide what to stop doing.

If there's no money to hire someone else, there's no money. But yeah, as someone else said - don't try to make yourself look "busy", you need to be open about it so that they can see the problem.

Of course you're all in agreement about this. It'd be far easier for you all if they just recruit another team member than it is for you to accept that you might not be working in the most efficient manner. If you are all efficient you've not much to worry about, you'll be vindicated.

When I worked in a lab based role, we had to log each task in tenths of an hour.

6 minutes = 0.1
12 minutes = 0.2

and so forth.

That was tedious,

We work on client ‘projects’ and so have to log all work based time on a system - logged against the job number and also what the task was. We then also have to record all correspondence/notes/contact reports in another system.
non job related stuff also has to be related eg business financials, general admin, marketing, etc etc

you soon get used to it. It does depend on what the data is to be used for though: ours is used to make sure jobs are within budget and also to help budget for future jobs etc that client needs more account management time as they insist on lots of meetings or another type of job takes longer on designer time etc.
mum sure management do look at each team members productivity but it’s never been used as a stick to beat us with.

It is fairly normal in my line of work to work with teams listing tasks, understanding how long they take and how many of the occur over a year. It allows management to use that data to justify the budget for new members to the team. If money is tight, taking the word of the people in the roles, without data probably won't get approval.

If you pop yourself in their shoes, you would never start a business without knowing the tasks you will do, how long they will take and how many you will have. I think it's a reasonable request for a business to address your concerns (although it would be great if their systems had this data already)

Yes but you are not management so don't have that authority.

If that is the case the exercise will prove it and give the management the ammunition they need to justify it.

Or it will show what work can perhaps be redistruted/there can be efficiencies to ease the load on the team.

Either way it is a good thing. Why are are you scared to embrace the first step to a solution?

Management are listening to you and are trying to understand that time spend on each task so they have an overview of the output.

Then they will have a clearer picture on what to do next & that may include a full time resource, partial, cover, moving certain tasks to other teams, outsourcing, review procedures to create efficiencies, reorganisation of tasks depending on individual efficiencies etc. Thry are trying to determine what will make the biggest difference. It's a common time in motion study used in these situations.

What's your proposed alternative?