Objective
The objective of WDC analysis is to identify the activities that comprise the process and then estimate the corresponding time and dollars expended on each of these activities. More specifically it describes the staff time and costs expended on activities within a department or a process and help prioritize areas for improvement. A work distribution chart (WDC) is an effective tool because it creates hard data and looks at work from a nontraditional perspective. Instead of evaluating the cost of a whole function or department, a WDC analysis considers the activities—the actual work—that occur within that department or process. The analysis of these small building blocks is critical when reconfiguring work as part of redesign. The BPR Team designed the following basic components of a WDC analysis
- An “activity dictionary” that lists and briefly defines all activities so that employees report their data based on a common understanding of the defined activities.
- A data-collection form on which each employee allocates his or her time across the defined set of activities.
- A spreadsheet or relational database to analyze the employee responses.
- A set of question to help analyze the data, interpret results, and generate ideas for redesign.
Directions to Use
A WDC Analysis can be applied in two ways
- To an entire unit, where every employee in the unit (including management) allocates 100% of his or her time across the defined set of activities that make up that unit’s operations.
- To an entire process, where every employee involved with the process (regardless of her or his department) estimates her or his time allocated to the defined set of steps in that process.
How complete a Work Distribution Chart
- Identify and create a list of approximately 10 to 15 “major categories” for departmental activities.
- Derive the list from interviews and from prior knowledge of the unit, identifying the key services for which the unit is responsible.
- Some of the major categories should capture miscellaneous work activities, such as training, supervision, reporting, or internal communication.
- Break out the discrete activities that fall into each of the major categories.
- The list of discrete activities should be neither overly detailed nor too abstract.
- As a guide, each major category should encompass roughly 5 to 12 discrete activities.
- Some major categories can stand alone, with no discrete activities listed under the main heading, such as the “Gather Statistical Information” in the exhibit.
- Major categories stand alone if the category is a “catch all” for insignificant activities or the category is a potential trouble spot intended to isolate data for one particular troubling or time-consuming activity.
- Briefly define each discrete activity to ensure common understanding and use of the activity terms.
- These definitions comprise an activity dictionary.
- Do not develop definitions for each of the 10 to 15 major category headers, unless it is a “stand alone” category.
- Example: an activity dictionary created by Accounting Function Team.
- Develop a list of all employees, positions, salaries and benefit rates.
- Create a data-collection form and collect each employee’s WDC data. A Sample Cover Letter for Work Distribution Survey and a Sample Instructions for Completing the Work Distribution Data Collection Form is also designed by BPR Team for the data collection purpose.
- Enter, aggregate, and analyze data using a spreadsheet.
Questions Raised by WDC WDC analysis does not point to solutions. Rather, the tool raises questions and points toward opportunities for improvement. Some of the major questions that might be answered through WDC are;
- Where should improvement efforts be focused?
- What processes will yield most significant and noticeable benefits from improvement because they currently take up so much time or are so fragmented?
- What activities eat up employee time?
- What are the costs (in salary and benefits) associated with each major category or activity? Are these costs reasonable given the importance of the activity.
- Are too many employees performing the same work?
- Greater centralization of responsibilities may facilitate work.
- When several employees are assigned the same task, considerable time is lost through interruptions and changeovers.
- Are Employees productive?
- Comparatively large amounts of time for simple groups of activities generally indicate low productivity for the unit.
- Low productivity can be attributed to an imbalance of staff to workload or inadequate employee training.
- Are there misdirected efforts?
- Is the time expended evenly matched to the importance of the activity?
- If the activity being supported is unessential the effort itself is misdirected.
- Are the activities that take the most time really the most important ones?
- Does the end justify the personal-hours expended?
- Are employee skills used effectively?
- Working below skill level can create under-utilization
- Working above skill level can increase errors and processing time.
- Do higher employees perform work that lower employees could do if given the opportunity and training?
- Is the work evenly distributed?
- Are only a few employees doing all the units critical work?
- Is there adequate cross training?
- Does this uneven distribution create process delays?
- Is the work under or over specialized?
- Employees with only a few activities entered on their WDC data collection sheet indicate specialization.
- Is this specialization appropriate for the mix of skills?
- Are there opportunities to increase cross training?
- Employees with many activities indicate that they are performing too many unrelated tasks.
- Efficiency and enthusiasm are hampered when employees are performing too many unrelated tasks.
- Continual interruptions in changing from one type of work to another is costly, tiring to the employee and will increase error rates.
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