Time Tracking & Management

This article covers Time Tracking from "acceptable" - to - "immature" and the difference between managing time vs. managing activities. 

Part 1: Tracking Time

Acceptable Time Tracking

As we've often said, organizations come in all sizes and flavors. Some activities may be suitable for standard time tracking, while some roles may not lend themselves well to jotting down minutes spent here and there. Few restaurants would ever dream of having the waiters or cooks track their time - they're either prepping food, cooking it or delivering it, and on a busy Saturday night they're lucky to even get to go to the bathroom. Two manufacturing companies basically make very similar "widgets," but one company pays workers by pieces completed and the other has a standard piece-per-hour expectation (by doing occasional studies), and pays by hours worked. So the first manufacturer tracks number of pieces (which must be recorded per person at the end of every shift) and the second just tracks time (with occasional checks to make sure the standard piece-per-hour is holding true). Two different ways of reaching a similar "time" conclusion.

One company we know has every production worker list each day's tasks with a reference number (Task 13 for Project A = 2 hours; task 7 for Project B = 30 mins, etc). In this particular company there's almost no middle management, and so the owner's rule makes sense: "I can't pay workers until I know what they did." Acceptable time tracking occurs when chunks of time can be accounted for by functional activity, and need to be accounted for because the worker is splitting time across multiple functions that cannot be correctly predicted by management. It's absurd, completely unacceptable, to track time for a person doing order entry 8 hours a day everyday. It is acceptable, however, to track time during the first week of the month when that order entry person may also be expected to create and distribute a previous month's report. Unbeknownst to the manager who spent 3 minutes reading the report, it may have taken 3 hours to create it.

Reasonable Time Tracking

"Reasonable" is a subjective word, but in this case we mean a leader's (owner, director or manager) desire to get a handle on what tasks staff are typically performing, for how much time. Once a "snapshot" of a week or a month is obtained, staff stop taking the time to track their time and re-focus on their work while someone analyzes the information gathered. What the leader may do with that information could range from staff changes (adding, reducing staff, or shifting staff to different functions), to bringing in computers, machines, temps, or outsourcing some functions altogether. To be in the category of "reasonable" time tracking, staff must be told why the exercise is being conducted, when to expect either the results of the analysis or decisions, and when the tracking will begin and end.

Immature Time Tracking (and the consequences)

As you might guess, in an immature organization, someone with authority gets the idea that either staff are wasting time, or the leader is subtly admitting that he doesn't actually understand what staff do on a daily basis. Either way, the authority figure (or authority group) decides to find out by imposing time tracking on everyone. When grumbling or push-back starts to occur, the leader (or a stand-in) generally explains that senior leadership wants to analyze where time is being spent so that "adjustments" can be made. Then fear (especially in this economy) adversely affects productivity, and everyone begins adjusting their numbers in a variety of ways (some too low, some too high, everyone wondering how to game a system they don't understand). No statement is made about when staff will get feedback on the exercise. No statement is made about when the exercise will end. The exercise goes on week after month, perhaps for an entire year, until the entire tracking effort finally, thankfully, dies of its own accord. First one area stops doing the tracking and is not reprimanded, then another stops, then the beast collapses. Many times the program dies without anyone actually using the data collected. In a worse scenario, someone tries to analyze the information gathered and figure out what changes to impose. Even if the intentions are good - to improve manufacturing quantity or quality; to reduce "maintenance-of-business" time and increase project time; or to bolster customer service - in an immature organization the culture will win in the end. The leader will lose the trust of the staff, and a downward spiral will ensue. In less than a year that leader will likely have either transferred (possibly even been promoted due to the appearance of progress and improvement) or left the organization. Workers will remember time tracking as a loathsome annoyance that never led to anything positive. No trust was established, and in fact future trust will be even more difficult to earn.

Part 2: Managing Time

Time Management vs. Activity Management

Time management is nothing more nor less than knowing when to shift attention from one task to another. A person can be responsible for his own time management if he knows the priorities of his supervisors. In many situations (particularly in immature organizations), workers don't know their supervisors' priorities because the supervisors don't know the managers' or directors' priorities. And in a truly immature organization, even the directors don't know the priorities because they've lost control of planning and only know how to react to the loudest customer or board demands.

In an immature organization, "time management" is misunderstood to be activity management. "Let's manage peoples' activities, let's make sure that everyone is as active as possible all day long." Unfortunately it's easy to keep people "jumping," but much harder to know whether the end results, the deliverables, are being produced from 100% or 90% or 40% of the activity. People can always look busy if their paycheck depends on being active.

The real art and science of managing time is to:

1. understand all the tasks that go into producing each deliverable;
2. understand the organization's maximum capability to deliver (that is, maximum without burn-out);
3. be aware of changing customer wants, needs and demands;
4. re-prioritize deliverables to best satisfy customers; and
5. constantly communicate the current customer needs and the organization's priorities.

If you understand the tasks which go into producing each deliverable, identification of the skills required to accomplish the tasks with proficiency can be used to establish training plans and efficiency metrics of individual workers.

If you understand the organization's maximum capability to deliver priorities can be shifted based on a mixture of customer demand and worker capacity.

If you are aware of changing customer wants, needs, and demands you can obtain alignment between worker hiring and training, and the purchase of the right tools and materials to meet customer needs.

If you reprioritize deliverables to best satisfy customer needs, the organization becomes flexible enough to rapidly address changes in the marketplace.

And if you constantly communicate the changing needs and priorities everyone in the organization knows not only when to alter their activities, but why. And when the why is understood, people will team spontaneously to quickly complete deliverables. As the organization matures it will also encourage people to make creative suggestions and offer creative solutions.

Bottom Line: One way to gauge the maturity of any organization is by observing the ratio of worker-directed vs. management-directed time management. Do the workers monitor their time or does management? The more that workers can manage their own time to fulfill the requirements of clear priorities, the more mature the organization, and the more engaged the workforce. Where management over-controls staff activities, treats workers like robots that "just don't get it" (because there are no clear priorities), the less mature the organization.