Time in Motion

MalMonroe

thomasparker430 said:

A new manager has just joined our team and wants everyone to do a time in motion, he wants to know what we are doing every 15 minutes. I heard of people doing this if they are being on poor performance. I really don’t see the point in doing it and it will just cause a lot of tension within the team as everyone works a different paces

It doesn't necessarily mean that anyone is performing poorly. Or that anyone will lose their job. If a new manager has joined, he may want to find out who does what and why and how they carry out their duties and how long things take. If everyone works at different paces maybe they're not all doing the same job. Or maybe some people don't have the same abilities. In which case, the manager will find out if there are any problems and it will give him an opportunity to help put things right.

Time and Motion isn't necessarily a bad thing but it would have been helpful if someone could have informed you who gave the new manager permission to carry out the study. Or has he just taken it upon himself to do it?

I think it's really bad if he hasn't even bothered to hold a meeting to explain what his reasons are too - and also to let you know how long you'll be having to report what you are doing every 15 minutes. Is it just for a week, or a day or hasn't he said? Having to stop to record what you're doing every 15 minutes is disturbing your work pattern anyway.

My ex was a Time and Motion Study consultant years ago. His job was to go into companies, find out what employees did, how they did it and how long it took them.

He then made recommendations to management of how time and energy could be saved by streamlining jobs. 

He was never a popular visitor because people feared that he would find something wrong with their productivity and they'd lose their jobs. But people were rarely dismissed as a result of his reports and recommendations. 

It could be that your manager wants to be a new broom sweeping clean by improving production, working conditions, anything. But he hasn't gone about it in the right way because he hasn't informed any of you of his motives and he's going about it in a very underhanded, unprofessional and haphazard manner. 

BrassicWoman

If there is a belief that managers are generally without merit, the workers can propose to be a self managing team, thus saving a salary.

Jillanddy

bartelbe said:

Jillanddy said:

bartelbe said:

There are allot of managers/trusting types on here. Me, I am a cynic and look on such on a study as a potential bomb about to go off. Your employer may well be looking to make cutbacks and seeing who they can get rid of.

My advice is, if you know in advance when this study is going to happen, make sure you have plenty of work on that day. Better to appear busy and indispensable, than someone who is dead wood or can handle more work for the same pay.

You clearly don't really know anything about how these studies work, because if they were that easy to fix, they would serve no useful purpose. And you also know very little about management if you think that managers aren't cynics as well.

Managers aren't all "bad" or "evil", but being a good manager doesn't mean that managers get to only make nice decisions that employees all like. I am currently having to manage staff reductions which are being forced on my teams, against my will, because (a) there is no money to pay their wages and (b) MY management refuse to consider any other alternatives despite the fact that in my opinion reducing staff will lead to significant further financial risk. The one thing that I have partly in my control here is the method of reducing the staff, and I have managed the whole exercise without a single redundancy or loss of pay or terms. Because I care and because it was the right thing to do. 

Managers have managers, and they have managers, and then there are more managers - it is not as easy as saying that "managers" have control over everything. And whilst I do disagree with my own managers decisions in this matter, it is also true that there is no money to pay the wages. There might be other cuts elsewhere that would, in my opinion, be wiser - but no cuts anywhere in anything is not an option. 

Yes, there are bad managers in places. There are also bad employees as well, and it also happens to be managements job to, as you put it, "get rid of them". And if cutbacks are necessary, or efficiency needs to improve, why on earth would any employer choose the least productive employees over the most productive???

You make my point for me, managers have to sometimes sack people. Why you have to do it is irrelevant. from an employee point of view. So when an employee deals with a manager like you, they should be careful. It doesn't matter how friendly you appear to be, any information given to you could one day be used against the employee.

As for Time and Motion studies, they were originally developed by a man called Frederick Taylor. He claimed he came with the idea when working at a pig iron factory and used such methods to improve their productivity. Tiny wee problem, it was all a lie, complete non-sense. His methods didn't improve productivity in that factory in the slightest.

Didn't stop business and management courses teaching his non-sense. In fact management is full of fads, woo and utter bulls**t. Modern equivalent are complete non-sense like Lean Startup and AGILE. Cult like non-sense, which incompetent managers buy into and inflict on their poor employees.

Even if such management and consultant fads work and they don't. Managers often abuse and misuse such ideas to go on a power trip or get rid of people they don't like. Britain is full of incompetent useless managers, the thriving woo consultant industry proves that.

And you continue to make my point for me - you obviously have an unreasoned hatred of all managers, a completely bigoted view of any form of management, and convenient view of facts based solely on your opinion. Nothing in life is ever so clear cut as you want to make it. I could just as easily point out that "Britain is full of incompetent workers and workshy individuals". There is plenty of evidence to support that view too. It would be no more accurate than your own though, because yes, it describes some people people but it does not describe the vast majority of them. But by all means continue to hold your bigoted view. I am sure it will make you feel secure in the knowledge that management really are out to get you. 

TELLIT01

How often have we heard people, be they 'workers' or 'managers', say "But we've always done it this way?"  That comment alone should be enough for fresh pair of eyes to be brought in to look at process. 

ryan7

I've done them in the past; it's really not about performance. Ultimately month-end will determine that.
This new manager will want to identify what departmental tasks are the most frequent, taking the longest and gauging why the same task will take 30 seconds but on another occasion it may take 30 minutes.
Eventually, they may drill into this further for analysis and understanding.

Eg. A manager may want his sales staff on the phone chasing new accounts however the reality is that they spend more time identifying the lead, talking to current clients or drafting up reports.

DontBringBertie

The sort of people who hate all kind of management are usually the ones who either lack the ability/ambition to get in to management themselves or think a management job is easy just because they’ve watched other people do it.

TELLIT01

DontBringBertie said:

The sort of people who hate all kind of management are usually the ones who either lack the ability/ambition to get in to management themselves or think a management job is easy just because they’ve watched other people do it.

Very true.  I've met and worked with good and bad managers, and good and bad 'workers' for want of a better word.

Jillanddy

TELLIT01 said:

DontBringBertie said:

The sort of people who hate all kind of management are usually the ones who either lack the ability/ambition to get in to management themselves or think a management job is easy just because they’ve watched other people do it.

Very true.  I've met and worked with good and bad managers, and good and bad 'workers' for want of a better word.

Exactly. People are people.  Employment doesn't change that. But most rational people can make balanced judgements. Despite everything my staff respect me.  They despise my manager. I agree with them. Not because she believes she had to reduce headcount (as I said,  I don't agree with her,  but that's irrelevant) but because of how she's doing it.  There are not always choices.  But everyone has an obligation to act like a decent human being.  The measure of that isn't when things are great,  it's when they aren't....

TELLIT01

I once worked with a guy who was the worst of the bunch for bending the rules, fiddling arrival and departure time from shifts, even going home on night shifts and coming back in early enough to ensure he was never caught.  He was so good at not getting caught that he was promoted over the people he had worked with to become their manager!  Almost his first act in his new role was to give his erstwhile workmates written warnings for doing exactly what he had always been the greatest offender at.

That's an example of somebody who was an a******e as a 'worker' and an even bigger one as a manager.  Thankfully I moved roles at the same time so didn't suffer from his actions.

bartelbe

DontBringBertie said:

The sort of people who hate all kind of management are usually the ones who either lack the ability/ambition to get in to management themselves or think a management job is easy just because they’ve watched other people do it.

Lot of outraged managers here. The reason I view management with such contempt, is in my experience they are basically useless. One truism from my working life, is the more competitive the industry, the less management and admin staff there are. Companies in competitive markets can't afford to have the dead wood.

Alas the opposite is true in the public sector, the place is infested with admin staff and management. God knows what they do all day. Since I am the poor sod who has to implement all their bulls**t I can tell what they don't do is make public services more effective and efficient.