After reading the recession watch section of this business supplement last week by Patrick Forrester, who discusses his belief that ‘ensuring a company is efficient as possible is key to surviving in a difficult climate.’ I wondered… does becoming more efficient or productive involve more than the focus on increasing our workload that he discusses?

You see there are times in my life and career when I look back and say ‘yes, I could have done that differently’ or perhaps been more efficient especially when I compare what I did then to the amount of balls that are juggled now. Perhaps if I’d just got just my act together in my twenties or early thirties, I could have easily done everything in about a third of the time. In fact, looking back I could begin to think, God, what a slacker I was. Or was I? Well, it seems I’m not alone in pondering over this one.  According to a press release from Knox D’Arcy (KDA), a performance improvement consultancy “68 per cent of the working day of junior staff in the public-sector last year was ‘lost’ on average.”

And it’s not just public-sector staff. We are told that private-sector staff are only productive “on average 44 per cent of the time”.

So what are these reports and Patrick Forster really saying, when in the latter case, Forester indicates that he is an advocate of splitting up the workload of those who have left the company and sharing that workload with the remaining staff, he says,  ‘…Yes it increases somebody else’s workload but its not the case that they are coming in early or leaving late.  It’s simply the case that people become more efficient.’

First, there could be an implication there that we’ve all been a bit useless on the posts we’ve held prior to the downturn and coasted along blissfully unaware of the awful economic change that was about to shake us. Second, that public-sector staff are more useless than private (their words not mine). And Last, and by no means least, if you want to increase your work-force’s productivity as these surveys and articles suggest, you will most likely need to seek some advice on how to go about this by employing a performance improvement consultancy firm such as, oh, I don’t know, maybe like the performance improvement consultancy quoted above.

So I suppose the question is, how on earth are these figures calculated?  From the limited information the press release gives it seems the case studies are based on  “live observations to measure the time actually required to process a given quantity of work – and then compared that with the staff time available”.

Seems dubious to this HR Manager, I mean, how do you set out to calculate the time “actually required”?
So I think being more efficient or productive involves much more than just processing quantities of work and informing a work force that they now need to become more efficient. Organisations have always and will always survive and thrive because their staff do things over and beyond their immediate task such as helping other colleagues, being patient with difficult customers and going beyond the call of duty. And yes if a company strives to be innovative and possibly finds better ways of doing things that’s good. But remember these extras that we contribute may take longer but through the eyes of those (like myself) who advocate that our customer must always come first, that little bit of extra time taken is vital. Also, like myself in my twenties making mistakes may have taken time but surely was an essential part of my work-based learning experience.
I suppose what I am saying is we need to be careful as employers and employees to treat advice that is given in times of a recession carefully, digest diligently the ‘advice’ given by those who have over-night become ‘experts’ in the discussion on how to ride out the recession when they are also promoting their own services.

Trying to grab headlines to promote your services is understandable- advisory services is a business after all. But publicising research in this way could paint public-sector workers as being lazy when compared with their private-sector counterparts and this is an un-just and unfair judgment.

I’m sure many of us can be more efficient and managed more effectively. It’s hard to argue with that. But, remember the human aspects involved when upping a workload on those who may not be naturally capable yet perhaps worried about loosing their job, while hearing the excuse that it’s all because of the ‘down-turn’.

I did my own little time and motion study while writing this column, and it’s not good news. Comparing the time required to research it then write it to the time I actually spent on it, dealing with other issues in between such as three year old twins who want to play and an older child who needs help with her homework,  my utilisation rate was less than 18 per cent, oops…even though I was giving 100 per cent. Perhaps it’s time to call in the performance improvement consultant!!