2X your White-Collar Productivity

The People Productivity focus in Indian Companies is not very strong. There are good number of Companies that may control the Shop floor Workmen in a reasonably strict manner. There may be focus on their Productivity. But the focus on White Collar Productivity or Staff Productivity is not there in most of the Companies. Here, the recruitment happens against a perceived need of a Department Head. Those who have an exposure to companies in Europe, Japan and USA would have definitely seen the difference in number of people in Indian companies and similar comparable companies in those Countries. We seem to have more people in just about every area. 

The Productivity of Staff or the White-collar employees is not being measured properly and there are hardly any activities to improve it. Indian Companies are realizing the burden of having a lot of people in the current situation. They are simply not able to support them. I would suggest that the Companies should look at the White-Collar Productivity. 

What do we mean by White-Collar Productivity? We are talking about the Man hours that are spent on some routine works in the Company that are done by the White-Collar employees. Works like Regular Purchase activities, Releasing P.Os, Taking care of Pay roll, Taking care of bill payment, Design activities in R&D, Engineering activities in Process Engineering department, Managing the Plant maintenance and so on. Every company spends good amount of money on these Staff. Usually much more than what they spend on the Workmen in the Company. 

The work of the Workmen is visible, and it is measurable. Hence, it can be seen clearly in the shop floor. It is not the same with the work of the Staff or White-Collar employees. It is not easily visible. So, a Boss cannot easily decide whether or not to approve a recruitment as and when someone asks for it. 

The Routine work of the Staff is not engineered well in most of the Companies. Resultantly, the work happens as per the skill of the particular Staff member and his/her Boss. When you really look at each of the Routine work in detail, you can see huge possibilities of improvement. If you have not touched this area in your company at all, then there will be opportunities to at least double the Productivity in these areas. That means, you can cut down the time spent on these routines by at least half! 

The right time for taking this up is when you are implementing an ERP in your Company. But if you have not done it, then you can take it up as early as possible. Most of the Routine works may have a link to the ERP. That is why it would be good to attempt improving the White-Collar Productivity along with ERP implementation. 

How do we do it?

The methodology for taking up the improvement of White-Collar Productivity is very simple and involves getting into the details of every routine work in your company.

Formulate a Team: A full time Team would be needed for this purpose. It would be good to have an Industrial Engineer in the team as the Leader. Along with her, there can be a few Fresh Engineers. It would be good to avoid ‘experienced’ people in this team. In most of the cases, the ‘experience’ can come in their way of re-engineering the routine work. This team would be a full time team and hence called as a ‘Task force’.

Model area: You should take up a model area for carrying out this improvement. You can take up an area where a number of Manhours are being spent. It can be Purchase activity, it can be Stores related, it can be Payroll related, any area that has a lot of manhours.

Take a big target: It is essential that we take a big target for Productivity improvement. We should take up a target of halving the time that is spent on this Routine activity. Small targets will not bring the full potential out. 

Log the time: You need to log the time of the people who are carrying out this activity. Log the activity for every 15 minutes. What are they doing? Do the logging for at least one week. You need to ensure that you are covering all the peculiarities of their work. Eg. If they issue Purchase orders once in a week, you need to capture that time. If they are releasing the payments for Suppliers once in a week, you need to capture it and so on. The Logging has to be done by the person who is doing the work. This can be verified by the Task force team on a daily basis. One the first few days, the data has to be verified every half hour so that we can ensure that the right type of data is collected. 

Pareto principle: After logging the activity of the person who is doing the activity for 7-10 days, look at the Pareto activities of the person. Where is he spending the time most? You can take up the activities that consume most of the time. These should be the activities that need to be studied more. 

Micro activity study: Then for these top time-consuming activities, a Micro activity study has to be done by the Task force team member. This study has to be done on the basis of principles of Time and motion study. Every second of the time has to be captured. The Task force member would observe the work of the person who is actually doing it and note down every detail. It is very important to note down every activity that is being done. It is recommended that the Micro activity study should be done at least 2-3 times for every Routine activity. This is to ensure we capture the variations for every activity. 

Re-engineer the Routine activity: After you have all the details of how a Routine activity is being done, it is time to re-engineer the activity. The re-engineering is done with following basic IE and other principles in mind:

-       Apply Eliminate, Combine, Rearrange, Simplify – IE Principles.

-       What is the most efficient way of doing the work from common sense?

-       Are we using the common Software that is already available in this area?

-       Are there any simple Apps that are available or that can be developed to do this work in more simple manner?

-       How do you apply the Technology that is available today to this activity?

Here, the Fresh Engineers with no experience can help. They can raise some fundamental questions of how the work is being done. More ‘experienced’ people may accept the inefficiencies. When we Re-engineer the activities with the target of cutting down the time by half, the team will find better methods to achieve this target. It is not uncommon to see some big -time results in this area. Some of the activities may be eliminated. Some duplication of activities may be identified. 

Some simple examples are as follows:

-       If you are taking an hour every day to prepare a daily report on factory manpower details to the Operations head, can you look at tweaking the software already available to get this report at the click of a button?

-       If your Security is making entries of all the incoming goods into your software every day, can you look at creating an automated entry with details from the P.O with a few clicks by the Security or even better issue unique numbers to the Suppliers against which the goods will be accepted without further entries. 

-       If your Security / Stores is counting the goods from your regular suppliers, take a call that there will be no regular counting. But if there is a shortage in any supply, the supplies of last one month will be applied with the reduced quantities. Basically asking your suppliers to take control and responsibility of the quantity! 

There can be many, many examples like this.  

You need to be innovative in your Solutions. 

Kaizens to be taken up: You may have to take up several improvements to cut down on the man hours and make the improvement permanent. Many of them may have a link to the Software that you are using, or Software may become a solution for that. We need to look at how we can use the Technology that is available today do the work in a much simpler manner. 

Keep Re-visiting

Retain the full time Task force permanently. Ensure the Routine work is being revisited regularly. There are always new and improved methods available continuously. The improvement of technology is always an opportunity to improve the Productivity. 

Improving your methods for Routine work and reducing the time being spent for these activities is a high priority for every Company.