Use a Comprehensive Time Survey

1
Tutorial 4
DIG FOR VICTORY

• Use a Comprehensive Time Survey
• to flesh out the indirect benefits of the portal

This is an excellent way to turn benefits
inherently difficult to realise into something
that appears more solid and real. After all, 200
or more people cant be wrong, can they?
Making the Business Case
2
Why a time survey?

• You cant fire 10 minutes of a person
• But you can accept that the 10 minutes saved
  could be re-directed into activity which adds
  value to the company (e.g. producing or selling
  more product)
• Also, in areas of high headcount (e.g. call
  centres) a 10 minute saving over over 90 people
  could equate to a 2 fte saving (where company has
  a 450 minute working day) so maybe you can fire
  the 10 minutes after all!
• Its hard to argue with hard evidence
• If you have a large sample (see overleaf) say
  200 people it will be hard for anyone to
  dispute the validity of the survey results
• You can re-survey post-implementation
• Using the same people to confirm that the savings
  hoped for were actually delivered (or hopefully
  even more)
• Even if their results come back lower (more
  likely) you would probably still comfortably make
  your case (as you shall see later when I show you
  some benchmark figures)

3
How should I run the survey?

• Pick a large sample
• A representative survey of 100 or more gives
  (statistically) a margin of error of less than
  5, for a large population (i.e. several thousand
  people)
• However, not everyone has studied statistics at
  university, so I would play on the safe side and
  survey 300 people (hoping for about 200 valid
  returns)
• Pick a representative sample
• Make sure your survey includes a healthy mix of
  early adopters, laggards and those in-between
• Make sure ages, genders and geographies are
  evenly spread
• And include different grades and types of
  employees
• Do the survey by email (using an e-form if
  possible)
• With a paper back-up for employees not on email
• This makes admin easier (particularly chasing
  responses)

4
What should I ask?

• The Questions
• On the next three slides, I have listed 10
  questions that all begin with how many minutes
  per day would you save if
• Any more than 10 questions will probably result
  in too low a response rate, so resist the
  temptation to ask more
• The Answers
• Allow them to select from 0.5,1,2,3,5,10,15,20,30,
  60 minutes per day as an answer (using a drop
  down box)
• Require them to select a description of their job
  role from the following options manager,
  pa/secretary, sales, customer service,
  production, operations, back office
• This allows you to cut the data different ways
  (and to point to direct realisation of benefits
  through fte savings in roles with high headcount
  concentrations)
• The results
• I have run this exact survey on one of my
  projects, so I have also given you some (actual)
  benchmark results to look at and compare with
  your own (later on in this deck)

5
Time Survey Questions (1of3)

• How much time could you save each day if you
  could
• Access a directory of all the people in our
  organisation, which could be browsed or searched
  on many different fields (e.g. by organisation
  map or name, job title, location, manager, etc.)
• Access all the forms we use at work, plus guides,
  templates, policies, etc. all through one site
  (e.g. all company powerpoint templates, approved
  logo picture files, pensions guide, share scheme
  forms, lists of approved suppliers, employee
  benefit guides, financial approval forms,
  password applications, maps of offices, etc.)
• IT Helpdesk on-line can access frequently asked
  questions, hints and tips, log faults and track
  them to completion, view status of current
  service, check planned outages, etc.

6
Time Survey Questions (2of3)

• How much time could you save each day if you
  could
• Access an application from which you could book a
  meeting or conference room at any of our company
  sites (and request catering, projector,
  flipcharts etc. as appropriate) and be able to
  change or cancel bookings
• Access an application where you can complete
  expenses claim forms on-line, submit them
  electronically and track the progress of the
  claim through to payment (you would need to
  retain receipts etc. for occasional spot checks)
• Access an e-learning application from which you
  could view a training catalogue, browse and
  search available courses, book a course and (if
  it is deliverable online) receive it there and
  then, whilst sitting at your PC.
• View an (internal) job vacancies listing on-line
  and be able to apply directly for jobs from there
  (loading a pre-saved CV)

7
Time Survey Questions (3of3)

• How much time could you save each day if you
  could
• Access a facility for notifying the reception of
  your building of visitors due, their car
  registration (for security purposes) and
  reserving for them a car parking space
• Access an online HR dashboard application from
  which you can do timesheeting, claim overtime,
  record sickness and request leave (as well as
  browsing information)
• Ability to search for any or all of the
  information listed above and quickly access a
  comprehensive list of results (which includes
  people, web pages, documents stored on drives and
  internal external news feeds).

8
Benchmark results you could expect
9
Working out the benefits
This is a worked example for a company of 20,000
employees, where the average annual salary (in US
dollars) is 35,000 (fully loaded) and the
standard working day is 450 minutes. It is
assumed that only one third of the time saved is
actually realised (through reduced recruitment,
lower use of contractors, temp staff, better
productivity, higher sales, etc.)
20,000 x (30 / 450) x 35,000 x 33 15.4m pa

• Note that this is a fairly substantial figure,
  even on the fairly pessimistic assumptions made!
• In environments (like retail and manufacturing)
  where the contribution per employee is a well
  understood and generally accepted figure, this
  sort of calculation will be well received

10
Conclusions

• This is a powerful weapon in your armoury
• Making a business case on unproven time savings
  will not go down very well with skeptical senior
  executives
• However, by using a large, evidenced survey and a
  set of very reasonable assumptions to produce a
  very large number, you have made the evidence
  hard to ignore!
• In some industries, this will be the killer
  argument
• Where your executives are accustomed to thinks in
  terms of sales, calls and profits/contribution
  per employees, this sort of argument should play
  well!
• However, there are companies where they will say
  so what? If one of my workers could save 10
  minutes, he would just take a longer lunchbreak
• My advice is that - if you are working in a
  company like the latter it is time to move on
  to a company where people are trusted and where
  the power of productivity is better understood !