A Stopwatch for Bathroom Breaks
Heading to the restroom? If you’re a call center employee in one government office, you had better be back in three minutes.
As reported by the Australian news site news.com.au, staff have been told to time their toilet breaks:
Managers ordered all staff to fill out the length of toilet breaks in a “compliance diary”, threatening staff who failed to spend 92 per cent of their time on the phone with counselling and disciplinary action.
The call centre staff, who said they felt “bullied and harassed” by the policy, outlined shocking examples of management invading their privacy.
They included team leaders regularly “popping in” while staff were going to the toilet because they were deemed to have taken too long, staff being lectured for failing to enter into a diary a one-minute toilet trip and management suggesting staff only use the bathroom at certain times.
These kinds of stories seem incredulous, but we all know about employers well on their way to measuring time spent in the bathroom. Already many companies require their workers punch a clock in order to pay them down to the minute. Many automatically dock thirty minutes for a lunch break and some employee handbooks outline the number of allowed breaks per work period. Where is the line between filling out a timecard and having to count minutes spent in the bathroom?
In some respects, this is another story about micromanagement. The tale of this government office sounds like the Canon Electronics company where alarms sound if you walk too slowly. But really, this is an extreme example of our fundamental perspective on work: It’s much easier to measure time than to measure results. Everybody can agree on the meaning of an hour, but it’s tremendously difficult to agree on the meaning of a job well done.
That doesn’t mean that all companies can or should stop paying people by the hour or by the year. Rather, it’s a reminder that measuring time is just a poor approximation for understanding work. If you are worried that your organization is struggling with metrics, contact Slaughter Development. We help companies and non-profits find ways to improve processes that respect stakeholders and produce meaningful results.
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October 20th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Let’s face it, many employees today are paid simply to look busy. Employers assume, rather than accurately measure, that if an employee has a look of busyness throughout a day than they must be just that-busy. In reality, most work is accomplished by great employees well beyond the point in time when they must begin to fake being busy.
It’s a shame that so many employers are still interacting with their employees as if their is no relationship needed, no communication allowed, and no other way to measure productivity other than a time sheet. It’s also a shame that so much creativity and production and entrepreneurship within the work place is squandered in an attempt to look busy rather than actually being busy.
Their are a lot of managers and bosses out their who should hear your message and get help quickly so they can stop micromanaging and start allowing their employees to be uber productive without their watchful eye always present, accounting for every spare minute, even those spent in the restroom.
Great post!
Parke
October 20th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Great comments, Parke, thanks!
I think that many employers do believe they must have a “relationship” with employees and effective “communication.” The problem is they employ stock phrases instead of actually understanding what these words mean. A “relationship” at the office does not mean “the boss tells the employee what to do.” An work environment with “good communication” is not one where all the information goes in one direction. There’s more to management than telling people what to do. Management requires listening, enabling and supporting effective behaviors.
October 20th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Good point. It’s not that employers and managers don’t understand the importance of having a relationship and open communication with their employees, it’s just that they don’t fully understand or correctly understand what it actually means to do so in real life, on a day-to-day basis. There truly is more to management and being a great leader than simply telling people what to do or when to use the restroom. It genuinely does involve listening and a deeper understanding of where each other is coming from and what expectations both parties have of each other.
The challenge, I would assume, is that building these authentic, work related relationships and open avenues of communication requires some up front energy, time and work. However, implementing these characteristics into how you do business & interact with your employees will have a very high return in the short and long term, in my humble opinion.