I presented the findings in Oxford last summer, talking about the effects of overtime hours on other areas outside of work.

The Globe and Mail picked up the study and reported on it today.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/management/morning-manager/tv-time-outstrips-family-time-canadian-survey-finds/article2246080/

In the survey, employees reported work hours of 45 hours per week. This closely matches data from our own time and motion study projects from the last 22 years. Our data shows the average work week is 47 hours, including breaks.

The key finding from the Microsoft study that causes alarm is that employees consider about 17 hours per week to be unproductive. That’s more than a third of the work week!

Some of the common “productivity pitfalls” that were reported include unclear objectives, lack of team communication, ineffective meetings, unclear priorities, and procrastination.

Microsoft is in the technology business, and no doubt a couple of its survey questions were designed to support its mission. Sure enough, 55 percent of respondents said they relate their productivity directly to their software. Not surprising. But wait. That leaves 45% who relate productivity to something else. Whatever that is, it is not about technology. It’s likely that employees are thinking about soft skills that enable them to run better meetings, overcome procrastination, set priorities, and enhance other time management skills.

Those are the skills that get overlooked. An on-line service called Google Trends shows relative search volumes over the past few years – what terms people are interested in. A search on “training” shows a decline from a score of 1.5 in 2004 to a score of about .75 in late 2011. Meanwhile “smart phone” skyrocketed from 1.0 to over 2.0 between 2009 and late 2011. Clearly, smart phones today have a greater appeal than training.

Yet what if everyone who lined up for hours to buy the latest version of a smart phone spent their money on training instead? Something needs to be done to address all those unproductive hours. As we study the use of time, our data confirms that employees are not becoming any more productive in achieving their highest priorities than they were twenty years ago. Much has improved about how we do our work, but there is farther to go. Do we need the latest app? Or should we invest in new training methods to improve personal productivity?

The pie chart below is based on our time and motion studies of 565 different activities measured by managers since 1990. These activities are combined into 12 major categories.

The participants are managers from 38 different job types; sales managers, bank managers, vice presidents, construction supervisors and others. All of them are responsible for managing people.

These managers each tracked about 15-25 activities, corresponding with alphabet letters on our proprietary TimeCorder device. Each manager typically conducted a time and motion study of his or her own time for two weeks. The categories that appear on the pie chart each consist of a number of individual activities.

Ask managers what they do, and they will tell you that they need to be coaching, supervising, managing operations, planning for the long term, etc. These high priority activities fall into the first 7 categories clockwise (people management, strategy / analysis, planning, selling, customer administration, customer service, and operations)

Altogether, these pie segments show that only 59% of a manager’s time is spent on activities that add value. The rest are administrative, internal, travel, training (oneself) travel, personal time and miscellaneous activities. These do not directly add value to the organization.

Companies need to recognize that operating at 100% efficiency or 100% capacity is simply not feasible. Time for long term priorities and daily responsibilities is limited. Numerous “requirements” or burdensome tasks will inevitably eat up time that managers would like to allocate to their priorities.

These job “requirements” are the unwritten or administrative tasks that are a necessary part of being an employee in the organization or that must get done eventually. These include administration, training, travel, personal time and miscellaneous activities. For managers, they can account for up to 41% of the time!

Managers should maximize their productive efforts by first understanding how they allocate their efforts through a time and motion study. Then they should look to improve processes, delegate tasks, automate, and get training on how to maximize productivity.

Following are brief descriptions of the main categories:

• Planning – Activities oriented towards developing new products / services / clients, etc.
• Strategy / analysis – Reviewing business results to aid in planning
• Selling – Direct contact with prospects or customers to obtain additional business
• Customer Administration – Internal activities that support sales and service
• Service – Responding to customer requests or provision of products and services
• Administration – Required internal activities not connected with main priorities
• Internal Operations – Internal work that keeps the organization running
• Training – Personal and professional development done on work time
• Travel – Travel to customers, other offices, but not commuting
• Personal time – Lunch, breaks, calls to spouse, short medical appointments, etc.
• Miscelleneous – Activities not covered elsewhere

The classical definition of the organizational manager is one who plans, organizes, coordinates and controls. However, the reality is that there are numerous, mundane activities that take up a manager’s time – some of which actually impede his or her productivity. Many of these non-priority tasks are unavoidable; they come with the job, but are never written in the job description. Managers try to focus on their priorities, but often get bogged down in the requirements of the job.

Administrative tasks are an unavoidable reality of work. In our time and motion study consulting projects, we define administrative tasks as those that don’t necessarily advance work toward achieving its major objectives, nor directly support these activities. Instead, they are necessary requirements of the job. They might support the operations of the organization, such as filling out time sheets, reports, and paperwork. They might support the dissemination of information, through internal, non-planning meetings. Or they might support other workers, providing assistance by answering questions or filling in for others.

The irony is that since we began conducting our time studies using the TimeCorder device in 1990, technology continues to proliferate; yet there is no reduction in administrative tasks. This is because for the manager, the computer is not an automation tool; it is an information-processing tool. With the increasing number of tools, or programs available, from word processing to spreadsheet analysis and presentation software, options have also increased. Now, more scenarios can be checked, more reports can be printed, and more data needs to be inputted.

As shown in the table below, the administrative burden is massive and takes up 11.6 hours of the manager’s work week. This is 25% of his or her time. The activities in this category are also very interruptive; 43 of them occur each week lasting 16 minutes each.

Administration is also an area where managers would like to spend considerably less time than they do. Managers spend 11.6 hours in administration time, but would ideally only like to spend 7.3 hours doing these activities. No one likes doing paperwork.

Administration time increases as one moves higher in the organization (see table below). Some of the time in this category is simply staying in touch through networking, writing and responding to e-mails or communicating with head office. Nonetheless, even when communication activities are excluded (some of which are routine and some of which are people management), administration for presidents is still 11.7 hours per week or 18% of the time.

If one considers a “normal” work week for knowledge workers to begin at 9:00 a.m. and finish at 5:00 p.m., this would add up to 40 hours per week, including lunch and breaks.

We examined time use by employees who tracked their own time using the innovative TimeCorder device. All of the data is anonymous, so employees felt comfortable in tracking the time they spent on work activities. Across a broad range of industries, our data shows that the average employee works 46.7 hours per week. This means that they work just over an hour per day extra, assuming a base of a 40-hour week.

For this analysis, we looked at people who work more overtime hours than the average . Examining the pattern of activity among 235 employees who work over 50 hours, TimeCorder data shows the average time worked for this subset of workers is 55.5 hours per week. 72% of these hours (or 40 hours per week) are completed during the 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. period. Of the remainder, 19% occur prior to 9:00 a.m. and only 9% occur after 5:00 p.m.

So overtime work occurs more in the morning than in the evening.

An expanded work day shows the same pattern. When the bookends of the day are extended one hour earlier and one hour later, the result is a work day that stretches from 8:00 a.m. in the morning until 6:00 p.m. at night. Among those with high overtime hours, the total time worked during this period now represents 85% of all hours. Earlier in the morning than that, hours worked are equivalent to 10% of the total. Meanwhile later in the evening, overtime hours represent just 5% of the total.

Clearly, when people work long hours, there is a greater tendency to come in early and do their work before the start of the official work day. The chart below show the percent of time spent during each of the 24-hour periods of the day, starting at midnight, the “0” hour.

(On the chart, it appears as if work drop off in the afternoon. This is because some  employees shift their hours by arriving very early in the morning and finish their day by 3:00 p.m. or 4:00 p.m. )

What does this mean for organizations? If they plan to provide snacks to those who work overtime, breakfast items may be more appropriate than dinner items. And if extra meetings need to be scheduled, employees may be more willing to come in early than to stay late. Finally, energy levels may be higher in the morning than at the end of a day when some employees have already worked ten hours or more.

Undestand the hours of work when you are most productive. Your time is worth it!

While participants in our studies typically track their time for two weeks, our results are reported on a weekly basis. The chart below shows total work hours, including work done at the office, at clients’ locations and at home. Business travel and breaks during the day are included, though commuting time is not. Overtime is done in the morning, at night, and on the weekends.

The average for all full-time employees is 46.7 hours per week. Within this group, municipal workers generally work 42.5 hours. Many of these are unionized employees with contracts that specify their maximum number of hours. Once negotiated, they generally stick to this The other jobs that are lower than the average do not have a travel component. Employees stay at one location.

Those who are above average have greater responsibilities, more travel, and more people management as part of their  jobs.

The chart below shows work hours per week (blue bars). Those who supervise employees have longer work hours and occasions than those who do not. Independent consultants are an exception. Unlike most other employees, their income is directly related to hours worked – they have a different incentive from employees to work long hours.

The scale for the red bars is in minutes. The bars represent typical durations, showing how long each event lasts.

Both scales increase at the same time, however there is not a causal relationship between hours worked and length of duration. Rather, durations increase with added responsibilities. Inside sales reps and receptionists for instance receive a high number of short phone calls or customer visits. Hence their durations are short. Middle managers and presidents on the other hand are more involved with long term planning through meetings. Meanwhile field supervisors show a long duration because their time spent in the field is usually long.

Generally, employees work longer hours than they would like. However, salaried workers do not receive extra compensation for overtime hours. They work more hours than the norm to:

• Achieve a level of results beyond expectations in order to obtain a promotion
• Reach bonus status, whereby compensation is tied to results
• Comply with requests by senior management
• Conform with peer pressure
• Be consistent with external schedules (e.g. train schedules, car pooling, or night time courses)
• Avoid stresses elsewhere. (For some, the attraction of work occurs when work becomes like home and home is too much work)