My role in the Client Implementation team involves coaching clients of eg in operations management techniques and in the use of the eg operational intelligence® software suite.  In order to measure, manage and improve productivity we spend time at the outset of each project measuring how long it takes staff to complete tasks.  The unit times we record help us to assign standard times to tasks – taking into account skill level – and these times can then be entered onto our software and used to forecast how long it will take teams to finish work and analyse how well they are performing against standard times.  This is essential to help Managers and Team Leaders understand how staff are performing and helps them to identify and correct any issues – such as training needs or underperforming staff – swiftly to reduce any impact on the performance efficiency of the organisation.

So, do you think individuals should be credited with additional time for reworking a case?

Historically eg’s stance has been no i.e. rework tasks should carry a zero time.  This is on the basis that there is no incentive to complete the case right first time if you know that you’ll get a generous allowance of time to correct it.  However, many of eg’s clients allow between 1 minute and 10 minutes to rework a case to avoid challenge and conflict.  This is inflating levels of productivity and masking underlying performance issues.  Is this still the right approach?

Please let me know what you think – leave a comment or email me terifebery@eguk.co.uk