Lost Time Management

“Managing Lost Time”. June 12, 2007. Seminar by Ford and Harrison.

Lost time is “any time not doing the job” including waiting time, visiting, sick leave abuse, personal phone calls etc.

Benefit plans may drive lost time and encourage abuse. (Employee isn’t to blame for taking advantage of poorly designed benefit plans.)

Loss due to “Lost time” is normally 15-20% of time. This is reduced productivity.

Reduce Lost time as an ORGANIZATION endeavor.

1. Manage the Causes (Absenteeism, Operational Inefficiencies, Structural Issues (benefit contracts), and Managerial Issues (employee motivation and training.)

2. Keys to success

-Create interdepartmental teams to address lost time

-Assess the causes of Lost Time (Evaluate data from Absenteeism Reports, Operational Analysis, Labor Agreements, Benefit Plans and Employee Surveys)

-Set goals and objectives to improve

-Measure and monitor results on a daily, weekly and monthly basis

BUILD A CULTURE OF MANAGING TIME EFFECTIVELY

CHANGE MANAGEMENT-HOW TO CHANGE VALUE SET. (Change yourself first, each person individually)

3. Managing Absenteeism:

-Engage personnel in improvement

-Identify and enforce uses of best practices

-Communicate policies clearly to employees.

4. Managing Operational Issues

-Involve supervisory and line personnel in accessment of operation challenges that cause lost time.

-Develop Best Practices

-Communicate Practices to all and train for implementation.

5. Managing Benefit Plan Contract Issues

-Identify parts of Benefit Plans that encourage lost time.

-Calculate costs

-Involve personnel in practices to reduce lost time.

6. Addressing Management Issues

-Take survey to determine key concerns of employees regarding management and change

-Create Change Teams, identifying goals and objectives, with emphasis on positive reinforcement.

-Build incentives (frequently start with safety)

-Use positive feedback

Key thoughts out of this Seminar:

1. If you want an Organization to change, change yourself first. If a Supervisor MODEL what you want.

2. Change is made one person at a time

3. BUILD A SIMPLE AND Efficient Model of tasks to avoid mistakes, lost time etc.

Probably the last thought (build a simple model) is the really key idea I got from this seminar. The “change” items 1 and 2 were reinforced, but I think if we can simplify many of our tasks to “efficient and simple” procedures we can provide much better service to our residents.