Industry:
Government
Services:
Business Optimisation
Balancing Productivity with Safety
Government departments often have a time-poor workforce that needs to deliver services across a wide geographic area. This case study outlines how MagniStrat helped a government department with a strong construction focus understand their employee workload. Understanding workload was a first step in optimising daily activities to not only improve productivity, but also improve the safety of workers exposed to hazardous activities.
The Challenge
The client requested a Time and Motion study in a highly unionised environment with a low degree of trust between management and the workforce. The relationship had deteriorated to the point where a formal industrial dispute had been declared and passed before the Industrial Relations Commission. The initial brief was to determine how long a specific work task could be expected to take for staff across 3 regions within Queensland.
Our Role
MagniStrat facilitated a working group consisting of management, workers, and union representation. Over a series of meetings our consultant led this group to agree the terms of reference for the Time and Motion study. Using detailed consultation and feedback, we designed a suitable recording template which was issued to a group of employees for a measurement period of three weeks.
Over the course of the study our consultant developed the relationships required to successfully obtain the daily time information needed from workers for study analysis. The resulting data set was subject to rigorous statistical analysis before draft findings could be presented to the working group.
Finding Opportunities for Improvement
While the client had only requested that the time required to perform the task was analysed, the data analysis highlighted several opportunities for further improvement in both management and worker practices. These were presented as an addendum to the final report with eight suggestions for improvement in workforce planning, time management, and worker productivity being included.
