Sorry, no discussions about cold water and the ill effects there-of.
Does anyone know how much workforce production is lost to lunches, breaks, vacations, idle time, sick time.
Here is what I am getting at: You have a staff of say 500 people processing widgets.
In reality, you can mutliply people times the production rate and figure out how many widgets they can crank out. You need to know how much staff shrinkage there is…and it involves alot:
sick time
wasted time (people not where they should be)
meeting time
lunch time
break time
event time
etc
etc
I have heard numbers as high as 25%. So, if you need the production of 300 full time employees (FTEs), you really need 375+ FTE to get the job done.
I get terrible results when researching…too many sales pitches about buying some book.
I’m not doing homework or anything. I’m trying to substantiate something that everyone 'knows"…like the crappy rule about everyone using 10% of their brains…bogus well known ‘facts’ like that.
Anybody out there that can help? While it sounds like a dull issue, it is fascinating to see how much production time at all levels is lost to miscellaneous things. A huge cost of everything we consumer is spent or worker overhead. And legislation by states is making it worse.
I was the marketing manager for more then 400 sales personnel across the eastern seaboard. I worked with many a new manager and supervisor who wanted the exact info you are requesting Philister and while I’ll not answer succinctly, there is a wealth of information from NEWSWEEK. Who are the best legitimate polling and stat reviewers outside the realm of bureaucratic gallup pollers. Check out their web site and see what they have on your requested stats. If did not ahve dinner to make right now I’d find it for you.
One interesting bit of info that I thought funny enough to put on the bulletin board in my old office (I got the stat from NEWSWEEK)
"…the average American spends more time waiting for a stop light than they do in High School. In the average lifetime.
As for the OP. I’d venture a guess that out of an 8 hour day, the average employee spends 5 hours actually working. But the demographic data for this assumption is way to broad to make it at all realistic as a cross section of workers in general…
Well, it’s not exactly “everyone knows” but it was a WAG formula we used to determine employee profitability at my old job.
52 weeks x 40 hours = 2,080 hours.
Minus two weeks vacation, 6 paid holiday and 6 sick/personal days equals 1,904 hours
Minus 1 hour lunch, .5 hrs. break and .5 hours not yet back from break equals 1,428 hours.
Your events, in-service training, meetings, team rallies, etc, should be budgeted in on a weekly basis. Let’s say over the course of a year they average 2 hours per week when the employee is there. That’s another 76 hours, bringing the total down to 1,352 hours or. . .
65 percent of maximum available time.
Now that’s peak productivity. Your mileage may vary.
The rule of thumb we used to use (in software development, so it may not be relevant to your situation) was 30% dead time. That also matches up with kunilou’s estimate. It probably varies by industry, though.