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Work Overload!
Redesigning Jobs to Minimize
Stress and Burnout

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Work Overload!
Redesigning Jobs to Minimize
Stress and Burnout

Frank M. Gryna

ASQ Quality Press

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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American Society for Quality, Quality Press, Milwaukee 53203

© 2004 by Frank M. Gryna
All rights reserved. Published 2004
Printed in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gryna, Frank M.
Work overload! : redesigning jobs to minimize stress and burnout / by
Frank M. Gryna.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-87389-624-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Job stress. 2. Work and family. 3. Work—Psychological aspects. 4.
Work—Physiological aspects. I. Title.

HF5548.85.G79 2004
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ISBN 0-87389-624-6
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With love, I dedicate this book to my family: my wife,

Dee, our daughter, Wendy Esslinger, and her
husband; Perry, our son, Derek Gryna, and his wife,
Barbara; our son Gary Gryna, and his wife, Dina; and
the cavalcade of grandchildren: Jason, Sarah, and
Elizabeth Esslinger; Wesley, William, and Whitney
Gryna; and Emily and Samuel Gryna.

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Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Chapter 1 How Serious Is the Work Overload Issue? . . . 1
Who Suffers From Work Overload? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Warning Signs of Work Overload . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
To What Extent Is Work Overload Common? . . . . . . . 4
What Are the Reasons for Work Overload? . . . . . . . . . 6
How Do We React to Work Overload? . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Work Overload – Self-Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Viewpoints of This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Summary – Three Key Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Chapter 2 What Are the Causes of Work Overload? . . . . 13
The Ten Contributing Causes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Is Work Overload a Heavy Hitter to Job Satisfaction? . . . 17
Summary – Three Key Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Chapter 3 Why Study Waste in a Process? . . . . . . . . . . 19
Do We Change the Work or Change the Person? . . . . . 19
All Work Is Done in a Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
What Are the Forms of Waste in a Process? . . . . . . . . . 21
Who Will Do the Analyses to Eliminate Process Waste? . . 23
How Can We Be Sure That Savings in Process
Waste Will Help to Reduce Work Overload . . . . . . . 25

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viii Table of Contents

Analyzing for Waste in a Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Reality – Staff Low, Add People, but Never Enough . . . 33
Summary – Three Key Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Chapter 4 How Can We Redesign Work at the Process
Level to Eliminate Work Overload? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Process Waste and Work Overload . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Redesign at the Process Level – Radical and
Incremental Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Guidelines for Redesign of Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Summary – Three Key Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Chapter 5 How Do the Mental Demands of Work
Contribute to Work Overload? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Long Hours + Excessive Mental Demands = Work
Overload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Mental Demands and Job Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Mental Demands Caused by Job Content . . . . . . . . . . 45
Mental Demands and Poor Management Practices . . . . 48
Summary – Three Key Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Chapter 6 How Can We Redesign Work
at the Job Level? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Analysis of Job Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Analysis for Mental Demands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Analysis for Self-Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Checklist for Manufacturing Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Checklist for Service Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Redesign for Work and Family Life – Case Examples . . . 75
Summary – Three Key Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Chapter 7 How Do We Match Work to People? . . . . . . . 79
Why Middle Managers Spend Most of Their
Day on “People Problems” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Work Overload and Selection of Personnel . . . . . . . . . 80
What to Do When Personnel Requisitions
Cannot Be Filled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Work Overload and Training of Employees . . . . . . . . 88
Work Overload and Retention of Key Employees . . . . . 89
Summary – Three Key Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Chapter 8 How Do We Achieve Participation
and Empowerment of Employees to Reduce
Work Overload? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

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Table of Contents ix

Exciting Ideas for Organizing Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

One More Time – Participation and Empowerment . . . . 96
Empowerment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Teams, Teams, Teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Self-Managing Teams – Revolution in the Workplace . . . 104
Yes, We Can Make Teams More Effective . . . . . . . . . . 108
Summary – Three Key Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Chapter 9 How Can Middle Managers Handle
Work Overload in Daily Operations? . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Who Are Middle Managers? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Review of Causes of Work Overload . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
How Middle Managers Can Use Teams to
Reduce Work Overload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Where Do Middle Managers Spend Their Time? . . . . . 114
Departmental Planning and Administration . . . . . . . . 115
Firefighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Personnel Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Meetings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Managing Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Business Travel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Who Are Individual Professional Contributors? . . . . . . 128
Overload in the Personal Life of Middle Managers
and Professional Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Care and Well-Being of Middle Managers –
Lessons From Athletes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
How Long Does It Take Stress Management to Work? . . 136
Can’t We Act on Work Overload Tomorrow? . . . . . . . . 137
Summary – Three Key Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Chapter 10 What Is the Role of Upper Management
in Work Overload? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
My Perceptions About Upper Management . . . . . . . . 139
How to Convince Upper Management That
Work Overload Is a Serious Problem . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Find Out the Extent of Work Overload . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Analysis of the Overload Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Convincing Upper Management to Act on
Work Overload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Issues for Upper Management to Consider
on Work Overload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Developing a Strategy on Work Overload . . . . . . . . . 149

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x Table of Contents

Operational Actions That Upper Management

Must Take . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Summary – Three Key Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Chapter 11 What Are Work and Family Issues
in Work Overload? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Work and Family Life – Times Have Changed . . . . . . . 162
The Pace of Family Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
What Organizations Are Doing to Help
– Seven Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Elimination of Mandatory Overtime . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
The Top Companies on Work-Family Programs . . . . . . 170
Benefits of Work-Family Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
How to Institute Work-Family Programs . . . . . . . . . . 171
Work-Family Programs at the Marriott Corporation . . . 172
Sources of Information on Work-Family Programs . . . . 175
Summary – Three Key Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Chapter 12 What Do We Do Next? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
A Recap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Swing into Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
What Should Upper Management Do Next? . . . . . . . . 179
What Should Middle Management Do Next? . . . . . . . 180
A Closing Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Appendix A Can’t We Act Tomorrow on
Work Overload? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Appendix B List of Actions by Middle Management . . . . 185
Appendix C List of Actions by Upper Management . . . . 189
Appendix D Actions to Minimize Work Overload . . . . . 191
Appendix E Stress Reducing Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . 193

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

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List of Figures
and Tables

Figure 1.1 Our working society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Table 1.1 Survey results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Table 1.2 Work overload – self-assessment . . . . . . . . . 9
Figure 3.1 Work flow in a functional
organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Figure 3.2 High-level flow diagram to admit
ER patient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Figure 3.3 Service blueprint diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Figure 3.4 Flow diagram with rework loops
(identified with triangles) . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Figure 3.5 Analyzing a flow diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Figure 4.1 Process guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Table 5.1 Mental demands and job content . . . . . . . . . 44
Table 5.2 Mental demands and management
practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Table 6.1 Characteristic of jobs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Table 6.2 Self-control in the manufacturing sector . . . . . 62
Table 6.3 Self-control in the service sector . . . . . . . . . . 68
Figure 7.1 Attributes for a position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

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xii List of Figures and Tables

Table 7.1 Finding the right people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Table 7.2 Job satisfaction factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Table 8.1 Summary of types of teams . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Table 8.2 Comparison of organizational forms . . . . . . . 106
Table 9.1 Ranking by use of Pareto Priority
Index (PPI) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Figure 9.1 The high performance pyramid . . . . . . . . . . 133
Table 10.1 Costs of work overload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Table 10.2 Elements to justify action on
work overload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Table 11.1 10 work family activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Figure 11.1 Proposal-to-plan process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

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Preface
How This Book Can Help You

O
ften we hear: “Work overload is terrible, but it’s a reality of
modern life and we really can’t do anything about it.”
Poppycock – and worse. We can do something about work
overload.
Yes, the pressures are there to cause work overload: the organi-
zation must become “lean,” jobs have excessive mental demands,
globalization, customer expectations, and mergers. Also, our per-
sonal lives have changed, for example, two spouses working and a
lengthy schedule of sports and other activities for our children and
ourselves. These may be exciting times, but they are also busy times.
This book addresses the job and family activities that make our lives
so busy.
The key result of work overload is the mental and physical
stress on individuals and their families. It’s not right and we must
take action. This book is meant to help those of you who have work
overload in both line and staff positions in the manufacturing and
service sectors.
We must reduce work overload to make life easier for people in
all levels of our working society. This is not a book about:
• Teaching people how to handle the stress due to work
overload
• Motivating people to love their jobs
• Achieving higher productivity

xiii

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xiv Preface

This book views work overload as a failure of the design of the

work. We must analyze the work to identify areas of waste, elimi-
nate the waste, and then use the saved resources to eliminate the
work overload and prevent it from happening again. In analyzing
the work, we must recognize that overload creates excessive mental
demands due to both job content and poor management practices.
The book furnishes checklists to help redesign the jobs.
But surely you think that we cannot reduce work overload
unless upper and middle management are convinced that the prob-
lem is serious enough to act on and also given a plan of what to do.
I hear you. This book hits those two issues head on.
A word about the roadmap of the book to help you use the book
most effectively: Chapter 1 gives information about the seriousness
of the problem (and includes a self-assessment). Chapter 2 summa-
rizes my personal research on work overload. Chapters 3 through 6
cover the analysis of work and the redesign of jobs to reduce over-
load. Chapter 7 addresses matching work to people and Chapter 8
covers participation and empowerment of people. Chapter 9
describes the issues that middle managers face in addressing work
overload. It also provides a summary of stress management con-
cepts. Chapter 10 tackles the toughest problem – upper manage-
ment. Chapter 11 describes some excellent work and family
programs developed by companies. Chapter 12 sums it up and item-
izes a few short-range and long-range actions for middle manage-
ment and for upper management.
I wrote this book to blast the complacency that exists on work
overload. As the Canadians would say, let’s strike forth.

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Acknowledgments

L
et me start with the reviewers of the manuscript. They are real
professionals. Their efforts – a labor of love under tight dead-
lines – supplied me with extremely useful comments.
My friends at several organizations helped me to collect survey
data on work overload from their part-time graduate students who
were working full time in the business world. These people are
Aaron Buchko of Bradley University; Lawrence Aft of Aft Systems
Inc.; Al Endres of North Central University; and Thomas Browdy,
Clifford Schoep, Vincent DeBlaze, and Eugene Mariani of Washing-
ton University in St. Louis. A meeting at the AAIM Management
Association in St. Louis also furnished some survey data.
My son, Derek, was with me all the way on this manuscript. He
kept reviewing the manuscript in all phases and provided spirited
examples.
Dean Joseph McCann and Joyce Keller of the University of
Tampa helped me with office space and computer assistance during
the research phases of this project.
Dr. Edward Chang of Maryville University and my neighbor,
Richard Juenger, helped me over the computer problems.
In creating a book, the greatest burden is on the author’s family.
My wife continues to amaze me with her patience and support.
Thanks again, Dee.

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1
How Serious Is the
Work Overload Issue?

That wonderful book Cheaper by the Dozen brings to

life the true story of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and their
dozen children. Frank and (Dr.) Lillian were industrial
engineering pioneers. Industrial engineers study how
work is performed and redesign the work to be more effi-
cient and less tiring. The movie (original version 1950)
describes – hilariously – how they applied “motion econ-
omy” principles to family life. But the Gilbreths also
applied the principles to the design of work in the busi-
ness world. They would turn over in their graves if they
saw the frantic pace that many workers lead in today’s
business world. The Gilbreth idea of efficiency is not the
work overload that many people suffer today.

WHO SUFFERS FROM WORK

OVERLOAD?
Nothing is duller than people talking about their overload at work –
until someone burns out and resigns. Work overload can occur for
any members of our working society (see Figure 1.1):
• Upper management, for example, president, executive
vice-president, plant, or site manager
• Managers in the operations functions – the heart of
any manufacturing or service organization

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2 Chapter One

• Managers in other functions, for example, product

development, purchasing, marketing, and customer service
• Managers of staff departments, for example, human
resources, finance, accounting, quality
• Individual professional contributors in all functional areas –
the highly educated and skilled people who provide the
expertise for our businesses and society
• The hourly workforce, for example, bank tellers, call center
operators, operations floor workers, manufacturing workers
This book is aimed at management – upper management and mid-
dle management – because only management can take the actions to
relieve work overload.

Upper
management

Middle
management of:

• Operations function
• Other functions
• Staff

Individual professional
contributors

Workforce

Figure 1.1 Our working society.

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How Serious Is the Work Overload Issue? 3

THE WARNING SIGNS OF WORK

OVERLOAD
Work overload happens when job demands exceed the time and
resources available. You know the common symptoms:
• Long workdays, often with the eyes at half mast.
• Unwanted overtime, paid or unpaid.
• State and federal lawsuits accusing companies of avoiding
overtime pay by requiring hourly employees to work “off
the clock” or reclassifying hourly employees as managerial.
Also, suits by managerial and professional employees claim
that they must work excessive hours without overtime pay.
Overtime can be abusive.
• Inability to meet goals with available time and resources.
• Difficulty in taking vacation time.
• Responding to work problems during nonwork time,
including taking work home.
• Frequent “firefighting,” usually as unexpected as a sneeze.
• “Add on” tasks making it difficult to focus on the core job.
• Lost work days due to illness.
• Borrowing employees from other activities to fill in for
absent employees.
• Frequent interruptions.
• Errors caused by tired employees.
• Add your own to this list.
We can ask our people to give 110 percent occasionally, but not every
day. Some people work 24/7 – many managers and professionals
are “on call” 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Those extra hours are usu-
ally not recorded and lead to productivity figures that are overstated.
These symptoms snowball when managerial style involves crit-
icism without help, threats, intimidation (both direct and subtle),
and bullying. Yes, bullying. Would you believe that the UK National
Workplace Bullying Advice Line has a website called “Bully On
Line?” But before we go deeper, we must define two terms.

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4 Chapter One

Work overload leads to “stress” – the harmful emotional and

physical responses when the requirements of a job do not match the
capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker. “Burnout” is the state
of physical or emotional exhaustion that results from long-term
stress or frustration.
Work overload is only one of many organizational factors that
lead to stress. Other factors include role uncertainty and role con-
flict, responsibility for other people, job dissatisfaction, and job inse-
curity (more on these factors later). Sometimes, the result is . . .
despair. This book transforms despair to hope and satisfaction.

TO WHAT EXTENT IS WORK

OVERLOAD COMMON?
The media and the Internet proclaim that work overload is a serious
problem. The stories make fascinating reading, but my research
reaches this reality: work overload is a serious problem in some
companies and jobs; work overload is not a problem in other com-
panies or jobs.
My compliments to those organizations that design jobs and
provide sufficient resources to prevent work overload. But many
other organizations suffer from work overload, and the problem is
particularly serious in industries where customer contact is inten-
sive and continuous and where communication is super fast and
essential (for example, call centers, healthcare).
Let’s look at some research. The Families and Work Institute
(Galinsky, Kim, and Bond 2001) provides us with research of 1003
employees – about two thirds of whom are managers and profes-
sional employees and one third other employees. Table 1.1 shows
the results.

Table 1.1 Survey results.

• 28 percent of employees felt “overworked” often or very often in the past
three months
• 28 percent felt “overwhelmed by how much work they had to do” often or
very often in the past three months
• 29 percent felt that they “didn’t have the time to step back and process or
reflect on the work they’re doing” often or very often during the past three
months
• 46 percent responded “often” or “very often” to at least one of the previous
questions

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How Serious Is the Work Overload Issue? 5

My own research in the manufacturing and service sectors con-

firms the work overload problem. Of 168 managers and professional
employees, 107 (64 percent) responded “yes” when asked if “you
experienced work overload, for a continuous period of at least sev-
eral months.”
These numbers express the perceptions (opinions) of people. As
my friend, Dean Jeff Klepfer (a psychologist) of The University of
Tampa, points out: perceptions are not physical facts, but they are
psychological facts. When people feel they have work overload,
then stress is threatening.
The International Labor Organization of the United Nations
reports that Americans now work more total hours annually (1979)
than any other country – nearly a week longer than in 1990. Reich
(2001) reports that Americans work 350 hours per year more than
Europeans.
We all know of dramatic individual cases of work overload, but
serious researchers refer to these cases as “anecdotal evidence” that
are not sufficient to draw general conclusions. (As one example,
medical residents are people with a medical degree who spend three
to seven years training as specialists. Many residents complain that
they work 100 or more hours per week. Action has been taken – new
rules will limit the workweek to 80 hours. Wow.) Nevertheless, some
countries like England and Australia even have an annual national
awareness week on work overload.
To keep work overload in perspective, we need to recognize that
many people do not have work overload. My friend, Larry Aft,
views a large pile of work as simply unfinished worthwhile projects.
What a perfect match of a person and a job (more later on matching
people and jobs). Some people enjoy their job so much they just
work, and work, and work. Some of you will find that appealing;
some of you will find that appalling.
We also have extraordinary people who are able to perform
miraculously on their jobs (with long hours) but still find the time
for their family. Working moms with professional careers are a great
example. But such people are not the average. Also, if a wife is not
working she carries most of the burden of raising the kids. The hus-
band believes he understands this, but he may be working such long
hours that he is not aware of the total burden on his wife.
Many people suffering from work overload are highly edu-
cated, self-motivated, and attracted to demanding jobs where the
risks and rewards are high. Bob Williams is a research scientist in
a pharmaceutical manufacturing organization. He likes his work, but

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6 Chapter One

his workweek is typically 50 hours (with an occasional 60-65 hours

per week). This schedule interferes with family activities (he has a
wife and two children), and he doesn’t like that. Perhaps you are
in the same swamp.

e Russian proverb: Don’t overwork a willing horse. f

Finally, some industries go through extraordinary times requir-

ing long work hours. In the early days of the space program when
the United States was racing against the USSR, work overload was
a reality, but we rarely heard anyone complain – the excitement and
urgency made us feel that we had a job to do and we did it.
But the bottom line is this: many people suffer from work
overload.
Is work overload a new problem? Of course not. Then why hasn’t
the problem been solved before? First, the good scenario. Some mid-
dle managers and workforce people tell their superiors about the
overload problem once, or even twice. These superiors try to correct
the problem, but other important matters prevent them from resolv-
ing the overload issue. Managers and workers are aware of this, are
sympathetic to the burdens of their bosses, and therefore do not per-
sist but just grunt and groan. Now the bad scenario. Some middle
managers (and workforce people) fear that if they complain the boss
will conclude that the manager is not able to handle the job and
should be replaced. This book addresses such tough issues.

WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR WORK

OVERLOAD?
Prevailing wisdom says that work overload is due to several reasons:
• Competitiveness among companies. We must become “lean”
to meet competition – but how lean can we get?
• Globalization. Americans benefit from lower wage rates in
foreign countries because we can purchase their goods at
lower prices. But this competition puts pressure on
American firms to reduce costs and can result in work
overload for American workers. Also, as the value of the
American dollar in Europe increases, American goods cost
more to buy in Europe leading to less demand for American

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How Serious Is the Work Overload Issue? 7

products. This in turn adds pressure to cut costs in America

(“run lean”). As we will see later, eliminating the waste in
work processes helps us to compete and can prevent work
overload.
• Customer expectations. Customers expect faster and faster
service, and technology makes that service possible.
• Mergers, acquisitions, and downsizing. This leads to a
reduction in jobs and likely work overload for those
surviving the job reductions.
• Expansion of family activities. Our relative affluence enables
us to enjoy sports and other activities for our children and
ourselves. But these activities add to our time commitment.
• The ever-present desire to improve our standard of living.
This desire puts economic pressure on the wage earner(s)
to earn sufficient salary to meet family needs. We then
work longer hours to achieve a promotion or just to
provide job security. Moonlighting (two jobs) may be
necessary to achieve the needed income level. Data from
the Families and Work Institute indicates that 13 percent of
Americans are now holding second jobs. DeGraaf,Waan,
and Naylor (2002) calls this “affluenza,” which they define
as “a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of
overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the
dogged pursuit of more.” Rapoport, Bailyn, Fletcher, and
Pruitt (2002) suggest an even broader approach to address
work-family issues. They propose that work be analyzed to
cover a “dual agenda”:
1. The roles of men and women in family, community, and
paid work (“gender equity”)
2. How work is done, including wasted time due to
inefficient practices
• Everyday living adds to the problem. How about rush-hour
traffic, shopping, housework, even holiday trips?
• Add your own to this list.
These forces are mighty strong, but we need to move from these
broad issues to the actions needed to relieve work overload. First,
what are the consequences of work overload?

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8 Chapter One

HOW DO WE REACT TO WORK

OVERLOAD?
Some consequences of work overload are obvious and some are not.
We don’t need to overstate the case but let’s understand what work
overload does to people.
Clearly, the key effect is the increase in stress (mental and phys-
ical) on individuals and their families.
• This reason alone is certainly enough to act on work
overload. But other penalties emerge.
• Work overload reduces job satisfaction and eventually leads
to turnover – particularly of key middle managers. Further,
when these managers switch to another organization they
hire away some of their former colleagues who still suffer
from work overload. In a refreshingly frank article, Munck
(2001) describes how Marriott found it difficult to recruit and
retain talented people because of a deeply ingrained culture
of “face time” – the more hours you put in, the better. For a
summary of the action taken by Marriott, see Chapter 11.
• Work overload causes errors in products and services. Finding
and correcting these errors reduces productivity and increases
costs. In addition, overload of front-line employees who deal
face to face with customers can result in unpleasant
encounters with customers. Also, frustration sets in when
employees at all levels observe the poor quality of work.
• Work overload causes errors that can result in injuries to
employees and to customers. It’s not just an accident on
the job, but it’s also the accident that occurs when an
overworked employee drives home from work. We shudder
when we read about injuries and even deaths caused by
overworked healthcare workers.
• Add your own to this list.
So where does this lead us? Evaluate your status on work
overload.

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How Serious Is the Work Overload Issue? 9

WORK OVERLOAD – SELF-ASSESSMENT

Rate how often each situation occurs. To record your score, use a
scale of 0 to 6 with 0 meaning “almost never” and 6 meaning
“almost always.” Add up the ratings to get your score.
My workload
1. I am at my company location more than 50 hours
per week. _____
2. I take work home and/or receive work-related calls at
home. _____
3. Work demands make it difficult for me to schedule
vacations. _____
4 I am asked to do additional tasks without being
provided with additional resources. _____
5. My department does not have enough resources to
handle a normal workload. _____

The job itself

6. My job has a high degree of mental intensity and pressure
(for example, internal/external forces, production goals,
irate customers, information overload). _____
7. My responsibilities are unclear, and I don’t have control of
setting priorities, deciding work methods, and use of
resources. _____
8. The job content is distasteful (for example, boring,
unimportant, underutilizes my skills, poor working
conditions). _____
9. The work process provided to me cannot meet the job
requirements on quantity and/or quality that I am
expected to achieve. _____
10. The feedback provided to me on my performance is
inadequate or unfair. _____
11. I am concerned about my career (for example, job security,
lack of advancement opportunities, financial
compensation). _____
continued

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10 Chapter One

continued

The organization
12. Personnel requisitions in my work area are frequently
unfilled for two or more months. _____
13. People resign from our organization because of work
overload or other reasons of job dissatisfaction. _____
14. Cooperation among employees is poor. _____
15. The trust and respect among management and employees
is poor. _____
16. The organization is insensitive to the demands of work vs.
the demands of family. _____

SCORING WORK OVERLOAD STATUS

0 to 32 Moderate: Take preventive action to keep work
overload from getting worse.
33 to 64 Serious: Take steps to substantially reduce work
overload within the next few months.
65 to 96 Critical: If work overload cannot be substantially
reduced within the next few months, immediately
search for another position.

VIEWPOINTS OF THIS BOOK

First, let’s go over what this book is not. This book does not teach
employees how to handle the stress due to work overload. Also, this
is not a book on motivating workers to love their jobs. And, this is
not a book on how to achieve higher productivity. Americans are
proud of the increase in productivity, but the benefits are offset by
our failure to solve the work overload issue.
This book views work overload as a failure of the design of the
work activity. The work activity includes resources, work plans,
organization of activities, match of job requirements and employee
skills, and other factors. We discuss how to redesign the work to
eliminate and prevent the work overload.
Work overload often becomes a chronic and inevitable way of
life. Chronic work overload requires strong action – on the part of

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How Serious Is the Work Overload Issue? 11

management. This book specifies – in detail – both the short-term

and the long-term actions needed by middle management and
upper management.
The book cites the names of organizations that take positive
action on work overload. This may convince other companies
(unnamed, but examples cited) to act.
You probably know of concepts such as simplifying your life,
setting a personal vision and goals, and other concepts concerning
our lives. These concepts are logical and worthwhile – but for many
of us they are difficult to put into practice and do not reflect the real-
ities of the working world.
Action on work overload requires a sense of urgency. We do not
have to accept work overload as inevitable. You may call it a “chal-
lenge” or call it “an opportunity,” but I choose not to sugar coat the
issue. Work overload is a problem and we need to take action.

SUMMARY – THREE KEY POINTS

1. Work overload is serious and we must take the initiative

to act.
2. People who suffer from work overload are highly educated,
self-motivated, and attracted to demanding jobs where the
risks and rewards are high. They are the lifeblood of any
organization.
3. The pivotal backlash of work overload is the increase in
stress (mental and physical) on individuals and their
families.
Where to start? How about the causes.

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2
What Are the Causes of
Work Overload?

You know people like Joe. He’s a great supervisor in a

banking operation for sorting checks. He’s a family man,
with a wife and three children – always a smile.
Checks must be sorted by the end of each day, otherwise,
havoc. He has a classical stressful operations job – fire
drills, computer breakdowns, absent employees. Joe once
worked 14 straight days, 12 hours a day, always on his
feet. He made more in overtime pay than base salary. “Joe
is the only guy who can handle these problems.” Overload
still exists, coupled with many mental demands.

THE 10 CONTRIBUTING CAUSES OF

WORK OVERLOAD
My research with operations managers and professional con-
tributors identifies 10 key causes (listed in order of importance):
• Insufficient resources
• Firefighting
• Lack of control of the work process
• Work process not capable
• Unclear goals and responsibilities

13

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14 Chapter Two

• Inputs from suppliers

• Inadequate selection and training
• Information overload
• Computer problems
• Other
The research results come from middle managers and individ-
ual professional contributors in the manufacturing and service sec-
tors. They work in four metropolitan areas – Tampa, St. Louis,
Atlanta, and Peoria.
The inputs are perceptions of people – with all the usual biases.
But perceptions are an important reality because they affect people’s
feelings and actions. Further, all of these people said they have work
overload.
Now let’s examine some issues involved in these causes.

1. Insufficient Resources to Handle the Normal

Workload.
Some issues involved are:
• What are the short-term and long-term actions to obtain
resources to handle the normal workload?
• How much effort could we save by reducing the amount of
wasted resources in a process due to errors, corrections, and
nonvalue-added steps?
• After we eliminate the waste, how can we convince upper
management to use the savings to reduce work overload?

2. Firefighting on Problems.
We need to address issues such as:
• How should we set priorities for firefighting?
• How can we reduce firefighting?
• Who should do the firefighting?
My data show that the first two causes (resources and firefight-
ing) cause about 40 percent of work overload.

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What Are the Causes of Work Overload? 15

3. Lack of Control in Setting Priorities, Deciding Work

Methods, and the Use of Resources.
Some issues:
• How should we set priorities?
• How should we decide on work methods?
To what extent should workers participate in planning work
methods?

4. The Work Process Is Not Capable of Meeting the

Quantity and Quality Requirements.
We need to learn:
• How can we identify the sources of wasted effort in a
process?
• How can we determine if the process is capable?
• If the process is not capable, where will the resources come
from to redesign the work process to make it capable?
From my research data, these first four causes (resources, fire-
fighting, lack of control, and work process not capable) cause about
60 percent of the overload problem.

5. Unclear Performance Goals and Responsibilities.

Let’s investigate:
• On what parameters are performance goals needed?
• Do we need to set a goal to limit work overload?
• How can we translate the vague subject of “responsibility”
into specific actions and reach agreement on who should
take which actions?

6. Inputs from Internal/External Suppliers – Missing,

Wrong, Late.
Some issues:

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16 Chapter Two

• What actions can we take to prevent problems with internal

suppliers?
• What actions can we take to prevent problems with external
suppliers?
• How can upper management help on problems with
external suppliers?

7. Inadequate Selection and Training of Personnel.

Key questions are:
• How can we match job requirements to employee skills?
• What special approaches can we take to recruit new
personnel, particularly at low salary levels?
• Has the adequacy of the training been verified?
• When positions cannot be filled, what actions can we take to
minimize work overload on other employees?

8. Information Overload – E-mail and Other.

Some issues are:
• How should we set priorities to respond to information
arriving in our workplace (“pushed information”)? This
includes e-mails, letters, memos, telephone calls, journals,
and the like.
• How can we best acquire and use retrievable (“pulled”)
information. This information resides on the web, in online
journals, in discussions with colleagues, and other sources.
• How can the priority nightmare of e-mails be handled – who
sent the e-mail, the subject, or other criteria?

9. Computer Hardware or Software Problems.

Some questions:
• How can we identify chronic computer hardware problems
and present information to information technology (IT)
management that will assure action?

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What Are the Causes of Work Overload? 17

• How can we identify chronic computer software problems

and present information to IT management that will assure
action?
• How does computer system downtime contribute to work
overload?

10. Other Problems Causing Work Overload.

Some issues involved are:
• How can we address changing priorities and strategies in an
organization to minimize work overload?
• What is the relation between insufficient resources to meet
job requirements and the mental demands required in jobs?
• How can we discover the reasons for work overload that are
unique to our organization?

We will discuss all of the issues. Note, however, that the causes
have a common element – deficiencies in the work processes. Thus, we
will focus on studying the work processes to reduce work overload.

IS WORK OVERLOAD A HEAVY HITTER

TO JOB SATISFACTION?
Yes. Specifically, work overload is one of several factors that have an
impact on job satisfaction. We will examine these job satisfaction fac-
tors in Chapter 7. But this book is about work overload, and we will
focus on that subject rather than discuss job satisfaction and get lost
in a jungle.
Let’s hope that work overload is a small problem in your orga-
nization, but . . .

e Old Russian proverb: A small hole can sink a big ship. f

SUMMARY – THREE KEY POINTS

Those with work overload perceive that the top three causes are:
1. Insufficient resources to handle the normal workload

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18 Chapter Two

2. Firefighting on problems
3. Lack of control in setting priorities, deciding work
methods, and use of resources
Would you agree with these for your company?
All causes of work overload emerge from the work itself, and so
we will next move on to studying work as a process.

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3
Why Study Waste in a
Process?

An operation at a manufacturing organization requires

three shifts. At the beginning of a shift, a brief review of
work status takes place. The key question is this: “Do we
have enough people for this shift – how many are here?”
Absentees are a problem and often the supervisor must do
the work of an absentee. Near the end of a shift, all in the
work crew watch to see how many will show up for the
next shift; if the next shift has absentees then the super-
visor asks one or two people to stay on for the next shift.
All of this on a moment’s notice. What a stressful situa-
tion – in addition to the work overload. Why not hire
more people (but there is no money in the budget); cross
train people and borrow them from other areas when nec-
essary (but that creates problems of work overload for the
areas from whom employees are borrowed). So we now
have work overload.

DO WE CHANGE THE WORK OR

CHANGE THE PERSON?
We can learn more about the reasons for work overload by studying
the work itself. Overload means primarily a failure of the design of
the work system, not a failure of the people doing the work. To cor-
rect current work overload – and to prevent future work overload –
we must change the work design or add resources rather than teach

19

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20 Chapter Three

employees how to handle the stress due to overload. Stress reduc-

tion concepts are a valuable supplement (see Chapter 9 for some
suggestions), but those concepts focus on the effect rather than the
cause. This book focuses on the design of the work. We start with the
concept of the work process.

ALL WORK IS DONE IN A PROCESS

A process is a collection of activities (individual jobs) that converts
inputs into outputs or results. A simple process has several individual
jobs; a complex process has many individual jobs. Examples from
manufacturing are producing a printed circuit board or creating
loaves of bread. Examples from service might be making customer
reservations at a hotel call center or admitting a patient at a hospital.
Experience suggests that achieving business goals depends
mostly on large, complex processes that go across functional depart-
ments. Examples of such cross-functional processes are product
development, billing, assembly, hospital patient care, and insurance
claims servicing.
A primary process is a collection of cross-functional activities
essential for external customer satisfaction and for achieving the mis-
sion of the organization. These activities integrate people, materials,
work methods, energy, equipment, and information. The managers of
functional departments are responsible for functional pieces of the
process, but often no one is accountable for the entire cross-functional
process. Problems arise because managers focus on meeting func-
tional objectives rather than process objectives (see Figure 3.1).
Modern process management techniques include measurements
to serve as drivers to help achieve process objectives (see Gryna 2001,
Chapter 6).
We will first study work at the process level before studying the
work within individual jobs. For many processes, 30 percent of the
work performed is waste – waste that saps human resources and
leads to work overload. Yes, the number is surprising, but it is based
on my experience with processes that have not been analyzed for the
many forms of waste. Chapter 2 reports the number one culprit of
work overload as insufficient resources to handle a normal workload.
If we can identify and eliminate the waste in a process then resources
become available to reduce the work overload. This chapter analyzes
work at the process level and identifies the waste; Chapter 6 analyzes
work at the individual job level.

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Why Study Waste in a Process? 21

t g
en rin
m tu g
c in rt
l op u fa et ce po
e
an ar
k vi p
D ev M M Se
r
Su

Process objectives
Mission/
Billing Customer vision
Product
development Customer

Distribution Strategic
Customer
plans

Board of Key business

Functional objectives objectives
directors

Figure 3.1 Work flow in a functional organization.

Source: Juran Institute, Wilton, CT, www.Juran.com. Used with permission.

WHAT ARE THE FORMS OF WASTE IN

A PROCESS?
Waste takes several forms:
• Firefighting. Every organization does firefighting, that is,
reacting to unexpected problems that arise during day-to-
day (or even hour-to-hour) business. The range of problems
is endless, for example, computer breakdowns, missing or
wrong inputs from internal or external suppliers, absent
employees, and so on. In theory, if we do a better job of
planning or anticipating our activities then we can prevent
firefighting. In practice, that simply doesn’t happen. At best,
we can reduce firefighting. My research indicates that
firefighting is a significant contributor to work overload.
Action: In Chapter 9, we discuss some approaches to
reducing firefighting. If we reduce firefighting, then we free
up resources to reduce work overload.
• Rework to correct errors. Rework means doing the job twice
because it wasn’t done right the first time. The rework may
be partial to correct a deficiency or may be complete because
the product or service had to be discarded. Let’s face it –
some errors will always occur, but many processes run 10
percent or more rework. Even a small percent of rework has
an enormous impact when applied to a large volume of

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22 Chapter Three

activity, for example, 0.7 percent of packages delivered to the

wrong city by a major delivery service means 10,000
packages per week or more than a half million packages
annually.
Action: Diagnose the process to determine the process
stability and the causes of the rework. Then remove the
causes, and use the resources saved to reduce work
overload.
• Steps of marginal importance to a customer (the buzz word
is “nonvalue-added”). At Marriott, managers reported that
they were spending about 11.7 hours per week on low-value
work. After a Management Flexibility pilot program, the
time spent on low-value work had been reduced to 6.8 hours
per week.
Action: If you cannot justify these steps, then eliminate the
steps and thus reduce work overload.
• Unnecessary steps in a process. The process is initially
designed with steps to meet customer needs. Perhaps the
original reason for some of these steps has disappeared but
the steps remain in the process. A good question to ask is:
“What would happen if this step was eliminated?”
Action: Amputate these steps and use the resources saved to
reduce work overload.
• Excessive inspection to find errors. Inspection is a vital part
of business activities. Human beings are not perfect and so
we need inspection to give assurance that the customer
receives good product. But when the level of errors in a
process is high, then the level of inspection must be high to
catch all (maybe) the errors. Such processes must be changed
to reduce the errors.
Although the term inspection usually refers to manufactur-
ing industries, the term also applies to service industries. In
the service sector, inspection is called review, checking,
reconciliation, or examination. The evaluation of an income
tax return, the cleanliness of a hotel room, or the accuracy of
a bank teller’s closing balance are really all forms of
inspection – a measurement, a comparison to a standard,
and a decision. We should not eliminate inspection or other
forms of review, but we may be able to reduce the frequency.

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Why Study Waste in a Process? 23

Action: After we determine and eliminate the causes of errors,

then we can reduce the inspection and use the resources to
relieve work overload.
This book explains how to analyze processes for waste, but first,
let’s address two questions that you are burning to ask: 1) who is
going to do these analyses? and 2) even if we eliminate the waste
how can we be sure that the savings in resources help to reduce
work overload rather than be taken as cost savings, that is, sent to
the bottom line?

WHO WILL DO THE ANALYSES TO

ELIMINATE PROCESS WASTE?
Let’s set the record straight. You – the operations manager or the
professional specialist – won’t do these analyses because you’re
overloaded with work. I won’t try to convince you to find time. And
it’s not just the time that’s needed but also the basic skills to do the
analyses. So who can do it?
• An industrial engineering (IE) department – if you have one
(and you should). The names vary, that is, industrial
engineering, operations engineering, performance
improvement, management services. The IE’s (including
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth) are the pioneers in work
simplification and have the skills to analyze the processes.
Put them to work for you as your internal consultant. You
should select the process or processes and tell the IEs that
you want them to reduce work overload, not to reduce costs.
• A quality department – if you have one (and you should).
The names vary, that is, quality, quality assurance, quality
management, Six Sigma, performance management. Quality
professionals make major contributions to process analysis
and can help you. Again, select the process and have them
focus the analysis on reducing work overload.
• Any other staff department that has the skills and that could
be enlisted to help you. One possibility is the human
resources department – if you still have one (and you
should). Another possibility is the audit group in a finance
department. Some companies like Baxter Healthcare and

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24 Chapter Three

Exxon Mobil broaden their financial audit function to

include a focus on improvement of work processes.
• A cross-functional team consisting of senior personnel or
managers from the various departments having activities in
the process. Such people know the process better than
anyone else in the organization. Two obstacles may arise: 1)
in a situation of work overload, these people do not have the
time to study the process; and 2) they probably do not have
the skills needed to study work at the process level. They
certainly could be taught the skills needed but again time
will be required. If time could somehow be made available
then a cross-functional team would be the first choice to
study the process. Judith Lyons of Vista Plan Solution has a
practical suggestion to encourage such a team. Promise them
up front that their role is to study and redesign the process,
but they will not have to revise the procedures and other
documentation about the process. Staff people will handle
the paperwork revision. People in operating functions are
anxious to participate in improving a process, but they hate
to spend time revising the procedures.
• An external consultant. This requires approval by upper
management (see Chapter 10).
• A local college. First, find out who are the professors active
with the business world. They want their students to get
“real-world” experience. Ask them if they have a team of
students who would like to gain experience analyzing a
process in your department. The students will not solve your
work overload problem, but they can at least document the
process in a flow diagram (explained next). With this much
analysis done, you could finish the analysis and find ways to
reduce the work overload.
Bradley University has 35 years experience with a required
senior industrial engineering course in which student teams (under
the direction of one or more professors) take a vaguely defined prob-
lem (like “work overload in this department”), analyze the
process(es), and recommend and present recommendations for solv-
ing and implementing the solution. Trust me, this works. If you
decide to contact a college, the appropriate departments for you to
contact are industrial engineering, industrial technology, or opera-
tions management.

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Why Study Waste in a Process? 25

Whoever does the process analysis should make sure he or she

involves the people doing the jobs by asking their opinions about the
process. Don’t expect them to do the analysis – they don’t have the
time (work overload) or the skills. But they know the jobs better than
anyone else and those jobs affect their careers. You must convince
them that the analysis will help them (not eliminate their jobs). Why
not guarantee that no one will lose a job or take a decreased salary?
Once it is known who will do the analysis, then we are ready to
proceed. Obtain authorization from upper management to analyze
one process as an experiment. Much rides on this experiment, that
is, a successful case will jump start additional projects to discover
and eliminate process waste.
Use some of the savings from process analyses to provide
resources for analyses on additional processes. Sometimes this can
be a win/win situation. At Caterpillar Tractor Co., several improve-
ment projects resulted in reducing the amount of inspection of cer-
tain products. Some inspectors became available for other work.
Caterpillar trained them to do process analysis, changed their posi-
tion and salary, and thus provided the resources for further process
analysis work.

HOW CAN WE BE SURE THAT SAVINGS

IN PROCESS WASTE WILL BE USED TO
PROVIDE RESOURCES TO REDUCE
WORK OVERLOAD?
We can’t be sure. But, before we analyze processes, we can ask upper
management to commit that any savings in time and resources
apply to reducing work overload.
Even if we eliminate waste from processes, middle management
may still have work overload in managing departments. We will
address that matter in Chapter 9, Running Daily Operations.
We are ready now to discuss how to analyze for waste in a
process.

ANALYZING FOR WASTE IN A PROCESS

The main steps are: define the boundaries of the process, identify the
customers, discover customer needs, prepare a flow diagram for the

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26 Chapter Three

process, establish process measurements, analyze process data, and

redesign the process. We will discuss these steps next, but for a more
complete coverage see Gryna 2001.

Define the Boundaries of the Process

This means define the current (or “as is”) process in terms of where
the process starts, which activities to include (and exclude), and
where the process ends. A high-level flow diagram (also called a
process map or a value stream map) is a useful tool in this step. A
brief process mission statement is also useful.
This diagram shows the scope and major steps in the process.
An example is shown in Figure 3.2.

Identify the Customers of the Process

A customer is anyone who is affected by the input or output of the
product or process. Three categories of customers then emerge:
1. External customers, both current and potential. External
customers (or “stakeholders”) include ultimate users but
also intermediate processors as well as merchants. Other
“customers” are not purchasers but have some connection
with the product, for example, government regulatory
bodies, shareholders, partners, investors, the media, and
the public. External customers clearly are of primary
importance.
2. Internal customers. When the purchasing department
receives a specification from engineering for a procurement,
purchasing is an internal customer of engineering; when the
procurement is executed, then engineering is the internal
customer of purchasing. Similarly, at an insurance company,
the payroll department and the service department are
internal customers of each other.
3. Suppliers as customers. We should view suppliers as
internal customer departments just like our internal
manufacturing department.
In practice, some customers are more important than others. It is
typical that about 75 percent of the sales volume comes from about
20 percent of the customers. These are the “vital few” customers
who command priority.

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Why Study Waste in a Process? 27

Start

MD order
to admit

ER calls ER calls
admitting admitting
to notify to arrange
patient is transfer
ready

Ready No Patient
Bed No Patient to receive waits
available waits
Yes
Yes

Admitting
notifies Ready No Patient
NSG unit to send waits

Yes

No Patient
Bed Patient transferred
clean? waits

Yes
End
Admitting
notifies
ER

Figure 3.2 High-level flow diagram to admit ER patient.

Source: Juran Institute, Wilton, CT, www.Juran.com. Used with permission.

External customers are the backbone of a company, but they are

not all equal in importance. External customers of marginal impor-
tance can drain company resources and contribute to work over-
load. A difficult but important decision involves which current

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28 Chapter Three

customers to drop and which potential customers not to pursue. A

similar decision involves which products to drop. Upper manage-
ment makes decisions on customer and product composition (see
Chapter 10 under Operational Actions That Upper Management
Must Take). Reducing the customer base and/or product offerings
can not only relieve work overload but also can enable an organiza-
tion to concentrate resources on the vital few customers and vital
few products with activities that lead to customer loyalty. Having
identified our customers, we next need to discover customer needs.

Discover Customer Needs

We ask customers directly what their needs are and the relative pri-
orities of those needs. But we also methodically study how cus-
tomers presently use the product and analyze their total system of
use in order to identify hidden needs. This provides ideas to per-
form surgery on current products and helps to discover needs for
new products. Needs are always in flux because today’s new needs
become a routine expectation tomorrow. Make sure you update cus-
tomer needs for both external and internal customers. Also, survey
the needs of noncustomers, because meeting their needs may
increase sales. With respect to work overload, the study of customer
needs identifies work activities that contribute little or nothing to
customer needs and thus deserve no resources.

Prepare a Flow Diagram of the Process

We next prepare a more detailed flow diagram showing the activi-
ties, key customers, suppliers, and their roles in the process. This
tells us how the process works.
Schedule a work session of several hours for a team to discuss
the process and prepare the flowchart (some people call this value
stream mapping). These discussions will reveal disagreements on
how the process really works: “No, I don’t send that document to
accounting.” Or, “When you send me the sales order there is always
data missing and I must call you for the missing data.” Or, “I didn’t
know what you did with the information I send to you each day.”
A facilitator describes how the work session will proceed, asks
for inputs on the sequence of activities, and uses devices such as
sticky notes to physically create the flowchart on a large board pre-
pared for the purpose. The result is a starting point for analysis and
improvement.

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Why Study Waste in a Process? 29

Figure 3.3 shows a flow diagram for handling a request for

adjustments to customer bills.
This particular flow diagram has some clever additions to the
basic diagram. You do not need to include these additions but they

Customer Customer Customer Customer

Customer receives learns receives receives
calls delayed adjustment unadjusted adjusted
commitment amount bill bill
Line of
interaction
(P) (P) (P) (P)

On-line group
AR AR calls Bill sent Adjustment
AR calls
refers customer without bill
customer
case adjustment sent

Line of
invisibility 5 minutes
Organization
boundary
AR
AR prepares
examines adjustment
case form

Complex adjustments group

1 to 4
weeks
AR AR sends
Commitment Yes submits information
in jeopardy? form to to billing
manager organization

No 1 day

(P)
Manager
approves? Yes

No

AR = Account representative
(P) = Potential problem AR
revises
Varies
form
widely

Organization
Billing organization

(P)
boundary
In No
time for
next billing
30 days
cycle?
Yes

Figure 3.3 Service blueprint diagram.

Source: © 1990 AT&T., all rights reserved. Used with permission.

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30 Chapter Three

may be useful to you. The “line of interaction” is the boundary of

activities where the customer and frontline employees (“on-line
group”) have discussions. The “line of invisibility” separates activ-
ities that are seen or not seen by customers. The “organization
boundary” shows which activities occur in the three departments
involved in the process (the on-line group, the complex adjust-
ments group, and the billing organization). This example also illus-
trates both frontline direct customer contact and back-room or
back-office operations. The time required is also shown for some
activities. The symbol “P” denotes process points at which prob-
lems could occur that would cause customer dissatisfaction and
subsequent work overload to correct the dissatisfaction. To prevent
problems, we must identify potential problems, usually based on
past data or an analysis of the flow diagram.

Establish Process Measurements

Measurements on the output from a process tell us how well the
process is doing and set the stage for process analysis and improve-
ment. Also, measurements at intermediate steps in the process help
to control process performance and determine the capability of the
process to meet quantity and quality requirements. (The process
must be stable in order to measure the true process capability). A
process that is not capable is the culprit leading to work overload. In
deciding what measurements to collect from a process, the empha-
sis should be on the process mission, quantitative goals, and cus-
tomer needs discussed previously.
To address work overload, we need to collect data about the
overload: at what process steps, how frequently, and the likely
causes.
Collecting data on the work overload is an important step to
correcting the overload.

Analyze Process Data

In this step, we evaluate the process performance data, identify
opportunities for improvement, and determine the causes of
process problems (sometimes called “disconnects”). When these
problems happen, the people running the process must spend
unplanned time to correct the deficiencies, and you know what the
result is – work overload.

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Why Study Waste in a Process? 31

e f
Old Spanish proverb: He who stumbles over
the same stone deserves to break his neck

Causes of process problems span a wide range:

• Inputs from external suppliers
• Inputs from internal suppliers
• Sporadic or chronic computer hardware breakdowns
• Software problems
• Machinery or equipment failures
• Absent employees
• Poorly trained employees
• Other causes
In short, we have a process that simply is not capable of meet-
ing quantity and quality requirements with the current process
design and resources assigned.
The high-level and detailed flow diagrams are key tools at this
point. For example, at a telecommunications company a team
required four hours to construct a high-level flow diagram for a
new customer service. The time consumed was a classic case of
each member having a different view of how the process operated.
The discussion and resulting high-level diagram exposed missing
links, bottlenecks, unnecessary steps, and redundancies in the
process. For the first time, all team members had a common under-
standing of the process.
The team then divided the high-level diagram into four seg-
ments and constructed detailed flow diagrams for each segment. A
portion of one of these is shown in Figure 3.4 (Juran Institute 1989).
Examination of the four detailed flow diagrams revealed 30
rework loops – two of the rework loops (no. 26 and no. 27) are
shown with a triangle symbol. But then data showed a surprise, that
is, the time spent in six of the 30 loops accounted for 82 percent of
the total rework time. Clearly, that’s where the effort to reduce
rework must concentrate. This revelation illustrates a basic concept
of great importance. As applied to work overload: a few contribut-
ing causes to work overload are responsible for the bulk of the work
overload. This is called the Pareto concept.

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32 Chapter Three

Yes Send parts Manual

Planning Enter Distribute All
docs 1, 2, and 3 check for
and order in to
received? to ENAC completeness
package log supervisors
organization and accuracy

No
Yes
Call
Provisioning
responsible OK? L
log
organization

No
Wait
for
documents 27

26

Figure 3.4 Flow diagram with rework loops (identified with triangles).
Source: Juran Institute, Wilton, CT, www.Juran.com. Used with permission.

We must identify these vital few contributors and concentrate

our effort to reduce work overload on those contributors. We will
apply this concept again later in the book.
Flow diagrams often use four symbols for events: a diamond for
a decision-making event, a small square for an activity, a triangle for
a rework loop of several activities, and a paper symbol for a docu-
ment or data base. Figure 3.5 provides a checklist of questions to ask
for each of these symbols to help discover opportunities for
improvement.
Historically, we owe a debt to the industrial engineering profes-
sion for the construction and analysis of flow diagrams along with
other simple and complex process analysis techniques. A concise
and practical reference on flow diagrams and process maps is The
Basics of Process Mapping by Robert Damelio (1996).
At the end of the analyze phase, we have a clear understanding
of the current process, including waste and other problems and their
causes, and we probably have initial thoughts on redesigning the
process.

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Why Study Waste in a Process? 33

1. Examine each decision symbol 3. Examine each activity symbol

• Is this a checking activity? • Is this a redundant activity?

• Is this a complete check, or do • What is the value of this activity
some types of errors go relative to its cost?
undetected?
• How have we prevented errors
• Is this a redundant check? in this activity?

2. Examine each rework loop 4. Examine each document or

database symbol
• Would we need to perform these
activities if we had no failures? • Is this necessary?
• How "long" is this rework loop • How is this kept up-to-date?
(steps, time lost, resources • Is there a single source for this
consumed, and so on)? information?
• Does this rework loop prevent the • How can we use this information
problem from reoccurring? to monitor and improve the
process?

Figure 3.5 Analyzing a flow diagram.

Source: Juran Institute, Wilton, CT, www.Juran.com. Used with permission.

REALITY – STAFF LOW, ADD PEOPLE

BUT NEVER ENOUGH
Yes, processes have plenty of waste that cause work overload. But
another dimension of work overload relates to management practices.
As one manager said to me: many companies staff for the low
part of the demand cycle and, as demand grows, they add overtime
or people. But they never add enough people (or add untrained peo-
ple) – they don’t want to worry about staffing when demand drops.
If necessary – and this is the shocker – they overload their “stars”
with extra work. Message to management: it’s not fair.

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34 Chapter Three

SUMMARY – THREE KEY POINTS

1. To address work overload, redesign the work rather than

teach people how to handle the stress of work overload.
2. Work takes place in individual jobs that are grouped
together into processes. We should first study work at the
process level and then at the job level. Take a broad look
first (process) before jumping into details (jobs).
3. Most work processes have significant waste that we can
identify and eliminate leading to a reduction in work
overload. The waste is there and you can find it.
I end this chapter on a humorous note. An e-mail came across
my screen reminding us that people are sometimes asked to give
more than 100 percent on the job. Now try some math. Represent the
26 letters of the alphabet as numbers for example, A is 1 percent . . .
E is 5 percent . . .T is 20 percent . . . Z is 26 percent. Now convert the
letters in “WORK OVERLOAD” to numbers (for example, W is 23
percent). If you add up these numbers, the result is . . . 159 percent.
If we now understand the process causing overload, we can next
proceed to redesign the process and relieve the overload.

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4
How Can We Redesign
Work at the Process
Level to Eliminate Work
Overload?
It’s 2001. Another merger just announced. Two financial
institutions. Must convert mainframes. Here we go again.
We need to test the conversion in a production environ-
ment and the best time to do the test is 4:00 a.m. to 6:30
a.m. A capacity test is made to make sure that the system
can handle the volume of transactions and the number of
different users. All three shifts of personnel are present at
the same time during the test to handle the test and help
load up to full capacity.
We try for five days, but the system test still won’t work.
Many people sit around doing nothing, waiting for the
experts to solve the problem. We even give people gift cer-
tificates and extra time off to compensate for the long
hours. Morale is devastated – “I’m tired.”

PROCESS WASTE AND WORK

OVERLOAD
Wasted effort in a process is a main cause of work overload. Chapter
3 provides tools to identify specific forms of waste in processes; this
chapter furnishes a roadmap to redesign a process to eliminate the
waste and thereby reduce work overload.
Design changes may involve work content, workflow, processing
of information, new equipment, and workplace layout – to name just

35

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36 Chapter Four

a few areas. Work redesign may also involve making changes in poli-
cies and procedures. We can document and review these changes
using a revised flow diagram – the “as is” diagram of the current
process becomes a “should” diagram of the revised process.
This chapter considers redesign at the process level; Chapters 5
and 6 tackle redesign at the individual job level within the processes.

REDESIGN AT THE PROCESS LEVEL –

RADICAL AND INCREMENTAL CHANGE
Redesign (at the process level or the job level) may involve radical
change, incremental change, or both. First, let’s look at radical change.
The Ford Motor Company provides a classic example of radical
change in a process – in this case, the accounts payable process. The
accounts payable department employed more than 500 people to
make payments to Ford suppliers. These people match: 1) the pur-
chase order sent to suppliers by Ford, 2) the receiving document
generated at Ford when the parts were received, and 3) the invoice
received by Ford from the supplier. When these three documents
match then a clerk issues payment to the supplier. But sometimes
the documents don’t match – the supplier sent the wrong parts or
wrong quantity, the supplier invoice was incorrect, and many, many
other reasons. Resolving these cases requires time and exhausting
discussions between Ford and the supplier, that is, work overload.
Ford was planning to automate some of these detailed functions.
But first, Ford tried benchmarking with a Japanese partner com-
pany (Mazda) and learned that Mazda employed not 500 people but
five (not 500, not 50, yes five) to handle this accounts payable activ-
ity. Mazda is smaller than Ford but the ratio of 500 to five – wow.
Ford decided that automating the current activities was not suffi-
cient. Instead, they decided that the scope (boundaries) was not just
the activities in the accounts payable department, but instead
should cover the entire procurement process, which involved not
only accounts payable activities but also a number of steps in differ-
ent departments at Ford (that is, this is a cross-functional process).
Ford discussions with Mazda about the process (more bench-
marking) revealed a radical concept at Mazda.
Mazda did not use an invoice at all. This led to a radical
redesign of the process at Ford. Hammer and Champy (1993) pro-
vide the details.

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How Can We Redesign Work at the Process Level? 37

Radical redesign of a process (sometimes called reengineering)

can achieve great improvements in performance of a process,
including the reduction of work overload. But for cross-functional
processes the middle managers involved must lead the way.
General Electric and other companies report success with “work
out sessions” to achieve process improvements. These sessions last
several days and involve front-line personnel and senior manage-
ment people. A trained facilitator (see Chapter 7) provides assistance
at the session. The sessions identify improvement areas, develop
action plans, and obtain senior-level approval for action during the
session. See also the concept of a “blitz team” in Chapter 8.
Next, we consider an example of an incremental improvement
of a process that results in less work overload. This classic example
comes from a division of IBM and involves the monthly closing of
the financial accounts.
Every monthly closing of the books meant the processing of
two million accounting entries. Even though the incoming data was
97.5 percent accurate, 4000 to 6000 miscodes emerged each day dur-
ing the closing period resulting in high overtime and low morale
(work overload). A process analysis yielded significant improve-
ments, including provisions for feedback and stronger require-
ments for the supplier group. The result was a five-fold
improvement in miscodes – and overtime for error code correction
was mostly eliminated (see Fortune 1985).
An example of a powerful (but more complex) technique is
computer simulation of a process. Here, a computer systems model
is developed based on the logical sequence of process activities
along with data on the activities. The computer model then gener-
ates simulated results of process outputs. The time spent in devel-
oping the computer model is an investment to help reveal
bottlenecks, underutilized process activities, key causes of prob-
lems, and to understand the process. Later, the model can also help
to evaluate potential solutions to problems. Batson and Williams
(1998) describe seven cases, from both manufacturing and service
industries, of using simulation in process improvement. You would
not have the time to create a computer simulation, but you could
ask a staff department to make the simulation model.
Another technique for discovering ideas for process design or
redesign involves contacting other organizations having similar
processes. Some processes are common across many types of man-
ufacturing and service industries (for example, the hiring process,
the accounts payable process as in the Ford/Mazda example) and

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38 Chapter Four

the experience of these organizations can provide ideas already

tested in practice. This is an application of benchmarking, that is,
ask other organizations how they carry out their process and why
their process works in their environment. If you can obtain a copy of
their process flow diagram, so much the better.
To encourage and guide you to make process improvements we
next present guidelines on redesign of processes.

GUIDELINES FOR REDESIGN OF

PROCESSES
Eliminating waste in a process leads to increased productivity, and
we will use the increase in productivity to reduce work overload,
including the reduction of mandatory overtime.
These guidelines concern the redesign at the process level.
(Chapter 6 presents guidelines for redesign at the job level). Figure
4.1 summarizes the 15 guidelines into five categories.

Outside Process
actions planning

Work
Content

Time Process
and inefficiencies
resources

Figure 4.1 Process guidelines.

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How Can We Redesign Work at the Process Level? 39

Work Content

• Use the flow diagram of the process to identify nonvalue-

added steps, that is, waste. Some people call this diagram a
value stream map. Each step in a process must add value for
customers, otherwise eliminate the step. Unclear and
illogical steps are often nonvalue-added. Use the forms of
waste in Chapter 3 and Figure 3.5 for analyzing a flow
diagram.
• Business history is replete with examples of activities
originally established to meet an important need. But when
the need disappears, or has a lower priority, the activity just
continues on and on because no one asks if it adds sufficient
value to justify the time and resources spent.

e f
Old Russian proverb: Habit is a shirt that we
wear until we die.

• Combine several individual jobs to reduce the repetitive

sequence that leads to boredom. This also broadens the skills
of individuals and leads to more job satisfaction.
• As an extension of combining narrow jobs, have the
individual worker create the entire product or service for the
customer. Hewlett-Packard sometimes uses “work stations”
(instead of assembly lines) in which an individual worker
builds the entire product. This approaches the days of the
craftsman rather than the assembly-line worker who
performs one narrow job in a sequence of narrow jobs. In the
service sector, establish a single point of contact for
customers so that one employee handles an entire service,
rather than transfer the customer to other employees. Again,
this broader scope results in more job satisfaction and
perhaps a higher salary.
• Apply state-of-the-art information technology. Sometimes,
technology can relieve humans of unpleasant or tedious
tasks. Remember how customers in a department store had
to wait for a clerk to obtain approval from a supervisor of a
customer check. Technology has essentially eliminated that
step. Applying the technology often involves two steps: 1)

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40 Chapter Four

developing the software to perform a certain activity, and

2) teaching the user how to use the software in the job.
Ironically, sometimes the software is already available – and
even sitting in the computer on an employee’s desk. Thus,
an employee may have Microsoft Office™ software in the
computer but not realize all of the capabilities of that
software – let alone know how to use those capabilities. This
technology is forever changing. Many companies and
colleges offer excellent classes and workshops on new
software, for example, Accenture holds an in-house training
session every few months explaining how to use the
capabilities of the software.

Process Planning

• Focus on the needs of internal and external customers of the

process and find out the relative priority of these different
needs. Each step in a process must add value for customers,
otherwise eliminate the step. Customer needs and priorities
will change so keep up to date.
• Make sure that process goals (they should exist) are linked to
customer and organization requirements and that these
process goals are translated into job goals.
• Watch the “white space” among departments. This is where
information and material is transferred across departments.
These “handoffs” are often a source of problems because
each department focuses on its own goals, often at the
urging of senior management. Handoffs, of course, also
occur between individuals within one department. The idea
is to minimize handoffs.

Process Inefficiencies

• Collect data (or other input from supervisors) to identify any

bottleneck steps in a process that cause poor performance
and work overload. Would adding resources temporarily
eliminate the backlog or is additional action necessary?
• Remove causes of errors in processes to reduce rework and
minimize checking and controls. Make sure you collect data

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How Can We Redesign Work at the Process Level? 41

to identify the “vital few” errors that are causing most of the
total problem in the process (the Pareto rule). Eliminating
the vital few errors will not completely solve the problem,
but it will eliminate a good chunk of the work overload.

Time and Resources

• Identify overworked personnel (from overtime records,

inputs from supervisors, or other means) and study their
jobs for relief from work overload.
• If a step must be added to a process, make sure that the step
adds value, and that time and resources are available. If not,
eliminate some steps from the current process to provide the
time. If that isn’t possible, then don’t add the new step.
Make it a test case against work overload.
• In making time estimates for activities do not assume that
procedures will be followed exactly. This ideal case never
occurs. Add 20 percent to any carefully prepared time
estimate to allow for the unexpected, and thereby minimize
or prevent work overload.
• Allow sufficient time for “knowledge processes” that involve
acquiring, monitoring, processing, and analyzing complex
information. Often changing business environments and
technologies and their many complex interactions
accompany this knowledge. Adding up the times to perform
individual steps in knowledge processes is not sufficient. We
must add time to synthesize and integrate that information.
Some people call this time “slack.” Nohria and Gulati (1996)
define slack as “the pool of resources in an organization that
is in excess of the minimum necessary to produce a given
level of organizational output.”
• Slack resources may seem inefficient in the short term, but
slack is essential for long-term effectiveness and survival. For
further discussion, see Lawson (2001) and DeMarco (2001).

Outside Actions

• Consider transferring some activities to suppliers or even to

customers.

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42 Chapter Four

• Find out how other organizations perform the activity

(benchmark).

SUMMARY – THREE KEY POINTS

1. Redesign of work at the process level starts with a focus on

the needs of external and internal customers of a process.
2. Redesign may involve work content, workflow, processing
of information, new technology, workplace layout, or
outside actions.
3. Specific guidelines can help you to redesign a process and
smash the work overload.

The next two chapters address how the mental demands of many
jobs contribute to work overload and how we can reduce these men-
tal demands through work redesign at the individual job level.

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5
How Do the Mental
Demands of Work
Contribute to Work
Overload?
The plot at a bank: Three shifts in four cities must process
Monday’s checks and finish by 2:00 a.m. A directive from
upper management schedules a conference call (mini-
mum of two hours) every Tuesday at 1:00 a.m. to discuss
the question: “Will we get all of the Monday checks
processed by 2:00 a.m.?”
The call involves 12 middle managers: the site manager
(first shift) at each city and two each from other shifts at
the four different cities. They discuss the status of pro-
duction. But much time is spent waiting for the latest
status information, so there is plenty of time for the first
shift people – half asleep – to talk about their kids, what
they’re watching on television, and other personal mat-
ters. Yes, one of them did fall asleep – they heard him
snoring.
When production is not up to par, the epidemic of reasons
emerges: people are absent from work, computer system
breakdowns, weather problems (the plane flying checks in
for processing was delayed) and so on.
Climax: the conference call ends about 3:00 a.m., the first
shift managers can now go back to bed – and be at their
desks at 7:30 a.m.

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44 Chapter Five

LONG HOURS + EXCESSIVE MENTAL

DEMANDS = WORK OVERLOAD
The primary culprit in work overload is the lack of time and
resources to meet job goals. In Chapters 2 and 3, we considered the
contributors to work overload and how to identify the waste in
processes that leads to work overload. But another dimension adds
to the work overload problem. That dimension is the mental
demands of many jobs. Many jobs do not involve excessive mental
demands. But add excessive mental demands to insufficient
resources and the result can be serious work overload, stress, and
even burnout.
When the mental demands become excessive, then frustration
sets in. Dean Jeffrey Klepfer of The University of Tampa regards
such frustration as a form of waste because it reduces the capacity of
a person to handle job demands and results in reaching the work
overload state faster. Research (for example, Karasek and Theorell
1990) performed by psychologists, industrial sociologists, and
industrial engineers suggests that mental demands on jobs are
caused by: 1) job content and 2) poor management practices. This
chapter discusses these two elements of mental demands. In the next
chapter, we learn how to redesign individual jobs to minimize the
impact of mental demands on work overload.

MENTAL DEMANDS AND JOB

CONTENT
The mental demand issues and job content are shown in Table 5.1.

Table 5.1 Mental demands and job content.

Mental intensity of the job
• Internal and external forces
• Meeting productivity goals
• Frequent interruptions
• Irate customers
• Firefighting
• Information overload
Time spent on the job
• Total hours
continued

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How Mental Demands Contribute to Work Overload 45

continued
• Schedule of hours
• Overtime
• Accessibility during nonwork time
Job content
• Boring jobs
• Underutilizing employee skills
• Meaningfulness of job
• Physical exertion
• Working conditions
Control in doing the job
• Setting priorities
• Deciding work methods
• Use of resources
Social interaction on the job
• Social environment
• Cooperation among employees

MENTAL DEMANDS CAUSED BY JOB

CONTENT

Mental Intensity of the Job

Intensity of job content is the tension that results from forces, internal
or external to the organization, associated with the nature of the work.
A classic example is pressure to meet productivity goals when
management does not allot sufficient time and resources.
Management may believe that sufficient time has been allotted but
that simply may not be true. Working on too many tasks at the same
time is a frequent complaint, as is frequent interruptions. Another
example is the flashing of a sign at a call center stating how many
calls are waiting to be answered. A further example is dealing with
irate customers in person or over the telephone. Some of these cus-
tomers are correct in being irate; some of them are not. Some of these
customers are reasonable; some of them are unreasonable. But the
employee receives the brunt of the emotion from the customer. The
situation is particularly bad if the employee cannot provide a satis-
factory solution to an urgent problem.
For middle managers, examples of mental intensity are dealing
with difficult employees, firefighting, and information overload.

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46 Chapter Five

The mental intensity on some jobs is like wading through wet

sand. The action needed on this component may involve job design
or managerial style, as we will see in the next chapter.

Time Spent on Job

This component refers to the total hours worked by the employee and
the degree of control that the employee has over the hours worked.
An example is the employee who must work excessive total
hours including desired or undesired overtime. Some undesired
overtime is called “voluntary,” but nothing could be further from
the truth. Another example is working evenings or weekends
(“unsocial hours”). At the managerial level, some managers are on
call 24 hours per day, seven days a week. Being accessible to
employers during “nonwork” time contributes to work overload.
The conference call at a bank mentioned previously is a dramatic
example. Aside from the mental demands on the individual employ-
ees, imagine the effect on the families involved.
Long hours are particularly bad when the employee is not able
to occasionally adjust or vary the hours to provide some relief.
To minimize the mental demands, we need to change the
process design to eliminate the excessive hours and change policies
to provide flexibility on the hours worked.

Job Content
This component refers to the match of job requirements with
employee skills and interests.
Let’s face it, some jobs are simply boring, repetitive in content,
have short job time cycles, have little or no opportunity to learn new
skills, or all of these attributes. Some people are comfortable with
these jobs and the match is good. Other people cannot handle bor-
ing jobs or jobs that they feel are unimportant. Sometimes, technol-
ogy (as a part of job redesign) can provide automation to do the
boring jobs.
A further example is assigning personnel to jobs that underuti-
lize their skills and lead to boredom and a feeling of failure because
skills have not been recognized. A final example involves jobs that
provide no opportunity for employees to participate in decision
making. This means the work procedure is handed to the employee
and involves approvals from a supervisor on routine job steps. All of

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How Mental Demands Contribute to Work Overload 47

this concerns the “meaningfulness” of the job. To address this issue,

the next chapter discusses redesign of individual jobs using the con-
cepts of skill variety, task identity, and task significance.
Another aspect involves the physical exertion and working con-
ditions associated with jobs. Examples include dangerous equip-
ment, exposure to chemicals and air pollution, high noise levels and
temperature levels, and other hazardous working conditions. Subtle
inferior working conditions also take their toll over time. These span
a wide variety and include physical matters such as wrist problems
for data entry personnel and lack of immediate private space for
workers in crowded workplaces.
Action on this component involves job design for the man/
machine interface (“ergonomics” is the five dollar word) and facili-
ties management for the total environment.

Control in Doing the Job

Lack of control in setting priorities, deciding work methods, and the
use of resources ranked high in responses to my surveys on the con-
tributors to work overload. Actions on this issue can involve process
or job design for self-control, participation of employees in decision
making about jobs, and clarifying unclear performance goals and
responsibilities – coming up in the next chapter.

Social Interaction on the Job

This component involves how well employees work together as a
group.
A pleasant work environment means that co-workers are
friendly in their personal interaction and help each other in doing
their jobs. Workers must be competent in their jobs so that co-work-
ers are not overloaded because of shortcomings of others. When
these factors are weak or missing, then workers start each day with
negative feelings that make a work overload situation worse.
Action on this component involves matching job requirements
to employee skills by careful selection and training of employees.
Again, we need management initiatives.

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48 Chapter Five

MENTAL DEMANDS AND POOR

MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
The mental demand issues and management practices are shown in
Table 5.2.

Table 5.2 Mental demands and management practices.

Management support
• Trust and respect
• Feedback
• Nonfinancial reward and recognition
Career planning
• Job security
• Job lock-in
• Financial compensation
Family-friendly practices
• Demands of work and home
• Flexibility of work schedules
• Childcare and eldercare

Management Support
The support component concerns the organizational environment
among management and employees.
The ideal is trust, openness, fairness, and mutual respect among
all levels of management and employees. It includes the degree to
which supervisors show concern and compassion for personal prob-
lems of employees. Such matters cover a spectrum but we all know
examples – and the negative ones outnumber the positive ones.

e Old Arabic proverb: Arrogance diminishes wisdom. f

An example is the lack of timely and constructive feedback to

personnel from management. Feedback is essential, but often it sim-
ply does not occur because of the fear of confrontation. A further
example is the need for nonfinancial rewards and recognition.
Action on this element requires initiatives by management (at
various levels including the top level) to provide a positive job
atmosphere. The concepts of empowerment and self-regulating
work groups (we will discuss these in Chapter 7) are likely contrib-
utors here.

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How Mental Demands Contribute to Work Overload 49

Career Planning
This component concerns the various uncertainties that employees
have about their current job and the opportunities for the future.
Start with the lack of job security due to mergers, technology,
and the general economy. But the uncertainties also include unclear
job performance goals and too many changes or new “programs” for
which employees are not prepared. Another career uncertainty is
“job lock-in”, that is, the employee does not see how and when he or
she can progress from the current job to a more desirable one.
Personnel are discouraged with jobs that have little opportunity
to learn new concepts and develop new skills. Couple this with
financial compensation that is not competitive with other organiza-
tions and the mental stress becomes serious.
Right or wrong, we live in an environment in which the desire
for a high standard of living results in the need for a high family
income. This often results in both spouses working – with the many
ramifications of work and family overload. It also means that the
main breadwinner seeks a career with higher and higher compensa-
tion. This component is serious for lower-level employees, middle
managers, and professional specialists. Imagine the mental
demands on a single mother earning the minimum wage rate. In
these situations, we end up with another mental demand (how can
I earn more money?) that adds to the total job picture.
Action on this component requires initiatives by all levels of
management; job redesign cannot make a major contribution here. It
also involves broader work-family issues, which we will discuss in
Chapter 11.

Family-Friendly Practices
Often, both spouses work while trying to manage the many, many
activities in raising a family and handling the conflicting demands
of work and home.
Increasingly, companies find that they must provide work
scheduling flexibility and other support such as advice on childcare
and eldercare. Thus, work-family programs are now an important
element in recruiting and retaining good personnel. Some compa-
nies are providing exceptional help to employees; other companies
simply don’t consider such practices as a company responsibility.
We will discuss this issue in Chapter 11, Work and Family Issues.

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50 Chapter Five

The mental demands of a job vary greatly for different occupa-

tional groups. Karasek and Theorell (1990) provide a thorough dis-
cussion for nine typical occupational groups and 44 specific jobs
within the groups. The nine groups are managers, professionals,
craftsmen, technicians/administrators, bureaucratized service work-
ers, commercialized service workers, routinized workers, laborers,
and marginal workers.
It is useful to prepare and conduct a survey of employees peri-
odically to learn how well mental demands are being addressed in
jobs. Karasek and Theorell (1990) describe a Job Content
Questionnaire that provides questions to evaluate the psychological
and social structure of the job – issues such as work demands, deci-
sion-making opportunities, and social interaction. The recom-
mended format has 49 questions; a limited version has 27 questions.
The scores obtained using the questionnaire can be compared with
national averages. The results of such a survey may be surprising.
The demand-control-support (DCS) model developed by
Karasek and his associates provides an excellent foundation for a
study of job design. Van Yperen and Hagedoorn (2003) extend the
Karasek research to investigate the influence of job control and job
social support on both fatigue and intrinsic motivation (the pleasure
and satisfaction in the job itself). Their study of 555 nurses showed
that when the nurses have better job control (for example, making
decisions about their work, methods used to carry out work) then
this reduces fatigue in highly demanding jobs. Also high levels of
job social support produce elevated levels of intrinsic motivation,
regardless of job demands and job control. We will examine these
issues further in Chapter 6 when we redesign the jobs.
This chapter emphasizes that the mental demands of jobs can be
addressed by examining the job content and management practices.
But individuals can also help themselves in handling job stress – see
Chapter 9 under “Care for the Well-Being of the Middle Manager.”

SUMMARY – THREE KEY POINTS

1. Long work hours and excessive mental demands are tightly

braided together and can spell disaster.
2. Mental demands on a job can be caused by the work
content of the job. You can redesign out some of this static.

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How Mental Demands Contribute to Work Overload 51

3. Mental demands can also be caused by poor management

practices. Middle and upper management must pick up the
ball on this one.

In the next chapter we discuss how to redesign the processes

and jobs to eliminate work overload from two dimensions: 1) pro-
vide sufficient time, resources, and other elements; and 2) provide a
work content and atmosphere that has reasonable mental demands.

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6
How Can We Redesign
Work at the Job Level?

Sure, the principles in this chapter can help to redesign

individual jobs. But don’t underestimate the power of
people to redesign their own jobs. When they are given
the chance to redesign work, they often start with their
personal work environment. Examples from my research
in manufacturing include eliminating drafts in the work
area, reducing the amount of junk food in the vending
machines, improving space usage in the parking lot,
designing a special work table for operator comfort,
improving communication among shifts, and developing
a more secure method for attaching tags to work baskets.
One person called these examples the “frustrations” of
the job. Frustrations cause mental demands that con-
tribute to work overload.

I
f management wants personnel to contribute to work redesign,
management must first pay some dues by permitting personnel
to work on frustration problems. In one manufacturing organi-
zation, voluntary workforce teams were formed to redesign work.
About 80 percent of the problems selected by the teams were frus-
tration problems. Unfortunately, management directed that the
teams only work on problems that would lead to a tangible gain for
the company. Soon after the directive, the number of teams dropped
from 15 to four.
Three areas of research will help us to redesign work at the job
level. These areas are: analysis of job characteristics, analysis of mental

53

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54 Chapter Six

demands of jobs, and job design for self-control. This research will not
only serve to reduce work overload but also reinvent the fabric of jobs
to make them more satisfying and thus provide an additional – and
powerful – antidote to work overload.

ANALYSIS OF JOB CHARACTERISTICS

In a classic book, Hackman and Oldham (1980) describe five charac-
teristics that result in more meaningful and satisfying (“enriched”)
jobs (see Table 6.1).

Table 6.1 Characteristics of “enriched” jobs.

Skill variety
Task identity
Task significance
Autonomy
Feedback

Skill Variety
Jobs should have sufficient variety to use a diversity of employee
skills and talents. In designing jobs, we should:
• Use a flow diagram to identify the different tasks.
• Combine different sequential tasks to produce larger work
modules for individual employees (“horizontal job
enlargement”).
• Make provisions for workers to acquire a variety of skills
and encourage the rotation of job assignments to use
these skills.

Task Identity
Jobs should cover a task from beginning to end and result in a com-
pleted visible output. In designing jobs, we should try to:
• Combine tasks so that one person performs all of the tasks
required for a complete piece of work.

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How Can We Redesign Work at the Job Level? 55

• Arrange work into meaningful groups, for example, by

external customer, by internal customer, or by product or
other basis so that workers can personally relate to the
work. (“I process the expense accounts for the engineering
department”).
• Use a self-managing team or other type of team to perform
all of the work needed for one type of customer.

Task Significance
Jobs should be important and affect internal and external cus-
tomers. We should:
• Provide means of direct communication and personal
contact among employees and customers.
• Encourage face-to-face contact with customers.
• Arrange for personnel to talk directly with customers about
complaints.

Autonomy
Personnel should participate in planning the work. This means:
• Provide greater self-control in decision making.
• Provide authority to make decisions formerly made at
higher levels (“vertical job enlargement”).
• Encourage personnel to determine work methods.

Feedback
Jobs should provide direct knowledge of results to personnel. We
should:
• Create feedback systems, for example, computer support,
to provide personnel with information directly from the job
itself. Ask personnel how their jobs should be designed to
effectively and fairly monitor their performance and give
them timely feedback.

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56 Chapter Six

• Establish communication channels among personnel and

customers.
The first three elements, skill variety, task identity, and task sig-
nificance, collectively express the meaningfulness of the work.
When we design jobs that are truly meaningful, it helps to recruit
and retain talented people. Look around your own organization and
see if that isn’t true.
Next, we will consider work redesign for mental demands.

ANALYSIS FOR MENTAL DEMANDS

We will use the eight categories of mental demands of a job from
Chapter 5 to present some principles.

Mental Intensity of the Job

• Ask personnel how their jobs should be designed to relieve

mental pressure associated with the jobs. Wrzesniewski and
Dutton (2001) make a good case of the benefits of having the
employee “craft” their own job. Thus, the employee
redesigns his or her job by: 1) changing the number, scope,
and type of tasks that make up the job; 2) changing the
quality and/or amount of interaction with others
encountered in the job; and 3) viewing the job as an
integrated whole rather than as a set of discrete work tasks.
• Combine several short activities so that a job has sufficient
scope to avoid boredom and help personnel to develop new
skills. Design the job so that the person starts and completes
the entire product or service to be delivered to the customer.
This approaches the old concept of a craftsman – not a wild
idea in these days of customized products.
• Watch for opportunities for personnel to communicate with
customers and to use judgment in making decisions
involving customers. This helps to develop people by
providing intellectually challenging activities.
• Design jobs to minimize physical risks such as safety
hazards, noise, dust, and other environmental concerns.
• Use technology to do unpleasant or boring tasks.

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How Can We Redesign Work at the Job Level? 57

Time Spent on the Job

• Keep aware of conflicting demands of work and family for

personnel and use flexible hours, shared jobs, or other means
to ease the burden. Be careful that such steps do not cause a
work overload problem for other personnel.
• Watch for work overload problems for supervisors and
managers who have responsibility for three shifts seven days
per week. Regular monitoring of three shifts plus firefighting
on special problems can become a disaster.
• Watch for shift work that includes unsociable hours, no
flexibility, or unpredictable hours.
• Watch for the amount of overtime. Even if paid overtime is
desired, the result can be a stressed-out person.
• Provide work schedules that recognize personnel
responsibilities outside the job.
• Assist personnel who are responsible for the welfare of chil-
dren, parents, grandparents, or others. Being responsible for
others is stressful and personnel need the time and resources
to care for others. See Chapter 11, Work and Family Issues.

Job Content

• Help people to see the purpose and significance of the job.

Jobs should have a complete, visible output.
• Provide a job scope that encompasses a variety of skills.
• Be sure that the job content is in line with the capabilities of
the person and the resources provided.

e f
Old Russian proverb: If your friend is made of
wax, don’t place him near the fire.

• Design the physical aspects of the workplace (individual’s

workplace and community areas) to make the surroundings
pleasant. Tackle these issues:
– Temperature
– Noise

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58 Chapter Six

– Lighting (people prefer natural lighting)

– Chairs and desks
– Hallways (how about colorful hallways with “street signs”?)
– Gathering areas in a central location
– Small quiet places to work as well as team areas for collab-
oration (“caves and common areas”)
– Dress code

Some of the leading companies on workplace design include

Amoco, Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Ford Motor Company, Hewlett-
Packard, Pitney Bowes, and Steelcase.

Control in Doing the Job

• Clarify job uncertainty and conflict to minimize confusion

and frustration. Avoid job designs in which personnel
receive conflicting demands from several people.
• Provide personnel with a complete understanding of their
responsibility and what they are supposed to do. This
includes clarifying overlapping responsibilities with other
personnel and conflicting responsibilities to meet various
organization goals (for example, quantity of output vs.
quality of output).
Lack of control is often cited as a reason for work overload. But
“lack of control” is trite. We need to be specific, and later in this
chapter you will find checklists for self-control that pinpoint how to
redesign a job.

Social Interaction on the Job

• Avoid physical and/or social isolation of personnel. Provide

social support by having interaction among personnel
during the workday. Encourage people to have a best friend
at work and to help each other.
• Add some fun to the job. This can be as simple as posting
baby pictures, arranging an ugly tie/ugly shoe contest, or an
endless variety of other events. Use whatever type of fun fits

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How Can We Redesign Work at the Job Level? 59

your business territory. Managing to Have Fun, Weinstein

(1996) describes 52 fun events – one for each week of the
year. 301 More Ways to Have Fun at Work, by David Hemsath
(2001), is another useful source of ideas. A third source is
Fun Works: Creating Places Where People Love to Work, by
Leslie Yerkes (2001).
• Watch for unusual opportunities to create an environment for
social interaction. Dolores Fry is president of Ultimate Home
Care, a firm that provides homecare services. At her office, I
was greeted not by Dolores but . . . by her dog. The dog
comes to work with her each day and roams the offices at
will. This may not be feasible in many situations but imagine
the tone that this friendly dog sets in the office. That president
(an accountant by background) also has a charming novelty in
full view in her office – a large doll house. And she had her
husband’s office (he works for her) decorated with a civil war
motif because he is a civil war buff. This is the kind of
imagination that we need in our workplaces.

Management Support

• Provide personnel with regular feedback on their

performance and support in meeting their job objectives.
• Be accessible to personnel to discuss their job concerns.
Don’t wait for people to come to you with a problem. Take
the initiative to seek out people to show your concern for
them as a person. Yes, this will take time.
• Provide personnel with sufficient authority to decide the
“how” of doing the work. See Empowerment in Chapter 8.
Provide opportunities for people to be creative in helping to
design the job.

Career Planning

• Do a thorough job of matching job requirements with

personnel skills and interests (see Chapter 7).
• Assist personnel with career planning and development. Try
to meet with them quarterly. Periodically, give people the
chance to learn new skills. Make sure that each person has

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60 Chapter Six

someone who encourages their development and cares about

them as a person.
• Address company and job uncertainties as quickly as
possible. Don’t hide behind the excuse that “upper
management hasn’t told us yet.” At least find out a date
when information may be available.
• Have the human resources department conduct a salary
survey of local businesses to assess whether company salary
levels and benefits are consistent with competing firms.
• Strive for fairness in sharing economic rewards by
eliminating extreme differences in salary among upper
management and hourly personnel.
• Provide reward and recognition for outstanding personnel.
This means say something once a week – at least say thanks.

Family-Friendly Practices

• Flexible work schedules

• Assistance in meeting childcare needs
• Assistance in meeting eldercare needs
• Availability of family and medical leaves
• Assistance with physical and mental health needs
• Assistance with other family matters
• Elimination of mandatory overtime
A discussion of these specific practices is presented in Chapter
11, Work and Family Issues.

Volvo Cars made use of Job Design/Health Promotion teams to

help detect and resolve psychosocial hazards (Karasek and Theorell
1990; 230). Volvo’s efforts at psychosocial job redesign involved both
assembly-line workers and white-collar workers. At one plant, a
total of eight changes were introduced: 1) offices and workshops
rebuilt in a new layout; 2) traditional supervisor role replaced by a
more facilitative role; 3) less authoritarian management style; 4) less
confrontational style by trade unions; 5) computer aids to improve
work efficiency; 6) more personal contact among customers and

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How Can We Redesign Work at the Job Level? 61

employees; 7) work organized in teams; and 8) antismoking cam-

paigns. (Karasek and Theorell 1990; Wallin and Wright 1986).
Overall, Karasek and Theorell state it well: the job changes
“were all oriented to eliminate unnecessary restrictions in employee
decision making, increase intellectually challenging tasks such as
customer contacts, and build social cohesion in the work unit. These
changes occurred at both the level of the task and at the level of
organizational policy in a mutually reinforcing manner.”
These principles aim to redesign processes to minimize the time
involved in work overload and decrease the mental demands of
work overload. We proceed now to redesign individual jobs to pro-
vide self-control by those doing the jobs.

ANALYSIS FOR SELF-CONTROL

In Chapter 2, we identified three important perceptions about the
causes of work overload: “process not capable. . .”, “lack of control
in setting priorities,” and “unclear performance goals and responsi-
bilities.” In redesigning work, the concept of self-control addresses
these three causes and other causes of work overload.
Self-control is a universal concept, applicable to a bank teller
serving customers, a technician running a chemical reactor, a super-
visor running a work unit, a middle manager running an operations
department, a plant manager responsible for meeting the various
goals set for the plant, or a general manager responsible for running
a division at a profit. In our application of the concept, we will focus
on the middle manager and the people reporting to that manager.
The concept, originally proposed by J. M. Juran in 1962, is applica-
ble to both manufacturing and service jobs.
An ideal objective for designing individual jobs is to place
human beings in a state of self-control, that is, to provide them with
all they need to meet performance objectives. To do so, we must pro-
vide people with:
1. Knowledge of what they are supposed to do
2. Knowledge of what they are actually doing (performance)
3. Ability and desire to regulate the process, with minimum
variation
These three elements are basic, but they are far too general. We
will dissect them into sub-elements to help us to redesign jobs.

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62 Chapter Six

Most job designs do not meet the three elements, and subele-
ments of self-control. Some managers proclaim that they “provide
people with all the tools they need to do the job.” In many cases,
this is not true.
“All the tools needed” means the elements of self-control. How
do we evaluate for self-control? By applying the following checklists,
for the current and proposed job design we can redesign the jobs.
These checklists (adapted from Gryna 2001, Chapter 16 and Shirley
and Gryna 1998) are not theoretical but are based on my research in
talking with people about their jobs. Separate checklists are given for
the manufacturing and service sectors. Depending on your interest,
see the following checklist for the manufacturing sector or skip to the
checklist for the service sector later in this chapter.

CHECKLIST FOR MANUFACTURING

SECTOR
The elements and sub-elements of self-control are shown in Table 6.2.

Table 6.2 Self-control in the manufacturing sector.

1. Knowledge of what they are supposed to do
• Clear and complete work procedures
• Clear and complete performance standards
• Superior selection and training of personnel
2. Knowledge of what they are actually doing (performance)
• Thorough review of work
• Thorough and timely feedback of review results
3. Ability and desire to regulate the process to meet the standards, with
minimum variation
• A process and job design capable of meeting performance standards
• Process adjustments that will minimize variation
• Personnel training in adjusting the process
• Process maintenance to retain the inherent process capability
• A strong quality culture and environment

Criterion 1: Knowledge of What They Are “Supposed to Do”

Providing personnel with the knowledge of what they are supposed
to do is essential for self-control. The following checklist can help to
evaluate this criterion.

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Clear and Complete Work Procedures

1. Are there written product specifications, process

specifications, and work instructions? If written down in
more than one place, do they all agree? Are they legible?
Are they conveniently accessible to the worker?
2. Do personnel receive specification changes automatically
and promptly?
3. Do personnel know what to do with defective raw
material?
4. Have responsibilities in terms of decisions and actions been
clearly defined?
5. Do personnel who perform the job have any impact on the
formulation of the job procedure?
6. Are procedures “reader friendly”?

Clear and Complete Performance Standards

7. Do personnel consider the standards attainable?

8. Does the specification define the relative importance of
different quality characteristics? If control charts or other
control techniques are to be used, is it clear how these relate
to product specifications?
9. Are standards for visual defects displayed in the work
area?
10. Are the written specifications given to personnel
performing the work the same as the criteria used by
inspectors? Are deviations from the specification often
allowed?
11. Do personnel know how the product is used?
12. Do personnel know the effect on future operations and
product performance if the specification is not met?
13. Are job standards reviewed and changed when more tasks
are added to the job?
14. Do personnel feel accountable for their output, or do they
believe that shortcomings are not under their control?

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64 Chapter Six

Superior Selection and Training of Personnel

15. Does the personnel selection process match worker capacity

(technical, physical, work schedule, mental, emotional)
with job requirements?
16. Have personnel been trained to understand the
specification and perform the steps needed to meet the
specification?
17. Does training include the why, not just the what?
18. Does the design of the training program consider the
background of those to be trained?
19. Have personnel been evaluated by testing or other means
to see if they are qualified?

Criterion 2: Knowledge of What They Are Actually

Doing (Performance)
For self-control, people must know whether their performance con-
forms to standards on product and process characteristics. Here is a
checklist to help evaluate this criterion.

Thorough Review of Work

1. Are gauges provided to the personnel? Do they provide

numerical measurements rather than simply sorting good
from bad? Are they precise enough? Are they regularly
checked for accuracy?
2. Are personnel told how often to sample the work? Is
sufficient time allowed?
3. Are personnel told how to evaluate measurements to
decide when to adjust the process and when to leave it
alone?
4. Is there a checking procedure to ensure that personnel
follow instructions on sampling work and making process
adjustments?
5. Is a review of work performed at various checkpoints in the
process, not just when the work is complete? Is the sample
size sufficient?

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Thorough and Timely Feedback of Review Results

6. Are inspection results provided to personnel, and does the

supervisor review these results with personnel?
7. Is the feedback timely and in enough detail needed to
correct problem areas? Have personnel been asked what
detail is needed in the feedback?
8. Do personnel receive a detailed report of errors by specific
type?
9. Does feedback include positive comments in addition to the
negative?
10. Is negative feedback given in private?
11. Are there certain types of errors that are tracked with
feedback from external customers? Could some of these be
tracked with an internal early indicator?
12. Do upper management and supervision provide the same
message and actions on the importance of quality vs.
quantity?
13. Where appropriate, is feedback provided to both
individuals and a group of personnel? Is time provided for
discussion with the supervisor and does the discussion
occur?
14. Does feedback include information on both quality and
quantity?
15. Where appropriate, are reports prepared to describe trends
in quality (in terms of specific errors)? Are such reports
prepared for individual personnel and for an entire process
performed by a group of people?

Criterion 3: Ability and Desire to Regulate the Process

to Meet the Standards, with Minimum Variation
The process given to personnel must be capable of meeting quantity
and quality requirements, and the job design must include the nec-
essary steps and authority for personnel to change the process when
results are not acceptable. A checklist for evaluating the third crite-
rion of self-control typically includes the following questions.

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A Process and Job Design Capable of Meeting Performance

Standards

1. Is the process (including procedures, equipment, software,

information) given to personnel capable of meeting
standards on quality and quantity of output? Has this
capability been verified by trial under normal operating
conditions? The process must be stable in order to measure
the true process capability. On average, there may be
enough time to perform a task but unexpected firefighting
can still cause overload.
2. Has the quality capability of the process been measured to
include both inherent variability and variability due to
time? Is the capability periodically checked?
3. Has sufficient time been provided to perform the job taking
into account interruptions and delays?
4. When the volume of work changes significantly, do
provisions exist to adjust individual responsibilities or add
resources?
5. Does the pace of the work allow for personal time and time
to discuss the work with supervisors and co-workers?
6. Does the job design minimize monotonous tasks?
7. Has the design of the job made use of the principles of
errorproofing?
8. Has equipment, including any software, been designed to
be compatible with the abilities and limitations of workers?
9. Has the workplace been designed to be neat and clean? The
5S approach is useful: Sort (only necessary items at the
workplace), Set in order (arrange items so that they are easy
to find, to use, and to put away), Shine (keep the workplace
clean), Standardize (make shine become a habit), Sustain
(provide the time, resources, and rewards to continue 5S).
10. Is paperwork periodically examined, and are obsolete
records destroyed to simplify working conditions?
11. Are enough personnel cross trained to provide an adequate
supply of experienced personnel for filling in when
needed?

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12. Can personnel institute changes in a job when they show

that the change will provide benefits? Are personnel
encouraged to suggest changes?

Process Adjustments that Will Minimize Variation

13. Have personnel been told how often to reset the process or
how to evaluate measurements to decide when the process
should be reset?
14. Is there a process adjustment personnel can make to
eliminate defects? Under what conditions should personnel
adjust the process? When should personnel shut down the
machine and seek more help? Whose help?
15. Have personnel actions that cause defects, and the necessary
preventive action, been communicated to them, preferably in
written form?
16. Can personnel institute changes in a job that they show will
provide benefits? Are personnel encouraged to suggest
changes?

Personnel Training in Adjusting the Process

17. Is there a hidden “knack” possessed by some personnel that

needs to be discovered and transmitted to all personnel?
18. Have personnel been provided with the time and training to
identify problems, analyze problems, and develop solutions?
Does this include diagnostic training to look for patterns of
errors, and determine sources and causes?

Process Maintenance to Retain the Inherent Process Capability

19. Is there an adequate preventive maintenance program on the

process?
20. When personnel encounter an obstacle on the job, do they
know where to seek assistance? Is this assistance
conveniently available?

A Strong Quality Culture and Environment

21. Is there sufficient effort to create and maintain awareness of

quality?

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68 Chapter Six

22. Is there evidence of management leadership?

23. Have provisions been made for self-development and
empowerment of personnel?
24. Have provisions been made for participation of personnel
as a means of inspiring action?
25. Have provisions been made for recognition and rewards for
personnel?
Next, we provide similar checklists for the service sector.

CHECKLIST FOR THE SERVICE SECTOR

The elements and subelements of self-control for the service sector
are shown in Table 6.3.

Table 6.3 Self-control in the service sector.

1. Knowledge of what they are supposed to do
• Clear and complete work procedures
• Clear and complete performance standards
• Superior selection and training of personnel
2. Knowledge of what they are actually doing (performance)
• Thorough review of work
• Thorough and timely feedback of review results
3. Ability and desire to regulate the process with minimum variation
• A process and job design capable of meeting performance standards
• Changes in job design
• Handling problems
• A strong quality culture and environment

Criterion 1: Knowledge of What They Are

“Supposed to Do”
The manufacturing sector makes extensive use of product and
process specifications and work procedures, but the use of such doc-
uments is still evolving in the service sector. Nevertheless, providing
personnel in the service sector with the knowledge of what they are
supposed to do is essential for self-control. The following checklist
can help to evaluate this criterion.

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Clear and Complete Work Procedures

1. Are job descriptions published, available, and up to date?

2. Do personnel know who their customers are? Have they
ever met them?
3. Do personnel who perform the job have any impact on the
formulation of the job procedure?
4. Are job techniques and terminology consistent with the
background and training of personnel?
5. Are there guides and aids (for example, computer prompts)
that lead personnel to the next step in a job?
6. Are there provisions to audit procedures periodically and
make changes? Are changes communicated to all affected
personnel?
7. Are there provisions for deviations from “home office”
directives to meet local conditions?
8. Are procedures “reader friendly”?
9. Does supervision have a thorough knowledge of the
operations to provide assistance when problems arise?
10. Do procedures given to personnel fully apply to the job
they do in practice?
11. Have personnel responsibilities been clearly defined in
terms of decisions and actions?
12. Do personnel know what happens to their output in the
next stage of operations and understand the consequences
of not doing the job correctly?
13. If appropriate, is job rotation used?

Clear and Complete Performance Standards

14. Are formal job standards on quality and quantity needed?

If “yes,” do they exist? Are they in written form? Do
personnel consider the standards attainable?
15. Have personnel been told about the relative priority of
quality vs. quantity of output? Do personnel really
understand the explanation?

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70 Chapter Six

16. Are job standards reviewed and changed when more tasks
are added to a job?
17. Do personnel feel accountable for their output, or do they
believe that shortcomings are not under their control?
18. Does information from a supervisor about how to do a job
always agree with information received from a higher-level
manager?

Superior Selection and Training of Personnel

19. Does the selection process adequately match worker

capacity (technical, physical, mental, emotional) with job
requirements?
20. Are personnel given an overview of the entire organization?
21. Is there regularly scheduled training to provide personnel
with current information on customer needs and new
technology?
22. Do personnel and their managers provide input to their
training needs?
23. Does training include the “why,” not just the “what”?
24. Does the design of the training program consider the
background of those to be trained?
25. Do the people doing the training provide enough detail?
Do they know how to do the job?
26. Where appropriate, are personnel who are new to a job
provided with mentors?

Criterion 2: Knowledge of What They Are

Actually Doing (Performance)
For self-control, people must have the means of knowing whether
their performance meets job requirements. The following checklist
can help to evaluate this criterion.

Thorough Review of Work

1. Are personnel provided with the time and instructions for

making self-review of their work?

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2. Can errors be detected easily?

3. Are independent checks on quality needed? Are they
performed? Do peer personnel or others perform these
checks?
4. Is a review of work performed at various checkpoints in
process, not just when work is completed? Is the sample
size sufficient?
5. Is there an independent audit of an entire process to ensure
that individual work assignments are integrated to achieve
process objectives?
6. Where appropriate, are detailed logs kept on customer
contacts?

Thorough and Timely Feedback of Review Results

7. Do upper management and supervision both provide the

same message and actions on the importance of quality vs.
quantity?
8. If needed, do standards exist on making corrections to
output?
9. Where appropriate, is feedback provided to both
individuals and a group of personnel? Is time provided for
discussion with the supervisor, and does the discussion
occur?
10. Is feedback provided to those who need it? Is it timely? Is it
personnel specific?
11. Does feedback provide the level of detail needed
particularly to correct problem areas? Have personnel been
asked what detail is needed in the feedback?
12. Is feedback provided from customers (external or internal)
to show the importance of the output and quality?
13. Does feedback include information on both quality and
quantity?
14. Is positive feedback in addition to negative (corrective)
feedback provided?
15. Is negative (corrective) feedback given in private?

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16. Do personnel receive a detailed report of errors by specific

type?
17. Where appropriate, are reports prepared describing trends
in quality (in terms of specific errors)? Is this done for
individual personnel and for an entire process performed
by a group of people?
18. Are there certain types of errors that are tracked with
feedback from external customers? Could some of these be
tracked with an internal early indicator?
19. Are personnel held accountable for errors? Are goals for the
number of errors established and communicated to
personnel?
A credit card provider has identified 18 key processes such as
credit screening and payment processing. For these 18 processes,
more than 100 internal and supplier process measures were identi-
fied. Daily and monthly performance results are available through
video monitors and are posted. Each morning, the head of opera-
tions meets with senior managers to discuss the latest results, iden-
tify problems, and propose solutions. Employees can access a
summary of this meeting via telephone or electronic mail. The mea-
surement system is linked to compensation by a daily bonus system
that provides up to 12 percent of base salary for nonmanagers and 8
to 12 percent for managers (Davis, Rosegrant, and Watkins 1995).

Criterion 3: Ability and Desire to Regulate the Process

with Minimum Variation.
The process given to personnel must be capable of meeting quan-
tity and quality requirements, and the job design must include the
necessary steps and authority for personnel to change the process
when results are not acceptable. Here is a checklist to evaluate this
criterion:

A Process and Job Design Capable of Meeting Performance

Standards

1. Is the process (including procedures, equipment, software,

information) given to personnel capable of meeting
standards on quality and quantity of output? Has this

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How Can We Redesign Work at the Job Level? 73

capability been verified by trial under normal operating

conditions?
2. Has sufficient time been provided to perform the job taking
into account interruptions and delays?
3. Does the pace of the work allow for personal time and time
to discuss the work with supervisors and co-workers?
4. Has the design of the job made use of the principles of error
proofing?
5. Has the workplace been designed to be neat and clean? The
5S approach is useful (see previous under “Manufacturing
Sector”).
6 Does the job design minimize monotonous or unpleasant
tasks?
7. Have provisions been made in the job design to anticipate
and minimize errors due to normal interruptions in the
work cycle?
8. Can special checks be created (for example, balancing of
accounts) to detect errors?
9. Can steps be incorporated in data entry processes to reject
incorrect entries?
10. Does the job design include provisions for action when
wrong information is submitted or information is missing
as an input to a job?
11. Is paperwork periodically examined and obsolete records
destroyed to simplify working condition? Thus, the need
for an adequate records management policy.
12. When volume of work changes significantly, are there
provisions for adjusting individual responsibilities or
adding resources?
13. Are there external factors (for example, no account number
on a check, cash received instead of a check, and so on) that
hinder the ability to perform a task?
14. Are some personnel cross-trained for different tasks to
provide an adequate supply of experienced personnel for
filling in when needed?

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74 Chapter Six

15. If appropriate, is a “productive hour” scheduled each day

in which phone calls and other interruptions are not
allowed, thus providing time to be away from the work
location to attend to other tasks?
16. Has equipment, including any software, been designed to
be compatible with the abilities and limitations of
personnel?
17. Is there an adequate preventive maintenance program for
computers and other equipment used by personnel?
18. Is there a hidden knack possessed by some personnel that
needs to be discovered and explained to all personnel?
19. For a job requiring special skills, have personnel been
selected to ensure the best match for personnel skills and
job requirements?

Changes in Job Design

20. Are proposed changes limited by technology (for example,

address fields on forms)?
21. Can personnel institute changes in a job when they show
that the change will provide benefits? Are personnel
encouraged to suggest changes?
22. What levels of approval by management are required for
proposed changes to be instituted? Could certain types of
changes be identified as not needing any level of
management approval?
23. Do management actions confirm that they are open to
recommendations from all personnel?

Handling Problems

24. Have personnel been provided with the time and training
to identify problems, analyze problems, and develop
solutions? Does this include diagnostic training to look for
patterns of errors and determine sources and causes?
25. Are personnel permitted to exceed permitted process limits
(for example, maximum time on a customer phone call) if
they believe it is necessary?

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How Can We Redesign Work at the Job Level? 75

26. When personnel encounter an obstacle on a job, do they

know where to seek assistance? Is the assistance
conveniently available?

A Strong Quality Culture and Environment

27. Is there sufficient effort to create and maintain awareness

of quality?
28. Is there evidence of management leadership?
29. Have provisions been made for self-development and
empowerment of personnel?
30. Have provisions been made for participation of personnel
as a means of inspiring action?
31. Have provisions been made for recognition and rewards for
personnel?
These checklists are long but they provide the necessary level of
detail to redesign jobs.

REDESIGN FOR WORK AND FAMILY

LIFE – CASE EXAMPLES
Friedman, Christensen, and DeGroot (1998) propose a threefold
approach for redesigning work: 1) clarify what’s important – both
business goals and personal goals; 2) recognize and support the per-
sonal goals of employees; and 3) analyze the work processes (a main
theme of this book) and search for ways to redesign the work to
achieve business goals and enable employees to pursue personal
goals. It sounds good, but it also sounds difficult and time consum-
ing. But they cite persuasive case examples to encourage us to take
a shot at trying.
At a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant, a 24-hour command
center monitors more than 10,000 “hot spots” such as fire alarms,
sewage lift stations, and a hazardous manufacturing process. Shifts
change 21 times each week and exchanging information among mem-
bers from different shifts is cumbersome. Of course, the midnight to
8:00 a.m. shift is frequently difficult to fill. Operating conditions,
including the wearing of protective clothing, make the work stressful.
Also, the number of hot spots will increase by 50 percent within the

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76 Chapter Six

next year. The director’s first step was to call his staff together and
explicitly define the business goals of the command center. He also
acknowledged that the workload might have a negative impact on
employees’ personal lives, and he asked them to describe to one
another what that impact would be. Then he asked his staff to
redesign a solution to the scheduling problem that met both business
needs and personal requirements. No solution was out of bounds as
long as it met both business needs and personal requirements.
Their solution: work 12-hour shifts, three days on and four days
off one week, four days on and three days off the next week. The
redesign far exceeds expectations. The benefits: information
exchange occurs seven fewer times reducing errors during shift
transfers, overtime is less, other operating efficiencies result. In
addition, the new schedule allows employees to meet their personal
needs in ways not possible under the old system. The new schedule
even creates a high demand to work in the command center.
In another example, a new department director at a food ser-
vices company was able to redesign to meet both business demands
and employee personal needs. She inherited an administrative assis-
tant who had a reputation of being unmotivated and cynical and
caused poor morale. Some people suggested that she be fired.
When the two of them first met, the director learned that the
assistant liked to work with numbers, but her lack of computer
experience prevented her from doing finance work. Also, the assis-
tant was caring for her mother who had a terminal illness.
The two worked together on redesigning the process to improve
department performance and recognize the personal needs of the
assistant. As a result of a recent consolidation, the assistant was
maintaining separate budgeting and inventory control systems. The
assistant was then trained in Excel and in basic analytical methods
giving her greater control over the department’s finances. Managers
could receive and interpret the information faster. The morale and
performance of the assistant improved notably; she could even work
from home when her mother needed more attention.
Yes, managers may resist this three-step approach because they
believe it will be time consuming. Surprisingly, the researchers con-
cluded that this is not the case. Recognizing personal priorities can be
integrated in the activity of improving the work process. The
researchers suggest three ways for managers to begin: 1) apply the
steps to one employee; 2) initiate some small team meetings to discuss
work and personal life goals; and 3) apply the steps to the managers

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How Can We Redesign Work at the Job Level? 77

themselves. Of course, there will be obstacles to using this approach,

but imagine the potential benefits.

SUMMARY – THREE KEY POINTS

1. Five characteristics of individual jobs determine the

meaningfulness and satisfaction of a job.
2. Principles are available to redesign jobs to address eight
categories of mental demands.
3. Checklists can help to redesign jobs for self-control. These
checklists are not academic stuff but come from research
combed from the real world of jobs.

In the next chapter, we will discuss matching people with the

job design.

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7
How Do We Match
Work to People?

Terry Carter is a perfect example of the right person for

the right job. She is a nurse who draws blood from
patients in a hospital test laboratory. Her day begins
early – even before the full laboratory staff appears. Terry
not only draws the blood from the arm, she also handles
the paperwork. The job has mental demands – patients
arriving all day long, sometimes overflowing the lab,
patients who don’t read the instructions on a sign,
patients with the wrong paperwork, patients who are
physically sensitive to the drawing of blood, patients who
want to personally verify their name on the vial and so
on. All this plus many interruptions. But, day in and day
out, Terry does her job with wonderful competence and a
smile and personal manner that puts patients at ease.
Sure we can, and should, redesign the work. Better yet,
we should ask Terry to redesign the work. What a lady.

WHY MIDDLE MANAGERS SPEND

MOST OF THEIR DAY ON “PEOPLE
PROBLEMS”
One cause of work overload is a poor match among job require-
ments and employee attributes, that is, people are in the wrong job.

79

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80 Chapter Seven

One study estimated that 27 percent to 40 percent of people are in

the wrong job (Wood 1994). This is a key reason why many middle
managers say that they spend most of their time on “people prob-
lems.” Managers won’t solve these problems with the brief medici-
nal enchantment of scotch whiskey.
The skills required by a job may be inherent in a person or may
be acquired by training or experience. The matching of employee
skills (inherent or acquired) with job requirements is essential for
two reasons: 1) to meet quality and quantity requirements of the job,
and 2) to provide for employee well-being.
Thus, we must address selection, training, and retention of
personnel.

WORK OVERLOAD AND SELECTION OF

PERSONNEL
Some firms have a thorough process of selecting new employees. For
example, Southwest Airlines accepts only 4 percent of 90,000 appli-
cants each year. Chick-fil-A refuses to grow faster than it can recruit
excellent store operator candidates. The payoff? At Chick-fil-A
turnover of store operators is less than 5 percent compared to the 30
percent-40 percent common in that industry (Reichheld 2001). (The
cost of hiring a new employee is $10,057 in recruiting and adminis-
trative expenses, according to the Employment Management
Association).
Perhaps your firm knows how to recruit and assign people to
positions – but many firms simply don’t. Better employee selection
can reduce work overload in several ways:
• Reduce the work overload for middle managers who must
spend time on the “people problems” that arise because
people are in the wrong job.
• Reduce the work overload for those employees who must
carry more than their fair share of work because of the
deficiencies of a colleague.
• Achieve better employee satisfaction and help to retain key
employees.
• Provide better service to customers.

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We know that we should not recruit people just to fill open per-
sonnel requisitions, but pressures sometimes force us to do just that.
But selecting the right person for the right job is easier said than
done, so let’s address some key issues.
Organizations need many types of people – managers and
supervisors, individual contributors, those working in informal or
formal teams, customer contact people, back office operations peo-
ple, to name a few. Increasingly, many jobs involve the collection,
analysis, processing, and dissemination of information. We are in an
era of the knowledge worker who receives and processes informa-
tion rather than the physical worker who relies primarily on physi-
cal strength.
The five attributes for most positions are shown in Figure 7.1.
Personality is one important attribute for many (but not all)
positions. This attribute is increasingly essential as organizing by
teams becomes more important. A chemical manufacturer even
places job applicants in a team problem-solving situation as part of
the selection process. Larry Silver of Raymond James Financial
states the case well: “We need to recruit people who play well in the
sandbox with others, that is, don’t throw sand in people’s face and

Knowledge

Personality

Skills

Interests

Aptitude

Figure 7.1 Attributes for a position.

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82 Chapter Seven

do work together to build castles.” Mutual respect and support

among employees is indispensable if we are to lessen work overload
due to job content and mental demands.
One time-tested tool for classifying personality types is the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (McDermott 1994). This indicator
describes 16 personality types that are based on four preference
scales: extrovert or introvert, sensing or intuition, thinking or feel-
ing, and judgment or perception. Thus, one (of 16) personality types
is an extrovert, sensing, thinking, and judgment person.
Organizations need all 16 types of personality. Analyzing responses
to questions on the indicator from prospective employees helps to
determine the personality types of individuals. Then they can be
assigned to positions to get a good fit of jobs and personality. The
key is to hire for fit of person and position, rather than just filling the
open position. Then we must guide the employee to move from suc-
cess to success in that position as a stepping-stone to an even more
desirable position. The payoff is a better chance of successful per-
formance by the individual – and a satisfied employee because he or
she likes the job. Also, getting the right fit of people and jobs assures
that employees contribute their fair share to the workload; a poor fit
leads to work overload for others in the same department. Many
skills can be taught, many personality characteristics cannot.
Other personnel assessment tools are available to evaluate apti-
tude, knowledge, skills, personality, and interests. A good reference
is Morgan and Smith (1996). If assessment tools might be useful to
you, ask your human resources department to recommend the spe-
cific tools you need. These tools are an investment to select people
who will meet job requirements but also be happy in the job.
The position description plays an important role in the selection
process. The description should include the knowledge, skills, abili-
ties, and personal characteristics (KSAP’s) for the job along with a
summary of the responsibilities, working hours, and travel required.
Ideally, the job description should contain a list of the specific deci-
sions and actions that the incumbent is expected to perform. Sears
goes beyond the usual position description and includes such mat-
ters as decision-making authority, future competencies gained while
in the position, possible next jobs, and recommended minimum
time in the position.
If job descriptions don’t exist, ask someone to draft a description
for the next open job. You then review the draft and finalize. If you
don’t have time, just think of the time spent on problems with peo-
ple in the wrong jobs.

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Also, remember that the work you originally hired a person to do

may no longer exist. Likely, these people have been shifted to other
jobs – those in need of being filled. But the result may be that there are
now people in jobs for which they really are not suited. This is no
one’s fault; it’s just a reality. So, you need to review jobs and redis-
tribute work to maximize the match among people and jobs.
Raymond James Financial takes a more proactive approach.
They encourage their people to request a change in position, if they
desire. The only condition is one year of experience before request-
ing a new position. The result is an environment in which job
changes are a normal activity.
Job satisfaction factors include career development and satisfac-
tion with job content. At best, we can do an imperfect job on these
factors. The fault may be management; the fault may be the
employee. Some employees are viewed as highly competent but are
simply not satisfied in the job. Is there anything we can do? Yes, we
can encourage them to apply for a transfer to another position.
Raymond James prides itself in employee selection – carefully match-
ing job requirements with the knowledge, interests, aptitude, and
skills of an applicant. But an employee’s interests may change with
time. So a policy exists that says, after an employee has been in a
position for one year, the employee may apply for a position in
another function. Sometimes, the examples are dramatic, for exam-
ple, a bond trader transfers to a marketing position. Further, man-
agers are encouraged to support employees who apply for a transfer.
The policy has worked so well in practice that both managers and
employees see the benefits and actively support the concept.
Managers now realize that losing an employee from, say, operations
or MIS to another function not only means a more satisfied employee
but it has an unexpected benefit – the employee brings the experience
of operations to the new function and explains to the new colleagues
why operations must do activities in a certain way. Over time, this
helps to build up a surprising amount of empathy among functions.
Tim Eital of Raymond James says “transfers are the greatest thing”
because people are comfortable with reapplying if the position with
their new company has not been satisfactory.
Finally, on matching skills and interests to job requirements let’s
realize that the worst situation on work overload is when a job does
have work overload and the employee has neither the skills nor the
interest in the job. Disaster. When a job does have work overload but
there is a good match of the job with the person then at least the
good match helps the person to roll with the overload problem. But

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84 Chapter Seven

back to basics – we need to study the process and the job to elimi-
nate the work overload and we need to have a good match of the job
and the person.
Morgan and Smith (1996) is an excellent source of proven ideas
for the entire staffing process.

WHAT TO DO WHEN PERSONNEL

REQUISITIONS CANNOT BE FILLED
In my surveys, the number one cause of work overload was insuffi-
cient resources to handle even the normal workload. Sometimes,
this is due to a lack of approval to hire sufficient people. But some-
times management has given approval, but talented people simply
cannot be found. For example, the absolute number of workers aged
25 to 34 has declined 12 percent since 1990. Some companies don’t
have the problem of finding people, but other companies face a
severe problem. Finding talented people is hard work. The actions
to take are summarized in Table 7.1.

Table 7.1 Finding the right people.

1. Study the work processes for simplification
2. Benchmark other organizations
3. Analyze the recruiting process
•Redesign the recruiting process for simplification
•Ask upper management to form a taskforce
•Track the recruiting process
4. Review recruiting sources
•Build a special rapport with selected educational institutions
•Hire retirees
•Rehire former employees
•Use special sources of personnel
5. Outsource the work
6. Use unusual working time arrangements
7. Use remote locations for some personnel
8. Institute innovative employee policies

Let’s now examine these actions.

1. Study the process that requires additional people for
simplification and redesign (see Chapter 3). Perhaps waste
can be eliminated from the process or some tasks automated

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so that additional resources are not necessary. If no one has

time to study the process, consider using the unused salaries
to hire a consultant for studying the process. Or, get help
from a local school to have a student study the process.
2. Benchmark other companies on compensation, benefits,
and other aspects of employment. If your company is not
competitive, you simply won’t be able to attract good
people. Period. The benchmark information can convince
your management of the need to meet competition. Some
websites provide supplementary data on labor information:
• Bureau of Labor Statistics: www.bls.gov
• Employment Policy Foundation: www.epf.org
• Economic Policy Institute: www.epinet.org
3. Analyze the recruiting process itself. The Rogers Corp. did
exactly that to reduce the time required filling positions –
an average of about 78 days with a range of 132 days
(Leonard 1986). They collected data for each of the steps in
the process. This approach identified two problems: the
time to find the right resumé or person and, surprisingly,
the time required to move the candidate through the other
steps in the process.
• Ask upper management to form a taskforce to analyze the
recruiting process, set numerical goals on recruiting, and
develop a recruiting strategy to meet those goals.
• Set up measurements to track performance of the recruit-
ing process, particularly as it affects work overload. These
measurements might include time to fill positions, number
of applications generated, time required to generate appli-
cants, quality of interviews as rated by interviewees, and
number of jobs filled with people who remain at least one
year. Design these measurements to meet the needs of
your organization.
4. Review recruiting sources. The usual sources are internal
sources (promotion from within, employee referrals),
advertising, Internet, public and private employment
services, schools, and job fairs. But more innovative
methods are needed. One example involves schools.
Instead of having job openings posted in a career center at a

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86 Chapter Seven

school, speak with faculty. Build a rapport with that faculty

by helping the faculty strengthen the education program
for example, guest speakers, field trips, summer
employment for faculty, and sponsorship of faculty
professional travel. Setup student internships or a
cooperative education program in which students alternate
between school and work. This is a long-range effort that
can provide a continuing supply of students. Kodak is a
role-model company for this approach.
• Consider hiring some retirees from inside or outside the
company – even on a part-time basis.
• Former employees. Sometimes, employees leave a com-
pany and then discover that leaving was a mistake. After
a few months, they can be contacted to inquire about their
satisfaction in their new job. This keeps a contact available
for possible reemployment. Some organizations have
alumni websites that help to keep in touch with former
employees. The cost of rehiring is only about half as much
as the original hire, and rehires tend to remain twice as
long, according to the Society for Human Resource
Management.
• Don’t forget special sources of personnel – people with
disabilities and “welfare to work” programs are two
examples. Provide personal transportation to people who
have no means of transportation. McDonald’s found that
furnishing transportation helped them to recruit employ-
ees. Another unusual source is prison labor, that is, having
your work performed inside a prison.
5. Outsource the work. Outsourcing is the process of
subcontracting to an external supplier an activity that is
currently conducted in house. Estimates suggest that at
least 85 percent of major corporations now outsource some
activities. Outsourcing has advantages and disadvantages.
My bottom line is that the core (key) activities must be
carefully identified within each organization, and once
identified they should be performed internally and not be
outsourced. But other activities are candidates for
outsourcing – particularly if people cannot be recruited.
The Servicemaster Co. is an example of an organization that
does outsourcing work (for example, facility maintenance)

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How Do We Match Work to People? 87

and turns dead-end jobs into a career path while providing

help to their client organizations.
6. Consider unusual working arrangements for workers, for
example, flexible hours, telecommunication work, working
on and then off for periods of time. We discuss these
arrangements further in Chapter 11. Management must use
caution when providing special working arrangements for
certain workers to accommodate their family needs. The
other workers who put their time in on the job every day at
regular hours are invariably affected by the flexible hours
given to certain workers. The result can be an extra work
burden for those who are not on flexible hours (and this
impact is usually not voiced by the regular employees
because they are trying to be cordial co-workers). The
concept of flexible hours is excellent, but when employees
with children are on flexible hours, these employees need
to realize that flexible hours make scheduling more difficult
particularly when the inevitable happens – the babysitter
doesn’t show up, the unexpected carpool problem, the
medical emergency. Thus, employees who are on flexible
hours need to understand that co-workers and supervisors
are affected and need to be shown some appreciation.
7. Consider the use of remote locations for some personnel.
Pacific Bell has a department called Virtual Office
Development to organize telecommuting. People work
from their homes, customer sites, or neighborhood telework
centers. When they need to come to the office, they are
assigned a desk and phone calls are routed to that desk.
8. Institute innovative employee policies. Examples are: pay
an employee who is on another employer’s health plan
through a spouse, a mentor for every new employee, a
credit union, pastoral care, car wash at work, birthday
movie tickets. The search for innovative policies should
focus on employee needs, and thus employees should be
asked for ideas.
Some specialties have a persistent staffing shortage, for example,
information technology (IT). In January 2002, a chief information
officer magazine survey reported that nearly two thirds of IT execu-
tives agreed that they are experiencing an IT skills crisis with the
largest shortages in application development, project management,

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88 Chapter Seven

and networking. Although there is no lack of IT job applicants, tra-

ditional recruiting practices have not been able to supply personnel
with the right set of skills.

WORK OVERLOAD AND TRAINING OF

EMPLOYEES
Training of employees is essential to prevent errors and process
waste that in turn leads to work overload. But work overload and
training can have some unusual scenarios.
A bank provides an example. Ordinarily, an operations depart-
ment has a full-time training person. But what happens when the
department is not able to handle the volume of work that must be
processed each day? The manager does what any manager would
do in those circumstances, that is, the manager assigns the trainer to
do operations work rather than training work. This results in over-
load for the trainer plus someone who was scheduled for training
does not get trained adequately.
Another example also involves operations. When operations
people are in training for one or more full days the department is left
short-handed and the result is work overload. Experience suggests
that training be done in three-hour segments using small class sizes
so that sufficient people remain in the department to handle the nor-
mal activity without work overload.
Another example concerns the influence of downsizing on train-
ing. When organizations reduce the number of employees, the
impact on training takes several forms. Some training positions are
eliminated and the training activity is absorbed by regular personnel
probably as an “add on” to their regular job – resulting in work over-
load. But another form surfaces at the supervisor/manager level. If
the downsizing eliminates some supervisor/manager positions then
other supervisors/managers must absorb the managerial responsi-
bility (including training) previously performed by those whose
positions have been eliminated – again causing work overload. Or,
the downsizing may result in a lower-level employee being pro-
moted to a higher-level position that requires training and resources.
But perhaps the person best able to give that training is a supervi-
sor/manager who is gone because of downsizing (Ligos 2001).
Providing training to update skills is also an obvious step to
take. For example, 96 percent of Graniterock employees say that

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How Do We Match Work to People? 89

they receive training to further themselves (Fortune 100 Best Com-

panies). Why not institute job rotation to develop people to have a
wide variety of skills and maybe to provide a respite from boring or
stressful jobs. Cummins Engine rotates managers through several
different specialties before finalizing a role.
Progressive companies make an investment in training. The
January 12, 2004, issue of Fortune on the “100 Best Companies to
Work For” reports these scores on training hours per year: an aver-
age of 49, a high of 162, and a low of 12. The leaders are Container
Store, Paychex, Edward Jones, and AFLAC. If they can make that
investment, why not other companies?

WORK OVERLOAD AND RETENTION OF

KEY EMPLOYEES
When workers leave an organization, those remaining usually experi-
ence work overload to make up for the resources lost. In addition, the
process of hiring replacement workers involves time spent by middle
management to find job applicants, conduct interviews, select the
new employees, and provide training for these new workers. All of
this results in work overload for middle managers. Looking at this
from a cost standpoint is also dramatic: according to one estimate, the
cost of losing a key employee is between one to two times the
employee’s salary and benefits. Thus, the retention of experienced
employees is an important preventive measure for work overload. In
the latest Fortune ranking (January 12, 2004) of the “100 Best Com-
panies to Work For,” the top 10 companies were J.M. Smucker, Alston
& Bird, Container Store, Edward Jones, Republic Bancorp, Adobe
Systems, TD Industries, SAS Institute, Wegmans Food Markets, and
Xilinx (Levering and Moskowitz 2004).
Employees remain with an organization because they are satis-
fied with their jobs. But job satisfaction covers many factors. My
research suggests that the key elements of job satisfaction are shown in
Table 7.2.
Although this list provides the key factors that apply in most
organizations, you need to know what the key factors are in your
organization, the relative importance of each factor, and how well
the organization is performing on each factor. Ask your employees,
by using a carefully designed and administered survey or a focus
group of employees, with a trained focus group facilitator.

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90 Chapter Seven

Table 7.2 Job satisfaction factors.

• Financial compensation
• Employee satisfaction with job content
• Career development
• Trust, openness, and mutual respect among management and employees
• Empowerment and participation in decision making
• Workload
• Feedback and support from management
• Cooperation among employee
• Nonfinancial forms of recognition
• Other factors

My research says that financial compensation is still a key factor

in job satisfaction – no surprise. Salaries for managerial personnel are
usually higher than those for nonmanagerial. Sometimes, a sobering
scenario arises: a nonmanagerial person reaches the top of a salary
scale, desires more salary to meet family needs, and therefore wants
to become a manager. But you know what may happen: we lose a wiz-
ard chemist, programmer, or customer representative . . . and gain a
lousy manager. Then, we no longer have a good match of skills and
job and the person becomes unhappy because of marginal future
rewards in the managerial job.
A promising approach is called the “dual career ladder” concept
of employee development. In this concept, people in nonmanagerial
positions (often technical) can advance higher and higher as a spe-
cialist. At the top levels of being a specialist, the person can make as
much or more salary than the person’s supervisor. Examples of titles
for this position are Fellow or Distinguished Engineer. One of the
pioneers of the dual ladder approach was Esso Research and
Engineering Company. Other companies that practice this approach
are 3M, IBM, and Texas Instruments. Some organizations also exper-
iment with spiral career paths that create opportunities for employ-
ees to switch periodically among management, professional, and
entrepreneurial positions within a company. Still other organiza-
tions try lattice career paths that make use of cross-functional and
cross-project activities. These innovative approaches are alternatives
to the traditional hierarchical and bureaucratic career paths. Again,
an excellent reference is Morgan and Smith (1996).
Any of the aforementioned job satisfaction factors (or more
likely a combination of factors) can lead to an employee leaving.

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Where work overload and stress are present, then the likelihood of
a departure becomes imminent. Thus, it is essential that over-
worked, stressed personnel be identified and steps taken to alleviate
the condition. The symptoms of work overload discussed in Chapter
1 can be helpful in making this identification. Burnout surveys are
also available (see Maslach and Leiter 1997).
Motivational approaches to “fire up” employees do not work
unless the basics of a good job environment (the job satisfaction
factors) are in place. Some motivational approaches can even be
harmful if employees believe that an approach is only short term.
Motivational techniques cannot be plugged in to make up for defi-
ciencies that are more basic.

e Old Chinese proverb: Talk doesn’t cook rice. f

If the basics were not in place, the money spent on motivation pro-
grams would be better spent on correcting the deficiencies. If the basics
are in place, then motivational techniques can make a useful contribu-
tion by supplementing the foundation of a good job environment.
Workplace flexibility (see Chapter 11) is a powerful retention tool.
A 2003 survey conducted by the WFD consulting firm revealed that 86
percent of Deloitte and Touché client service professionals cited work-
place flexibility as important. This enabled Deloitte and Touché to
avoid about $27 million in turnover costs in fiscal 2003.
Finally, we must say the obvious. Recognition of employees is
basic. Whatever the forms of recognition they must be both tangible
and intangible. Don’t forget to have upper management participate.
As John Kritsas of Raymond James says, “Getting upper management
involved in the recognition has big emotional value.”

Measures of Retention
Three types of information are useful in retaining key employees:
retention data, employee opinion survey results, and outside research
information. Operating without this information is like flying blind.
Keeping track of retention data helps to identify problem areas
and provide data for convincing upper management to institute
required actions. Measures of retention can include:
• Percentage of employees who chose to leave their jobs
• Percentage of employees who were dismissed from their jobs

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92 Chapter Seven

• Percentage of employees who rated jobs as highly

satisfactory
• Other
Data can be analyzed by gender, age, length of time with the
company, departments, job categories, and performance levels of
employees. Comparing the data to the average for your industry
gives you a scorecard.
To gain a better understanding of retention data, an employee
opinion survey is also helpful. Questions might include, “Are you
encouraged to balance work and personal life?” “Are pay and bene-
fits competitive with other organizations?” “Are you satisfied with
career opportunities in the organization?” “Do you participate in deci-
sion making in your job?” These are examples and you need to design
the survey questions to fit your organization needs. Bank One and the
Gallup organization are collaborators on a survey for the bank opera-
tions people.
A third set of information to understand retention is research to
learn from other organizations. An easy place to start is the survey
reported by Fortune on the “100 Best Companies to Work For.” The
survey reports specific examples of personnel policies and practices
that enable an organization to achieve the “Best Company” citation.
Human resource specialists in a company should periodically meet
with their counterparts in other companies to exchange ideas on per-
sonnel policies and practices.
Thus, the combination of retention data, employee opinion sur-
veys, and outside research provides the information needed to de-
velop plans for retention of key employees. Baptist Health Systems of
South Florida uses these three sources of information (Gustafson 2001).

SUMMARY – THREE KEY POINTS

1. Most companies do not adequately match employee skills,

aptitudes, and interests with job requirements. That’s why
middle managers spend most of their day on “people
problems.”
2. Recruiting and retaining truly talented people is hard work,
but innovative approaches can help to achieve success. You
can get those open personnel requisitions filled with the
right people.

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How Do We Match Work to People? 93

3. Sure, training costs time and money. But it helps to keep

talented people in a company. Being stingy on training
leads to a stagnant workforce.
Now that we have a good match of people and jobs, let’s be sure
that we tap all of the talents of those people. That’s the subject of the
next chapter.

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8
How Do We Achieve
Participation and
Empowerment of
Employees to Reduce
Work Overload?
At a company with highly successful workforce team activ-
ity, the manufacturing manager proclaimed, “I had always
felt that these new approaches were not my management
style. My thinking had been that the guys out in the shop
knew what’s wrong and what to do about it. My style was
to beat them on the head hard enough to make them do it.”
I asked why he started workforce teams, and he replied, “I
don’t know. It just hit me.” Thanks to his support and the
humanistic approach used, workforce teams are now a
clear success in the company. When defects decreased, and
usable output increased, he became a fan of teams. He says,
“Workforce teams have caused me to rethink my old style
of managing.”

EXCITING IDEAS FOR ORGANIZING

WORK
Many businesses are still chilled by a climate of fear. But it’s chang-
ing. Management is learning how to mesh the interaction of the two
systems we need to meet objectives: the technical system (design,
equipment, procedures) and the social system (people, roles).

95

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96 Chapter Eight

New ways of organizing work, particularly at the workforce

level, continue to emerge. For example, supervisors are becoming
“coaches;” they teach and empower rather than assign and direct.
Operators are becoming “technicians”; they perform a multiskilled
job with broad decision making rather than a narrow job with limited
decision making. Team concepts play an important role in these new
approaches. Basic to all this are the concepts of participation and
empowerment. During the past two decades, the quality movement
in America has taught us many lessons about participation and
empowerment. The ideas in this chapter draw upon those in my book
Quality Planning and Analysis (2001).

ONE MORE TIME – PARTICIPATION AND

EMPOWERMENT
Participation of the workforce is essential to analyze and change
processes to eliminate work overload. One plant manager says: “No
one knows a work place and a radius of 20 feet around it better than
the worker.”
But will the workforce resist such participation because it could
result in a loss of jobs – themselves or someone else? Yes, it’s a natural
reaction. Management must hit this head on, that is, guarantee that no
jobs will be lost due to the process analysis. It can be done – and it has
been done. For example, at the Baxter Healthcare plant in Mountain
Home, Arkansas management promised that employees involved in
any jobs that were eliminated would be transferred to another line in
the plant (Fortune 2001).
The one exception to a policy of no job loss is a decrease in sales
revenue because adequate sales revenue is essential for company
survival.

EMPOWERMENT
Empowerment goes a major step beyond participation – it brings
democracy to the workplace, after years of autocracy. Empowerment
is the process of delegating decision-making authority to lower levels
within the organization. Particularly dramatic is empowerment of the
workforce. But empowerment goes far beyond delegating authority
and providing additional training. Empowerment means encourag-
ing people to take the initiative and broaden their scope of activity;

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How to Achieve Participation and Empowerment of Employees 97

empowerment also means management being supportive if mis-

takes are made.
As employees become more empowered in their work, the feel-
ing of ownership and responsibility becomes more meaningful.
Further, the act of empowering employees provides evidence of
management’s trust. Additional evidence is provided when man-
agement shares confidential business information with employees.
For many organizations, such steps are clearly a change in the cul-
ture and help to reduce the mental demands of jobs.
Empowerment is important because: 1) the higher education
level of the workforce results in a desire and ability of the workforce
to participate in decision making; 2) many repetitive jobs are now
done by technology and the remaining jobs require skills and judg-
ments by the workforce; and 3) the importance of meeting customer
needs often requires employees to make immediate decisions when
dealing with customers. Thus, empowerment has the potential of
providing opportunities for the workforce. All of this can result in a
positive outlook about their jobs by the workforce and thus reduce
the negative mental demands that often come with work overload.
But implementing empowerment is not easy, so we offer first some
realities and then some working rules to follow. First, the realities.

The Realities of Empowerment

• Contrary to what they say, many middle managers and

supervisors fear empowerment. They don’t want to give up
their authority to subordinates, particularly when the middle
managers are accountable for the results. Further, they
wonder what their role is. They have grave doubts about the
new approach. They will not express their concern if higher
management is clearly in favor of empowerment (instead,
“wait six months, this fad will pass”). Middle managers
need to be encouraged to understand empowerment.
• Contrary to what they say, many workers fear empower-
ment and some will choose not to participate. Some want
the authority but don’t want to be held accountable. As
empowerment provides more and more authority, the scope
of responsibility and accountability becomes more intense.
Let’s face facts: if you are receiving $8-$10 per hour you may
view empowerment as resulting in additional stress (that
you observe every day in your supervisor) or the additional

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risk if your participation does not yield positive results.

Some people prefer that the work be laid out for them
(including decisions) and not be concerned with decision
making. Some people view the decision making as
additional mental demands (see Chapter 5). But most people
view the decision making as positive to relieve some of the
mental demands of the job. We need to recognize these
differences among people. Don’t try to make them all fit one
mold.
• True empowerment requires a fundamental change in
management style – from command and control to
participation. For some companies, such a basic change may
not be possible now – or ever. Some highly profitable
companies practice empowerment, but other highly
profitable companies are strictly command and control
companies.
From realities, we proceed to guidelines for implementing
empowerment.

Guidelines

• Both for middle management and for workers, be specific

about the goal of empowerment and provide policies
concerning execution and limits on the authority being
delegated.
• Expect to spend money to develop the knowledge, skills,
and expertise of people.
• Empower only those employees who demonstrate that they
have the knowledge and skills to make certain decisions. Do
not empower other employees until they have made that
demonstration. Making this distinction among employees
will not be easy.
• Provide support and understanding to middle managers
who truly use empowerment to delegate authority to
subordinates.
• Hold periodic meetings of managers (before problems arise)
to confirm the approach and offer suggestions for improving
the decision making for the future.

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• Expect requests for additional salary and rewards from those

who are now empowered to use their knowledge and skills.
These requests are appropriate – because the jobs have
changed. Management should take the initiative and provide
the salary increases.
• If appropriate, give employees some control of financial and
other resources including such matters as hiring and firing
employees.
• If appropriate give employees access to customers, suppliers,
and higher management.
Wetlaufer (1999) describes a dramatic example of empowerment
at AES Corporation, a global electricity company. The characteristics
include organization around teams to run operations and mainte-
nance, elimination of functional departments, every person a general-
ist (a “mini-CEO”), and upper management acting as advisors. Sure
this is radical . . . but it has been done.

The Changing Roles

With empowerment comes the need to redefine the basic roles of
upper management, middle management, and the workforce. One
model at a bank looks like this:
• Upper management acts as shapers and coaches. As a
shaper, it creates, communicates, and supports the
organization’s mission. As a coach, it helps when asked but
avoids entering the day-to-day problems of middle
management.
• Middle management not only runs its area of responsibility
but also works as a group to integrate all parts of the
organization. In addition, it supports the workforce by
eliminating obstacles to progress.
• The workforce is the primary producer of the output for
customers. Its closeness and knowledge about its work
means that it uses its empowerment to determine how the
work can best be done.
Mann (1994) explains how managers will need to develop skills
as coaches, developers, and managers of activities that reside in dif-
ferent departments (“boundary managers”).

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Note, how essential it is for management to provide employees

with the information, feedback, and means of regulating their work,
that is, meeting the three elements of self-control is a prerequisite for
empowerment and subsequent motivation. Self-control includes the
training needed to make good decisions under empowerment.
Empowerment requires employees to have the capability, the
authority, and the desire to act.
Empowerment is not new, but we have many lessons to learn
from previous experience. Some good references are Argyris (1998)
and Forrester (2000).

TEAMS, TEAMS, TEAMS

Some organizations report that, within a given year, 40 percent of
their people participate on a team; some organizations have a goal
of 80 percent.
Aubrey and Gryna (1991) describe experiences with more than
1000 teams during four years at 75 banking affiliates of the Bank One
Corporation. The average team size was seven members, with a range
of two to 11. On some teams, membership was assigned; on other
teams, membership was voluntary. Although the focus was customer
satisfaction, reduced costs, and increased revenue two other benefits
emerged – a reduction in work overload in specific jobs and improved
communication among front-line employees and management.
Teams may be ad hoc to address one problem or may be perma-
nent to be responsible for a specific activity. Next, we examine the
three types of teams (see Table 8.1): project teams, workforce teams,
and self-managing teams.

Project Teams
A project team (sometimes called a cross-functional team) usually
consists of four to eight persons (managers, professionals, and
workforce) who are drawn from multiple departments to address a
selected problem. The problem can be work overload.
The team meets periodically, and members serve part time in
addition to performing their regular functional responsibilities.
When the project is finished, the team disbands.
The project team consists of a sponsor (upper management), a
leader, a recorder, team members, and a facilitator. Details about
these specific roles can be found in Gryna (2001), Chapter 8.

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How to Achieve Participation and Empowerment of Employees 101

Table 8.1 Summary of types of teams.

Project team Workforce Self-managing
team team
Purpose Solve cross- Solve Plan, execute,
functional problems and control
problems within a work to
department achieve a
defined output
Membership Combination of Primarily Primarily
managers, workforce workforce from
professionals, from one one work area
and workforce department
from multiple
departments
Basis and Mandatory; Voluntary; Mandatory; all
size of 4-8 members 6-12 members in the
membership members work area (6-18)
Continuity Team disbands Team remains Permanent
after project is intact,project
complete after project
Other names Improvement Employee Self-supervising
team involvement team;
group semiautonomous
team
Source: Gryna, Frank M. 2001. Quality Planning and Analysis, Fourth Edition. The McGraw-
Hill Companies. Used with permission.

An example of a special project team is the “blitz team.” A blitz

team is a project team that operates on an accelerated problem-solv-
ing schedule (several weeks for a solution rather than several
months). This is accomplished by having the team meet more fre-
quently – several times a week, often for full days. A full-time facil-
itator may be assigned to the team. Additional help is provided for
data collection and analysis. Most of the diagnostic work (data
analysis, flow charting) is done outside of the meetings. Skiba (1996)
describes the application at the Mayo healthcare system.

Workforce Teams
A workforce team is a group of workforce-level people, usually from
within one department, who volunteer to meet weekly (on company
time) to address problems that occur within their department. Team
members select the problems and are given training in problem-
solving techniques.
Kaiser Permanente uses Quality in Daily Work Teams. These
front-line work teams focus on work process improvements. The

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102 Chapter Eight

projects span across departments and include both clinical and sup-
port services (Centano, Ahn, and Tawell 1995).
Where the introduction of these teams is carefully planned and
where the company environment is supportive, they are highly suc-
cessful. With respect to work overload, the benefits of teams fall
into two categories: 1) identifying and eliminating wasted effort in
processes so the time saved can help to reduce work overload, and
2) addressing the mental demands and psychosocial issues
involved in many jobs. Teams can use the self-control checklist of
questions (see Chapter 6) given previously to analyze the jobs. This
analysis can then lead to ideas for job redesign. The workers can
immediately institute some of the job changes; other changes will
need to be presented to managers for possible modification,
changes in procedures, changes in physical work environment, and
then implementation.
If project teams or workforce teams are to be formed to analyze
work overload, the process should evolve carefully and slowly. You
should start with one or two pilot teams assisted by a facilitator.
These pilot projects are critical to prove that the workforce can make
an important contribution to reducing work overload.
A key question is: if work overload is a problem, how will we
provide people with the time and skills to study their jobs? These
teams should meet during regular working hours. Only middle
management and upper management can authorize the time and
training to study work overload. It simply won’t happen without
management support (see Chapters 9 and 10).
Perhaps the most important benefit of workforce teams is their
effect on people’s attitude and behavior. The enthusiastic reactions
of workers, sometimes streaked with emotion, are based on their
personal involvement in solving problems (Gryna 1981 provides
many examples from a variety of companies). As applied to work
overload, the effects can be:
Teams increase the individual’s self-respect. At Woodward Gover-
nor, a worker spoke highly of teams because “the little guy can get
in on things.”
Teams increase the respect of the supervisor for the workers. At
Pontiac Motor division, a supervisor remarked, because of teams, “I
find that I talk more with workers on the line.”
Teams increase the workers’ understanding of the difficulties faced
by supervisors. As a result of team activity, workers for the first time

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How to Achieve Participation and Empowerment of Employees 103

become aware of the supervisor’s many burdens. This fosters a more

understanding attitude when the supervisor is unable to solve prob-
lems quickly. Sometimes, we may even hear a murmur of apprecia-
tion for the supervisor.
Teams increase management’s respect for workers. An upper man-
ager said: “Some of the presentations by workforce teams have been
better than those of my staff people.”
Teams change some workers’ negative attitudes. At one company,
a worker stated, “I always had a chip on my shoulder around here
because I didn’t think the company cared about the worker. As a
result of my team, I’ve got a lot better attitude.”
Teams reduce conflict stemming from the working environment.
The removal of work environment frustrations (draft in a work area,
a water fountain not accessible to workers, poor food in a vending
machine) not only eliminates sources of conflicts, but worker
involvement in the removal process encourages them to think that
they can deal with other mental demands as well.
Teams help workers to understand better the reasons why many
problems cannot be solved quickly. For instance, certain process
changes at the Henry, Illinois facility of the BF Goodrich Chemical
Group required approval of the Chemical Group technical function
located in another city. Workers at the plant could understand the
need for this and have subsequently learned why this approval
process required some time because of many other process changes
being considered.
With all the potential benefits of workforce teams, the success
rate has been mixed. Baker (1988) provides perceptive recommen-
dations for management to support and sustain workforce teams.
These are:
1. Recognizing and rewarding (not necessarily monetarily)
workers’ efforts, even if recommendations are not adopted.
Giving workers increased discretion and self-control to act
on their own recommendations is an excellent reward.
2. Offering monetary rewards through the suggestion
program (which may have to be modified to accommodate
joint submission by team members).
3. Providing sufficient training to expand worker skills to take
on projects that are more complex.

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104 Chapter Eight

4. Establishing a system for teams to expand into cross-

functional teams when it appears to be a logical step. Teams
may become “fatigued” when they feel they have
accomplished about all they can by themselves and see the
need to work with their internal suppliers and customers.
5. Training of middle managers in team tools and techniques
so they can ask their subordinates the “right questions” and
not be “outsiders.” These tools are also useful for the
managers’ own processes.
6. Addressing middle management resistance when
diagnosed. Typically, management is concerned about a
loss of authority and control.
7. Measuring effectiveness by focusing on the quality of the
process—for example, the training, the group discussion
process, the interpersonal relationships, supervisory
leadership style—rather than outcomes (for example,
reduction of scrap and costs). If the process is right, the
outcomes will be also and that will reinforce employee
involvement, as well as management commitment.
Every organization must provide for the participation of the work-
force in solving problems. One approach makes use of workforce
teams. A more revolutionary approach involves self-managing teams.

SELF-MANAGING TEAMS –
REVOLUTION IN THE WORKPLACE
A self-managing team is a group of people who work together contin-
uously to plan, execute, and control their work to achieve a defined
output. That definition starkly contrasts with the traditional system of
work design developed by Frederick W. Taylor, an industrial engineer.
Basic to the Taylor system is the division of an overall task into narrow
specialized subtasks that are assigned to individuals by a supervisor.
The supervisor then coordinates and controls the execution and han-
dles the general supervision of the workers. Taylor’s system achieved
spectacular increases in productivity and was a major contributor to
the affluence during the 20th century. But Taylor’s major premise –
low level of worker knowledge – has become obsolete by the remark-
able rise in education at all levels including the workforce.

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How to Achieve Participation and Empowerment of Employees 105

Historically, Taylor is viewed as a technocrat, not a humanist.

His emphasis on the technical did not go unnoticed by other indus-
trial engineers. Henry L. Gantt, Lillian Gilbreth, and others sought
to temper the technical with the humanistic aspects of work design.
As a result, organizations increasingly use the education, experi-
ence, and creativity of the workforce.
Here are two examples of self-managing work teams:
In an electronics plant, an assembly team handles all aspects of
a customer order: it receives the order, prepares the components,
assembles and solders circuit boards, tests the boards, ships the
boards, monitors inventory levels, and processes all paperwork.
At an insurance company (the Aid Association for Lutherans),
work was originally organized into three areas – life insurance,
health insurance, and support services such as billing. Under the
new organization design, teams of 20 to 30 employees perform all of
the 167 tasks that formerly were split among the three functional
sections. Now, field agents deal solely with one team. The result is a
shorter processing time for cases – and less work overload.
The American Express Consumer Card Group uses “semi-
autonomous work teams.” A team consists of 10 to 12 employees in
the natural work group. Team members do customer service work
and manage quality, inventory, and attendance; prepare work sched-
ules; and prepare production reports and forecasts. Individual roles
are defined to handle these team responsibilities. The team leader
focuses on coaching, feedback, and special human resource issues.
One fast-food firm creates teams of “crew members” (workers at
one location) who are trained to manage the site without a full-time
manager (Harvard Business School 1994). Not only does this mean
installing on-line sensor technology such as the time to prepare an
order, but it also means providing crew members with the same
operating and financial information provided to a restaurant general
manager to run the site. Crew members make operating decisions
such as ordering food materials. Thus, knowledge that long sepa-
rated “brain workers” from “hand workers” now resides in a com-
puter on the operations floor.
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company uses self-directed teams.
These are process teams aligned with the way customers come in
contact with the hotel: 1) prearrival team; 2) arrival, stayover, and
departure team; 3) dining services team; 4) banquet services team;
and 5) engineering and security team. In a self-directed work team,
members may have individual roles but the team shares account-
ability for meeting performance goals.

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106 Chapter Eight

A contrast of features of the traditional organization of the

workforce and self-managing teams is given in Table 8.2.

Table 8.2 Comparison of organizational forms.

Feature Traditional organization Self-managing team
Scope of work Each individual is Team is responsible for
responsible for a a broad scope
narrow scope
Job categories Many narrow A few broad
for personnel categories categories
Organizing, Primarily by supervisor Primarily by team
scheduling, and or staff
assigning work
Measuring and Primarily by supervisor Primarily by team
taking corrective or staff
action
Training provided Training for task Extensive training for
assigned to individual multiple tasks plus
interpersonal skill training
Opportunity for job Minimum High because of
rotation extensive training
Reward system Related to job, Related to team
individual, and seniority performance and scope
performance of skills acquired by
individual
Handling of Primarily by supervisory Many issues handled
personnel issues personnel or staff by team
Sharing of business Limited to non-confidential Open sharing of all
information information information
Source: Gryna, Frank M. 2001. Quality Planning and Analysis, Fourth Edition. The McGraw-
Hill Companies. Used with permission.

The difference is revolutionary. Workers are empowered to

make certain decisions previously reserved for a supervisor.
Clearly, the implementation of such a fascinating but radical
approach will be like walking through a minefield. Some key steps
involved are:
1. Get upper management to commit to the approach and to
accept some unknown risks.
2. Provide in-depth orientation and participation of upper
management, middle management, specialists, workforce,
and union officers.
3. Analyze the production workflow to define logical
segments for teams.

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How to Achieve Participation and Empowerment of Employees 107

4. Define the skills required, levels of skills, and requirements

for certification.
5. Form teams and train the teams and individuals.
6. Develop production goals for teams and provide
continuous feedback of information to teams. Such
feedback must have the content and timeliness needed to
control the process.
7. Change the compensation system to reflect the additional
skills acquired by individuals.
8. Develop trust among management and the workforce, for
example, the sharing of financial and other sensitive
information on company performance.
9. Develop an implementation plan spanning about three
years and starting slowly with a few pilot teams.
Some middle managers will have a new job. That new job may be
working with a self-managing team but perhaps now as a member,
facilitator, or technical consultant instead of the hierarchical supervi-
sor. Such a change in a role affects power, knowledge, rewards, and
status and, thus, will be threatening. Organizations have a responsi-
bility to explain the new roles for managers clearly and to provide the
training, understanding, and patience to achieve success.
Self-managing work teams are not always successful. For some
managers, supervisors, and workers, the demands of the concept are
more than they are willing to accept. But self-managing teams can be
highly effective if they fit the technology, are implemented carefully,
and the people in the organization are comfortable with the concept.
Although these various types of teams are showing significant
results, the reality is that, for most organizations, daily work in a
department is managed by a supervisor who has a complement of
workers performing various tasks. This is the “natural work team” in
operations. But team concepts can certainly be applied to daily work.
One framework for a team in daily operations work is the control
process. As applied to daily work, the steps are: choose control sub-
jects, establish measurement, establish standards of performance,
measure actual performance, compare to standards, and take action
on the difference. When the natural work team of the department is
trained in these concepts, the work team gains greater control over the
key work processes so that they can meet customer needs and reduce
work overload.

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108 Chapter Eight

At Bank One, employees are encouraged to use measurements

(“metrics”) to manage their work. Thus, a subdepartment of 12-20
employees will have their own “Q board” (Q for Quality) of mea-
surements that they manage. They track whatever they feel is
important. Their manager may offer suggestions, but the board
“belongs” to the employees. They do weekly or biweekly produc-
tion management reviews to monitor progress of the metrics. The
metrics are also used to identify potential projects for a team.

YES, WE CAN MAKE TEAMS EFFECTIVE

The scars of experience provide some principles to follow:
• Provide sufficient time for team members to participate. On
a cross-functional project team, members usually spend 15
percent to 20 percent of their working time to attend
meetings and do the follow-up work after the meetings. This
means about one day each week. Unless sufficient time is
provided for people to be on a team, their team activity will
be viewed as an “add-on”, that is, they must somehow do
their work on a team in addition to their regular job. The
result is surely work overload – and the regular job doesn’t
get done and the team activity is weak and results in failure
of the team.
• Teams often require a “facilitator.” Although not a member
of the team, the facilitator plays an important role in helping
the team leader. The roles include assistance in team
building, training the team members, providing technical
support, and helping to solve human relations problems
among team members.

e Old French proverb: Soft words don’t scratch the tongue. f

Organizations that do extensive team problem solving have sev-

eral levels of facilitators. In the Six Sigma approach, three levels are
employed: a master black belt is usually a full-time facilitator and
trains black belts and green belts; a black belt is full time and trains
and assists the project team in problem solving; a green belt is part
time and helps the black belts.

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How to Achieve Participation and Empowerment of Employees 109

• Understand that team performance depends on the

performance of individuals. Thus, the individuals must
understand the common goals, must be able to continuously
develop their individual capabilities, and must feel that they
are being treated fairly by others on the team. A facilitator
can help team members to work toward these characteristics.
A useful reference is Avery, Walker, and Murphy (2001).
My research on workforce teams identifies what it is that mem-
bers like about being on a team. They like:
• Discussing and solving problems as a team
• Presenting their solutions to problems
• Getting engineers and others interested in their problems
and working with them
• Freedom to express themselves
• Influencing decisions about their work
• Recognition
• Reduction of conflicts in the work environment
What workforce people like about teams also applies to middle
managers and professional specialists.
For a discussion of research conducted on teams, see Katzen-
bach and Smith (1993).
The humanists in the business world are now swimming in
rhetoric – participative management, empowerment, situational
leadership, social capital, people building, and industrial democ-
racy. Will management nurture these concepts to help humanize the
workplace and further the objectives of all organization members?
Time will tell.

SUMMARY – THREE KEY POINTS

1. Participation and empowerment of the workforce can

produce ideas to reduce work overload. We need their help.
2. We enjoy – revel in – team sports. Why not use more teams
in the workplace? Teams can analyze the technical content
and the mental demands of work to reduce work overload.

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110 Chapter Eight

3. Experiment with new forms of organizing work. If all of the

experiments are successful, you aren’t being imaginative
enough. Take some risks.

Participation and empowerment are not pills that will eliminate

the need for more substantial medicine on work overload. That
medicine must come from the doctor (upper management). But first,
the role of middle management – the next chapter.

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9
How Can Middle
Managers Handle Work
Overload in Daily
Operations?
Sometimes software bugs can raise havoc for operations
managers and professional contributors. The software
usually worked, but on Thursday some unusual transac-
tions caused a failure.
So, they are sorting checks at a bank (three million checks
accounting for $2.5 billion per day) and sending some
checks to other banks. The computer system keeps track of
the number of checks, and the amounts, sent to each bank.
Yes, it’s critical that the transactions financially balance.
Three subject-matter experts are trying to identify the
cause of the failure. While that was going on, other people
must manually reconstruct where the checks were going,
with amounts, to 400 different banks.
Late Thursday, the system was finally fixed. It blew up
again on Friday. Friday and Saturday were hectic until
the root cause was found and corrected. Imagine the work
overload.

This chapter discusses work overload issues for middle managers

and individual professional contributors.

111

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112 Chapter Nine

WHO ARE MIDDLE MANAGERS?

We will focus on middle managers, particularly those in operations
– the heart of any manufacturing or service organization. Operations
managers direct the activities that generate sales revenue through
the product or service provided to external customers. They are
responsible for meeting various “performance goals” (with or with-
out adequate resources).
For organizations of moderate or larger size, middle managers
are often two levels below the CEO and one or two levels above
individual workers. Examples include a manager in a bank, a pro-
duction manager in a plant, a site manager at a construction site, a
store manager, a restaurant manager, a manager at an insurance
company, a manager at a call center, and many, many more.
Middle managers are the backbone of an organization. They are
problem solvers – roll up their sleeves and get the work done. As
they are close to day-to-day operations with customers, front-line
employees, and suppliers, these middle managers continuously face
operating problems.
Downsizing and mergers often lead to a reduction in middle man-
agers. Running lean also can result in fewer layers of middle
managers. These and other factors lead to work overload for mid-
dle managers. An upper manager remarked to me that middle man-
agers have a more stressful role than upper managers because middle
managers have people coming at them from above and below.

REVIEW OF CAUSES OF WORK

OVERLOAD
First, we will review the key causes of work overload from Chapter 2.
• Insufficient resources to handle the normal workload (see
the following under Personnel Issues)
• Firefighting on problems (see the following under
Firefighting)
• Lack of control in setting priorities, deciding work methods,
and use of resources (see the following under Departmental
Planning and Administration)

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How Middle Managers Can Handle Work Overload 113

• Work process not capable of meeting quantity and quality

requirements (see the following under Firefighting)
• Unclear performance goals and responsibilities (see the
following under Departmental Planning and
Administration)
• Inputs from internal/external suppliers – missing, wrong,
late (see the following under Firefighting)
• Inadequate selection and training of personnel (see the
following under Personnel Issues)
• Information overload – e-mail and other (see the following
under Information Overload)
• Computer hardware or software problems (see the following
under Firefighting)
• Other (for example, sustaining change/direction)
No wonder most middle managers, and the people working for
them, have work overload. Before we examine these causes in more
detail and the action needed, we will first review the role of teams in
work overload.

HOW MIDDLE MANAGERS CAN USE

TEAMS TO REDUCE WORK OVERLOAD
Chapter 8 discusses how teams can analyze processes and the indi-
vidual jobs in processes. Many processes are cross-functional, that is,
the individual jobs within the process reside in different functional
departments, each having its own middle manager. Also, problems
within cross-functional processes often occur during the transfer of
work among departments (that is, the “white space” on the organi-
zation chart). Additional problems occur due to other issues, for
example, misunderstandings, different priorities, and lack of feed-
back between departments. All of this suggests that the middle man-
agers in the process need to form a team of managers (or their
representatives) to study work overload in the process. The team
would use the concepts discussed in Chapters 3, 4, and 5. Some
manager must take the initiative to form the team.

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114 Chapter Nine

Workforce-level teams using the concepts discussed in Chapters

3, 4, 5, and 6 can analyze individual jobs within a process. The
department manager would set up these teams. The caution in
Chapter 8 needs to be repeated here. Some middle managers have a
background of managing that has established them as bosses – “I’m
not bossy, I just have better ideas than you.” Many middle managers
see a conflict between the boss role and workers participating in
solving problems. Managers who are autocratic cannot be expected
to embrace the concept of participation. They fear the loss of their
authority and think that workforce teams would be a waste of time
– and add to the work overload. But we’ve come a long way in the
past two decades – many middle managers now understand that the
worker on an individual job knows that job better than anyone else
and can contribute valuable ideas.
Next, we address the causes of work overload by examining
where middle managers spend their time and how they can reduce
work overload for themselves and for their people.

WHERE DO MIDDLE MANAGERS

SPEND THEIR TIME?
Middle managers told me that they spend most of their time on six
activities:
• Departmental planning and administration
• Firefighting
• Personnel issues
• Meetings
• Managing information
• Business travel
Some middle managers don’t even have the time to do all of
these activities. For many operations managers, a typical day is this:
manage fires, attend high-priority meetings, and read e-mails in the
time that remains. What’s missing is managing the work process.
That’s easier said than done, but it’s critical and we will address that
issue in Chapter 10 under Long Range Actions. But first, let’s help
middle managers keep their heads above water by discussing the
short-range actions needed to reduce work overload.

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How Middle Managers Can Handle Work Overload 115

We start by addressing the major categories of time spent by

middle managers.

DEPARTMENTAL PLANNING AND

ADMINISTRATION
The issues here are time management, setting priorities, focus, dele-
gation, fun on the job, and having a plan of palliative actions.

Time Management
This will not be a lecture on time management techniques – but those
techniques really are useful. Browse in a bookstore and select a book
that seems to fit your territory. Hindle (1998) is concise, readable, and
practical. Beyond the techniques, my recommendations are:
• Keep a time log for a representative month to estimate the
time spent in various work activities such as the six listed
previously. Trust me, your memory is not accurate on where
you spend your time. The results of a time log will provide
some surprises. An alternative to keeping a detailed time log
is the work sampling study. Work sampling is the process of
recording the frequency of observations in various activities
in order to estimate the time spent in each activity. For
elaboration, see Aft 2000; Chapter 8.
• Add 20 percent to any estimate you make to complete a
project. You need that cushion to allow for the unexpected,
which always occurs.
• Schedule a half hour a day for uninterrupted quiet time for
collecting your thoughts and assessing priorities. This quiet
time may be in the office behind a closed door, taking a walk
outside around the property, or in an exercise mode. Later in
this chapter we will take a closer look at the importance of
exercise.
This may make you laugh. Some mavericks use exercise for cre-
ative thinking time. (Medical people say that exercise kicks in the
“endorphins.”) A lap swimmer (me) enters the water with one prob-
lem in mind. After 15 minutes of lap swimming, one to five creative
thoughts occur to him. After he leaves the pool, he immediately
writes the thoughts down before they are forgotten.

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116 Chapter Nine

Setting Priorities on Major Projects

Most of us put off working on the difficult problems. Life is more
pleasant working on easier problems (those that we can conclude in
a short time), those that are of personal interest and fun to us, those
in response to a squeaky wheel – a pest who barks the loudest. Thus,
sometimes we are working on the wrong problems.
When we work on lower-priority problems, then the important
ones fester and become worse – sometimes resulting in a crisis.
Instead, we need to set clear priorities based on companywide pri-
orities set by upper management. See Chapter 10 for an example
from Bank One. Stick to your priorities and be prepared to tell peo-
ple how your priorities flow down from company priorities. For
complex problems, break up the problem into parts and work on
one or a few parts at a time. This shows visible progress and gives
you a feeling of accomplishment.
About twice a year, middle managers should step back and
review current projects. Then relative priorities must be assigned to
the projects. (This is not the same as deciding priorities on firefight-
ing). How to define the relative priorities on major projects is a per-
sonal matter but some possibilities are:
• Distinction: “Urgent” must be done now but “important”
may have higher value to the organization. Focus on what’s
really important (I know “they’re all important”). With work
overload, the middle manager says, “I’m trying to decide
how to get the work done, much less solve problems.” See
below under Firefighting for an important distinction
between sporadic and chronic problems.
• Separate the projects into A, B, and C piles where A is the
number one priority.
• Hartman (1983) describes an approach at AT&T that makes
use of a “Pareto priority index” (PPI) to evaluate each
project. The index is:

savings x probability of success

PPI =
cost x time to completion (years)

Table 9.1 shows the application of this index to evaluate five

potential projects.

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How Middle Managers Can Handle Work Overload 117

Table 9.1 Ranking by use of Pareto Priority Index (PPI).

Project Savings, Probability Cost, $ Time, PPI
$ thousands thousands years
A 100.0 0.7 10.0 2.00 3.5
B 50.0 0.7 2.0 1.00 17.5
C 30.0 0.8 1.6 0.25 60.0
D 10.0 0.9 0.5 0.50 36.0
E 1.5 0.6 1.0 0.10 9.0
Source: Juran Institute, Wilton, CT www.Juran.com. Used with permission.

High PPI values suggest high priority. Note how the ranking of
projects A and C is affected when the criterion is changed from sav-
ings alone to the index covering the four factors.
In deciding priorities, it is important to review with customers,
internal and external, the relative importance of current work. (Your
most important internal customer is . . . your boss). Customer prior-
ities do change. When the change in priorities is radical, the cus-
tomer will speak up; when the change is modest, the customer may
be silent, but the change needs to be known because of the impact
on many matters including work overload.
Stepping back to make a departmental assessment, identifying
projects, and assigning priorities takes time, but it’s strategic plan-
ning at the departmental level. Some middle managers claim that
they don’t have the time (is this an excuse because they have never
been taught how to step back?), but to move ahead in an organiza-
tion they must somehow find the time.

Focus
Once priorities are set, then the key element is focus. That is, concen-
trate on a goal and follow through with sufficient energy to complete
the task. Bruch and Ghoshal (2002) believe that the most effective
managers practice the combination of focus and energy. Their
research shows that only about 10 percent of managers are highly
effective or “purposeful” (highly focused and highly energetic);
about 40 percent are “distracted” (highly energetic but unfocused);
30 percent are “procrastinators” (low focus and low energy); and 20
percent are “disengaged” (high focus but low energy). This explodes
the myth that hard work alone yields superior results. Further, the
research concludes that although focus and energy are personal char-
acteristics, upper management can directly affect manager behavior

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118 Chapter Nine

by encouraging managers to eliminate waste (the subject of this

book) and encouraging managers to develop their own ways to
achieve goals rather than rely on formal procedures. Staying
focused includes saying “no.”
Politely say “no” to people who habitually ask for help on short
notice. Let’s face it, some people procrastinate and then realize that
they need an input from you. Their request becomes “urgent” (to
them). The result is work overload for you. It’s not fair to you and
they need to break their practice of imposing on your good nature.
Here’s how. Give them a future date and, if this is unacceptable to
them, firmly state that the short deadline is impossible to meet.
Doing this once or twice will send them a message. Of course, this
also means that you must give adequate notice when you are the
one making the request.
Finally, learn to say “no” to new work. Politely refuse requests
to perform additional work. If you find you must say “yes,” then
give a date of completion that is realistic (and includes an
allowance for the unexpected, which will occur). If the date is unac-
ceptable (to a boss) then propose what current activities will receive
a lower priority.

Delegate
Delegate is the name of a song that managers hear all the time.
Many managers (particularly rookies) know they should delegate
but they are fearful. For example, will the job be done correctly?
Trust your people, empower them, and delegate tasks. Part of
work overload of middle managers is due to a failure to delegate.
Sometimes, managers unwittingly encourage reverse delega-
tion. This occurs when a subordinate comes to a manager for help
on a problem. When the manager says “I’ll get back to you on that,”
the responsibility transfers from the subordinate to the manager. If
this happens with many subordinate problems, the manager
becomes overwhelmed. Of course, part of the role of the manager is
to help subordinates. But the manager must emphasize that the
problem is still the responsibility of the subordinate. The key is
empowerment, that is, make sure the subordinate has both the
desire and the knowledge and tools to solve the problem.

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Add Fun to the Job

We can at least relieve the agony of work overload by keeping a
sense of humor. Weinstein (1996) provides 52 ideas; for example,
transform a cubicle, take a trip to the toy store, distribute stuffed ani-
mals, design personalized fortune cookies.
The holidays furnish plenty of fun outside of working hours.
That’s great, but sometimes the first day back at work can be a drag
on everyone. Thus, it’s a good idea if that first day back can be a
“recovery day.” My friend, Andy Rivera, is manager of a successful
restaurant and he tries to have the restaurant closed on the day after
a holiday where the employees traditionally have a fun, but
exhausting, holiday. Some would say that closing a restaurant for a
day is not practical – Andy closes the restaurant.

A Plan of Palliative Actions to Relieve the Overload

Have a plan of palliative (medical word) actions to take when work
overload cannot be reduced. Such actions might include special time
off, extensive reward and recognition, inserting fun into the work,
rejuvenation ideas (see later in this chapter) and a target date for
eliminating the work overload. Palliative actions treat the symptom
rather than the cause, but they are better than no action.

FIREFIGHTING
In Chapter 2, the second most important cause of work overload
was firefighting on problems.
• Distinction: sporadic vs. chronic problems.
– A sporadic problem is a sudden, negative change in operat-
ing results. Examples are an irate customer, a bad batch of
material from a supplier, an unexpected absence of a
worker, and a computer breakdown in the middle of the
night in a department processing checks. Often, we drop
what we are doing and address the problem. This is fire-
fighting. Sporadic problems are often dramatic, require a
response to a customer or higher management, and get
attention. Sporadic problems cause sudden additional work
overload – on top of the usual work overload.

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120 Chapter Nine

Ironically, people who are good firefighters become heroes

and are rewarded accordingly. A vice president at a utility
once (half jokingly) told me that his organization probably
had some “arsonists” who wanted to become heroes. Some
people even thrive on firefighting – to them, it’s fun and
they experience a sense of accomplishment. But it adds to
work overload.
– Chronic problems are long-standing negative situations that
are not addressed for various reasons. Examples are work
processes that are not capable of meeting quantity and qual-
ity requirements, unclear performance goals, poorly trained
personnel, and information overload. They are not even
regarded as problems but are accepted as part of the business
environment. Thus, they are not dramatic and receive little
attention (until some maverick brings them to life). Chronic
problems also cause work overload because of the extra time
spent correcting errors, doing excess inspection, and other
activities to live with the problem. Solutions to chronic prob-
lems are rarely easy to find and implement; otherwise, we
wouldn’t have the problems. For chronic problems, we need
a project-by-project approach where each project is a chronic
problem. A project team identifies the cause of the problem,
eliminates the cause, and takes steps to prevent the cause
from recurring. The approach particularly fits cross-func-
tional problems that often include suppliers – both internal
and external. Computer problems during operations are one
of many examples. We will discuss the project-by-project
approach in Chapter 10 under Developing a Strategy on
Work Overload.
The fog of firefighting not only contributes to work overload but
it robs us of the time to correct the chronic problems that are a con-
tinuous cause of work overload. Firefighting on sporadic problems
will always be with us, that is, the irate customer, the call from upper
management. Have you heard this from managers? “I know I
should be working on the chronic problems but I have no time to do
that because I’m spending all of my time firefighting.” Thus, we
need to address the problem of firefighting in general.
The real answer on firefighting is to prevent the fires (problems)
from occurring. That doesn’t happen in most companies because
there isn’t the time to thoroughly plan the work processes (but there
is the time to fight the fires when they occur).

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How Middle Managers Can Handle Work Overload 121

e f
Old Italian proverb: It is too late to come with
the water when the house is burned down.
Meanwhile, what can we do in the short range to do some
firefighting but minimize the effect on work overload? Here are
some ideas:
• Add temporary help to assist on firefighting. But what if no
funds or resources are available? Then the problems
accumulate until the situation becomes so serious that
management finally allocates funds – or transfers
employees temporarily from another department. This is a
bad situation, but that’s the price we pay for letting a
smoldering fire turn into a three-alarmer.
• Train additional firefighters. Sometimes, personnel at lower
levels can be trained to handle some of the sporadic
problems thus freeing up other resources to handle the
more complex problems.
• Face the reality that some problems will not be solved. This
means assigning priorities to problems with the emphasis
on solving external customer-related problems or problems
that come from senior management. (Of course, in both
cases, the problems may not really be of the highest
priority). But problems with a low priority will probably
never get solved. Again, a bad situation.
Bohn (2000) presents a valuable paper on firefighting. His ideas
cover both the short range (“tactical”) and long range (“strategic”).
Smith (1998) describes root-cause analysis and other forms of diag-
nosing underlying causes of problems.

PERSONNEL ISSUES
Middle managers spend much time on issues involving the people
who work for them. Here, we will address matters concerning work
overload of those employees:
• Middle managers need to recognize the symptoms of work
overload for themselves plus of the workforce. This
includes not only the hours worked but also the mental
demands of many jobs that can turn long hours into an
intolerable situation (see Chapter 5).

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122 Chapter Nine

• Tim Eitel, senior vice president of Raymond James,

purposely plans work so that if a person has work overload
for several weeks the person is then assigned a different
kind of work for a few weeks to rejuvenate the senses. That
different kind of work might be training for themselves,
teaching others, or whatever activity the person likes to do.
This approach helps to make the work overload period more
tolerable. People can handle the overload (temporarily) if
they can look forward to a breather. Later in this chapter we
will discuss the concept of rejuvenation.
• Have an automatic follow-up on the status of open
personnel requisitions.
• Pursue special additional resources such as part-time help
form local schools, retirees, or other resources. Consider an
outside consultant (paid for from unused personnel budget)
to study key processes for waste.
• In far too many companies, we make staffing decisions
based on the low part of the product demand cycle, that is,
as product demand increases we add overtime or add
people – but never enough to cause worry about staffing
when demand drops. Unfortunately, as demand grows, we
often overload our star people with extra work. That’s
simply not fair to them. This must be pursued as part of a
long-range strategy (discussed in Chapter 10) for reducing
work overload.
• Where job responsibilities are not clear, a useful approach is
to make a list of specific decisions and actions that the
employee must do on the job.
• Chapter 7 emphasizes the importance of selecting people for
jobs based on matching the job requirements with the skills,
aptitudes, and interests of the person. This is critical in
situations of work overload. When people are not matched
well to jobs, then work overload can become serious because
of the added mental demands placed on the people. Jobs in
the operations function often have work overload and are
therefore candidates for this situation.
• A useful approach is encouraging employees to request a
transfer to another position. This concept has much value
even if work overload is not a problem (see Chapter 8). But

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How Middle Managers Can Handle Work Overload 123

it does provide one alternative under a work overload

situation to prevent a bad situation from becoming worse.
Note that it means that the middle manager involved must
view this approach positively rather than viewing it as
losing a person in a situation that might make the overload
problem worse.
• Chapter 7 discusses the importance of training all personnel
– not just initially but throughout their career. When people
are temporarily placed in training to learn some new
concepts those people remaining in the department may
have to carry an extra workload until the training is finished.
Proper planning of the training can prevent a work overload
situation. Judith Lyons of Plan Vista Solutions has some
practical suggestions: use three-hour training segments
instead of full-day sessions, and keep the class size small to
minimize the impact on the department.
• Middle managers must meet department goals and care for
the career development and well being of the people in the
department.
• Managers can easily spend 20 percent of their time on
employee-related benefits, regulations, paperwork, and the
many day-to-day problems that arise. An increasing number
of organizations are outsourcing their employee relation’s
activities. This can include payroll and benefits but also
hiring, training, job placements, and layoffs. That’s a radical
change from the past. The organizations handling the
employee relation’s activities are sometimes called
professional employee organizations (PEOs) or professional
guilds. This trend may accelerate as the number of
temporary and contract workers increases and as the
knowledge-based economy demands more and more
knowledge workers. A benefit of outsourcing employee
relations is to reduce the time spent by internal management
on many employee-related activities. But the risk is that
relationships with employees will be weakened and career
development and company loyalty may suffer. Drucker
(2002) presents the pros and cons of this developing concept.
It is also important to pursue the actions discussed in previous
chapters: Chapter 5 concerning the mental demands of jobs of sub-
ordinates (lack of management support, career concerns, and lack of

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124 Chapter Nine

family-friendly practices) and Chapter 7 concerning retention of key

personnel (retention data, employee opinion surveys, and outside
research).

MEETINGS
Let’s set the record straight – some meetings are necessary, and some
are not worth the time spent.
Here are some tips on meetings:
Consider alternatives to a meeting. These include e-mails (ugh) and
conference calls. Also, no meetings on Fridays. Many times on con-
ference calls people get “caught” multitasking, that is, the person is
reading e-mails during the conference call and is asked a question.
Often, the person says, “I’m sorry, could you repeat that.” That’s a
polite way of saying, “I was reading e-mails and not listening to the
conference call.”
Prepare thoroughly for the meeting. When appropriate, circulate a
written agenda before the meeting. This should be one page and list
the attendees along with the topics to be discussed and persons
responsible, time allotted for each topic, and any key decisions to be
made at the meeting.
Conduct the meeting efficiently. Find a pleasant and functional
meeting place. Maybe the room should even be outside the building
for a change of pace. Or, maybe the meeting should be held online
(a “virtual” meeting”).
Take a short course in conducting meetings. The key elements
are known: start the meeting on time even if key people are missing,
control time during the meeting, handle the overly vocal person and
the quiet person, discourage side discussions, and keep the discus-
sion rigid to the agenda. Some companies even hold stand-up rather
than sit-down meetings, for example, at one unit of Sears Roebuck
briefing meetings are stand-up.
Make provisions for recording results from the meeting.
Appoint a scribe (before the meeting) and record key conclusions on
a flip chart for all to see.
Consider the use of a facilitator. For cross-functional project
team meetings, a facilitator is invaluable. The main roles are to assist
the team leader to solve human relations problems among team

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How Middle Managers Can Handle Work Overload 125

members, provide training, revitalize a stalled project, and help in

team building.
Close the huddle and get on to the next play. Give a quick sum-
mary of agreements and a list of action items with names and dates
and a date and time for the next meeting if necessary. Ask attendees
how the meeting could have been improved. And . . . end the meet-
ing on time.
Follow-up after the meeting. At a minimum, provide a written
summary of the meeting within 24 hours, either on a Web page or
internal mail.
A useful website for conducting meetings – www.effectivemeet-
ings.com – contains articles, checklists, and even shows how to cal-
culate the cost of meetings. Another website shows managers how
to facilitate real-time (multilocation) and Internet meetings. This lat-
ter website is www.technography.com.

MANAGING INFORMATION
In managing a department, we receive information by e-mail, Inter-
net, fax, or regular mail. Some say that we are overwhelmed with
information from many sources that is connecting us too much and
causing work overload (“hyper connectivity”).
Artificial intelligence techniques may someday provide us with
a “personal assistant” to help us read and select information we
receive through the computer. Meanwhile, today we must somehow
do this ourselves or have an assistant do it. You can never read it all,
so start by stopping some of the information you receive:
• Review internal material received (including e-mail),
identify what you will not read, and eliminate your name
from the distribution list.
• Drop subscriptions of business journals that you just place
on a shelf and never read. For a change of pace, visit a
library once a month to review journals and make copies of
useful articles. Or subscribe to newsletters that select and
summarize important articles in your field.
• Review how you handle e-mails. Most of us start the day by
reviewing the new e-mails. This may be wrong because
responding to e-mails detours us from the top priorities. The

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126 Chapter Nine

better approach would be to start the day by first reviewing

the current written priorities and tentatively planning the
day. Then look at the e-mails and decide how and when they
will be handled. Some people read and answer e-mails at the
end of the day. This helps to focus on the important ones
and keep your responses short. Of course, setting priorities
also applies to e-mails. These can be added to an A, B, C list
of priorities based on the urgency, author of the e-mail, and
other matters. Yes, some of these e-mails may never receive a
response. Some managers provide selected people with a
special e-mail address for truly urgent matters.
Guernsey (2001) reports that 39 percent of e-mail users have two
e-mail accounts and 10 percent have five or more accounts. Rogen
International, an Australian consultancy, reports that their 2001 sur-
vey revealed that executives spent at least two hours a day on e-mail.
At one company, once a manager reaches a certain level, he is required
to check (and respond to) his e-mail three times per day . . . 365 days
per year. Technology speeds up our communication, but it usually
does not speed up the analysis of the information in the e-mails.
In managing a department, a manager must first eliminate
information that is not useful. But the manager must also collect
information needed to run the department – including measures on
work overload. For middle managers in operations, this means cre-
ating an information system that regularly reports performance data
on the key processes for which the manager is responsible.
Some suggestions on selecting data to be collected:
1. Emphasize customer-related measurements – both internal
and external customers.
2. Focus on measurements that are useful, not just easy
to collect.
3. Provide for making measurements as close as possible to
the activities they impact. This facilitates decision making
and diagnosis when problems arise.
4. Provide not only concurrent indicators of performance but
also leading and lagging indicators. Current and historical
measurements are necessary, but leading indicators help to
look into the future and prevent problems before they arise.
5. Emphasize measures that turn knowledge into action.
Measures should directly link to operational goals or to

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How Middle Managers Can Handle Work Overload 127

factors that contribute to meeting those goals. Pfeffer and

Sutton (2000) develop a strong case for turning knowledge
into action.
6. Periodically review the data collected and decide to
continue, revise, or delete it.
Of course, data related to work overload should be a part of this
system. Such data could include mandatory and voluntary over-
time, personnel turnover, and other measures.

BUSINESS TRAVEL
Sometimes, the only effective way for people to exchange ideas and
information is by a face-to-face meeting – and that often requires
travel. Travel time certainly adds to work overload. But technology
provides some fascinating alternatives that can help in our struggle
to reduce work overload. These include:
• Videoconferencing. This is live, interactive video and
audio communication among people at different locations.
Thus, a typical business meeting could be held as a
videoconference. My first experience, in 1985, was a
revelation. A colleague and I appeared at a rented
videoconferencing facility in New York City and spoke
with a group of people in San Francisco. The two-hour
conference was great – standard visual aids, a chalkboard,
no special preparation, and no cross-country trip. A
variation of a full videoconference consists of having a
camera on top of a personal computer for video
transmission and receipt.
• Web conferencing (also called net conferencing or web link).
This uses computer file-sharing systems so that users can
collaborate on graphics, slides, and speadsheets while linked
by telephone. New computer files can be added throughout
the discussion. Web conferencing is less expensive than
video conferencing.
• Satellite broadcasting. This is a live broadcast by one person
or a group of people, usually at one location, who beam a
message to a large group of people at many locations. For
example, a message from management to employees or

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128 Chapter Nine

customers could be delivered by satellite. The broadcast is

one way but we can transmit questions or comments by
phone to the broadcasting parties and provide a response to
the satellite audience.
• Teleconference calls. This allows a number of people in
different locations to talk live by phone.
• E-mail. This is excellent for exchange of basic information.
Any of these approaches lose some of the personal interaction of
a face-to-face meeting, and sometimes that full interaction is essen-
tial. But these technological marvels can help to reduce work over-
load by reducing the amount of business travel (see Harmon 2000).

WHO ARE INDIVIDUAL PROFESSIONAL

CONTRIBUTORS?
Individual professional contributors furnish the technical expertise
to create, maintain, and improve the products and services of orga-
nizations. They have extensive formal education but usually do not
have people reporting to them. Examples include physicians,
nurses, teachers, social workers, accountants, and the many special-
ists in research and development, information technology, market-
ing, operations, and customer service. These people are strongly
dedicated to their profession and often voluntarily have work over-
load. Tim Eitel, senior vice president of Raymond James, reminds us
that some individual contributors are so wrapped up in their work
that sometimes they need to be forced to back away from their work.
The number-one concern of many professionals is trying to balance
work and family demands.
A subset of individual professional contributors deserves men-
tion. These contributors work in jobs with special characteristics:
• Continuous customer contact – all day long
• High volume of transactions
• Provide a critical (medical) service
• Service that often requires making mental judgments
• High degree of education and skills

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How Middle Managers Can Handle Work Overload 129

• Interaction with co-workers, often involving the need to

persuade others on a course of action
• Other
Examples of these positions are physicians, nurses, air traffic
controllers, and traders on the stock market floor.
Professional contributors spend most of their time in the fol-
lowing activities:
• Scheduled appointments with customers
• Response to ad hoc customer requests
• Assigned projects
• Firefighting
• Professional learning
• Training other employees
• Meetings
• Business travel
• Volunteer service to professional societies
• Volunteer service to community organizations
Most individual contributors are not able to reduce their work
overload. They don’t have the time to analyze processes for waste;
they don’t have the interest in doing process analysis; and they don’t
have the skills to make the point effectively to middle and upper
management. Therefore, nothing happens about work overload
until the situation gets so bad that personnel leave the organization,
serious errors are made, or other events occur that gain the attention
of upper management. Then management may throw money and
people at the overload problem without really studying the causes.
The working rules cited in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 for redesigning
work content and redesigning for mental demands apply to this
important subset of individual professional contributors.

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130 Chapter Nine

OVERLOAD IN THE PERSONAL LIVES OF

MIDDLE MANAGERS AND
PROFESSIONAL CONTRIBUTORS

Actions to Minimize Work Overload

The aforementioned issues provide guidance to middle managers in
minimizing and preventing work overload in their department. In
addition, we can suggest some points that will help the middle man-
ager minimize work overload in his or her own personal life. These
include:
• Decide where you want to go in life and make plans to get
there. These are long-range objectives for you and your
family. This includes career objectives but also objectives for
your family achieving a host of personal objectives – but
based on a realistic assumption of financial resources. Don’t
let unrealistic personal desires drive you into work overload
to achieve the financial resources needed to support the
unrealistic desires. Good luck.
• Don’t forget “essentials”: exercise, sleep, spiritual, take time
to do nothing. Also, practice relaxation and meditation
techniques (see later in this chapter).
• Set long-range and short-range work objectives on what you
want to accomplish. But be prepared to change those
objectives, particularly the short-range objectives. Set weekly
and daily objectives to: 1) keep a focus on the truly
important tasks, and 2) alert you that your objectives for
even a single day are too optimistic. Don’t be concerned
about not meeting those objectives – probably you will miss
many of them. But learn from missing those objectives by
realizing that you typically underestimate the time required
to do many tasks. Of course, you may also learn that you
have wasted time in many ways (a good lesson to learn) but
equally important you may simply not be allowing enough
time to do certain tasks. By having explicit goals and
objectives, and not meeting them, it forces you to rethink the
planning and scheduling of your work. Many people object
that setting even informal objectives cannot be done because
“there are too many variables – too many unexpected events

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How Middle Managers Can Handle Work Overload 131

that arise.” My experience suggests that this is exactly when

you need objectives so you can learn from operating in that
environment of the unexpected. Two useful references on
handling your work activities are St. James (2001) and
Hutchings (2002).
• Avoid “hurry sickness,” that is, the progressive need for task
completion. Bruce A. Baldwin, a psychologist, aptly points
out that some of us so enjoy the sense of getting a task done
that we forget that delays are a part of life and that we
should try to enjoy the doing of the job rather than fret at the
delays to completing the task. This works fine if we are
matched properly to a job and we truly enjoy what we are
doing (see Chapter 7).
Checklists of actions are repeated in condensed form in the
Appendix.

CARE AND WELL BEING OF MIDDLE

MANAGERS AND PROFESSIONAL
CONTRIBUTORS – LESSONS FROM
ATHLETES
In many companies, work overload is not a serious issue.
Congratulations to these companies. But other companies hire an
inadequate managerial staff and workforce and then work everyone
to the maximum.
When work overload exists, middle managers bear the brunt
of the burden. The workforce understandably says, “I just work
my eight hours and leave. If the work doesn’t get done, that’s my
manager’s problem.” If there is an overload problem at the work-
force level, a union can bring the problem to the attention of upper
management.
Middle managers are responsible for meeting performance
goals but fear bringing their personal work overload problem to the
attention of upper management (middle managers do not have a
union to act on their behalf). So upper management may not be
aware of a work overload problem faced by middle managers. A
doozie of a bad situation.
We start with a basic point: A middle manager is responsible to
himself or herself and the family; the responsibility is not to the

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132 Chapter Nine

organization. Having said that, we realize that family responsibili-

ties often focus around providing sufficient income to have a desired
standard of living. This may mean both spouses working (perhaps
with work overload for one or both spouses) complicated by over-
load on family activities because of the limited time available by the
parents. One or both spouses may then accept a work overload
problem in order to earn the income to “put food on the table.” We
will address this heavyweight situation in Chapter 11.
This book proclaims that the focus on work overload should be to
redesign the job rather than teach the individual how to handle the
stresses from work overload. But job redesign and other organiza-
tional changes will probably never eliminate work overload. Thus, we
need to recognize the value of stress management concepts.
Much literature exists on how individuals should handle pres-
sure and stress in the business environment. Psychologists base one
approach that middle managers may like on research with world-
class athletes. The result is a performance management model that
addresses the body, the emotions, the mind, and the spirit, and I will
use this model as a framework (see Loehr and Schwartz 2001).
Another useful reference is Mind and Body Medicine (2001), a special
health report from Harvard Health Publications (let’s call it the
MBM report). My following recommendations integrate those of the
MBM report with the framework of the Loehr and Schwartz paper.
For an excellent expansion of these concepts based on the research
of a Harvard physician, see Benson and Proctor (2003). These refer-
ences are authoritative, practical, and aimed at the layman.
The basic framework has four levels: physical capacity, emo-
tional capacity, mental capacity, and finally, spiritual capacity (see
Figure 9.1, Loehr and Schwartz 2001).
Each level influences the others, for example, exercise can pro-
duce a sense of emotional well-being, clearing the way for peak men-
tal performance, leading to the idyllic spiritual purpose. This certainly
sounds theoretical until we translate it into operational terms.

Physical Capacity
The key elements here are: at least seven hours of sleep, a proper
diet for weight control, and exercise. Adding a 15-minute power nap
is ideal. (Of course, don’t eat lunch at your desk. A recent study of
managers showed that 68 percent eat lunch at their desk at least
once per week). Clearly, these elements are essential and difficult to

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How Middle Managers Can Handle Work Overload 133

Spiritual
Capacity
Provides a
powerful source of
motivation determination,
and endurance
a ls
tu
Ri

Mental Capacity
Focuses physical and emotional
energy on the task at hand
a ls
tu
Ri

Emotional Capacity
Creates the internal climate that drives
the ideal Performance State
a ls
tu
Ri

Physical Capacity
Builds endurance and promotes mental
and emotional recovery

Figure 9.1 The high performance pyramid.

achieve but they are a MUST. Period. Much literature is available to

help you.
The MBM report also suggests yoga (a combination of breathing
exercises, meditation, stretch exercise, and strength exercise) and tai
chi (a form of meditation).
Taking care of physical well-being is necessary . . . but not suffi-
cient, so we move on to the next element.

Emotional Capacity
The key elements here are: identifying negative emotions and
replacing them with positive responses. Again, this is difficult, but
there are ways to manage the response to negative emotions.
The MBM report identifies 10 patterns of negative thinking:
• Exaggerating the importance of your mistakes
• Judging yourself based on complete success or complete
failure (black-and-white thinking)
• Focusing on minor negative problems
• Assuming the worst will happen

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134 Chapter Nine

• Discounting the positive as a fluke

• Labeling yourself negatively
• Drawing negative conclusions
• Allowing emotions to rule
• Applying rigid rules to yourself and others
• Blaming yourself for some negative event that was not your
fault
Identifying these “personal cognitive distortions” (cognitive
means mental) early alerts you to manage these in some way to pre-
vent the stress from occurring. Various forms of relaxation tech-
niques may be helpful. The MBM report suggests such approaches
as meditation, progressive muscle relaxation, belly breathing,
guided imagery (to imagine a calm scene), self-hypnosis, and even
biofeedback.
Physical well-being and emotional capacity are both necessary
but not sufficient, so we move on to the next element.

Mental Capacity
The key elements here are: focus, time management, and positive
and critical thinking.
Maintaining focus means concentrating our energy to achieve a
particular goal. Simple forms of meditation can be useful, for exam-
ple, doing deep breathing exercises for 15 minutes in a quiet room.
Time management here does not refer to the techniques for dis-
tributing your efforts in the most efficient ways, but rather changing
work routines to provide a more balanced view of life, for example,
starting the day with jogging or swimming or some other exercise.
Yes, that takes time but a benefit is both a higher-quality mental
process and better physical capacity.
Positive and critical thinking help to generate optimism and
well-being. Thinking occurs using some vehicle such as language,
mathematics, and sensory skills such as sight and hearing. But
another approach is visual imagery, for example, a golf ball rolling
into the hole before a shot, or thinking about the desired outcome in
a meeting about to take place.
Mental capacity is also necessary but not sufficient, so we move
on to the last element.

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How Middle Managers Can Handle Work Overload 135

Spiritual Capacity
The key element here is: use your deepest values to define a strong
sense of purpose.
The MBM report suggests two approaches: social support and
spirituality. Social support refers to social interaction with others,
that is, marriage, co-workers, support groups, community groups.
Doing an unexpected favor for someone can have quite an uplifting
effect. Of course, you “don’t have time,” but then . . . make the time.
You will be surprised if you do this when you are stressed and
“don’t have time.” The positive reaction of the recipient of the favor
will please you, relieve the stress, and convince you that it’s impor-
tant to find time to do it often.
In spirituality, we use prayer to induce a meditative state that
encourages relaxation. The workplace is seeing a spiritual revival –
not enormous but small and growing. In the past, the mention of
God in the business world would be unthinkable. Now, a small
group of courageous executives are stepping forward to ask how
they can address individual worker and societal issues – and still
generate a profit. Some of the companies who are active in these
efforts include ServiceMaster, Blistex, Greyston Bakery, and
Catalytica Pharmaceuticals. The executives are Christian and
Jewish. An article that describes how some executives are applying
the concept is “God and Business,” by Marc Gunther (2001).
Another useful reference is The Power of Positive Thinking in Business,
by Scott Ventrella (2001). Ventrella was formerly on the staff of the
Peale Center. Dr. Peale was the author of the famous book The Power
of Positive Thinking. Ventrella discusses 10 traits of a positive thinker
in business: optimism, enthusiasm, belief, integrity, courage, confi-
dence, determination, patience, calmness, and focus. Ventrella’s
website is www.positivedynamics.com.

Rituals and Rejuvenation

A practical technique can help translate these concepts into action.
The research with athletes discovered the need for “recovery”
events every 90 to 120 minutes. The recovery is an event that is a
change of pace and permits the body – and mind – to replace the
energy (physical and mental) expended. These “rituals” might
include some favorite music, a walk to the water cooler, a brief chat
with a colleague, a 10-minute stop at a park or a place of worship on
the way home from work, writing some pleasant events in a diary,

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136 Chapter Nine

thinking of a favorite joke, or looking at a door and imagining that

someone you love walks in. A few courageous companies even have
a room for taking a nap. One of my sons attends a weekly meeting
where, for each meeting, a person is assigned to tell a joke at the
beginning of the meeting. Now people get to the meeting on time . . .
to hear the joke. You could start that in your organization tomorrow.
Athletes use rituals often, for example, examining the strings on
a tennis racket in between sets, a baseball batter adjusting a glove
between pitches. Other examples are dancing, gardening, petting an
animal, or any event that helps you to unwind. Of course, you need
to create rituals that work best for you – some you will do alone,
some you may wish to do with others, whatever works. Dr. Clayton
Long of The University of Tampa refers to these rituals as “rejuve-
nation time.” He also observes that introverts use quiet time and
extroverts benefit from social interaction as rituals.
Let’s face it. If a person cannot recharge occasionally, he or she
will not be mentally alert to perform strenuous mental tasks.
Inevitably, they start to cut corners on their work (“it’s good
enough”), and this leads to errors and omissions that then require
rework time resulting in work overload.
The Gilbreths and other early industrial engineers provide an
analogy. Most factory jobs involved physical strength and
endurance. When a job was timed, a fatigue allowance was added to
the basic time for the job to reflect that the physical body needed
some time to recover from the physical stresses acquired from doing
the work. Depending on the degree of physical effort, the allowance
might be 15 percent added to the basic time required to complete
one cycle of the job. Today, machinery handles many (not all by any
means) of the physically strenuous jobs. But many of these physical
jobs have been replaced by jobs requiring mental and emotional
traits that can lead to stresses. Thus, we need to think about an
allowance for this and, therefore, the concept of rituals for recovery.
If you want to score yourself on stress, Hutchings (2002) pro-
vides questions for three types of stress: situational (major life
events), physical, and emotional.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR STRESS

MANAGEMENT TO WORK?
Stress management does work, but there is a price to pay. That price
is an investment of about 12 continuous weeks of sustained practice

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How Middle Managers Can Handle Work Overload 137

before the full effect takes place. After about six weeks, the effect will
be noticeable and encourage you to continue. After 12 weeks, most
people are hooked on the activities and will do their best to con-
tinue. People who have work overload “don’t have the time” to do
sustained practice. But, if they make that investment of 12 weeks
they will become addicted – yes, addicted – and will make the time.
That’s why my friend, Bob Williams, is in the community swimming
pool at 5:30 a.m. four days a week. Try.

CAN’T WE ACT ON WORK OVERLOAD

TOMORROW?
Yes. This book recommends that the primary thrust to reduce work
overload must be to eliminate waste from processes and redesign
individual jobs to reduce excessive mental demands. That won’t
happen overnight. In Chapter 10, we will provide guidance on how
to convince upper management to act. And that won’t happen
overnight. Meanwhile, you may have people (including yourself)
who need help tomorrow.
What can we do? Here’s a lineup of potential plays in this
predicament:
1. Eliminate mandatory overtime (to force the study of waste
in processes).
2. Set a target date for eliminating the work overload.
3. Set up an employee roundtable to brainstorm ideas on how
to ease the overload.
4. Hire temporary help.
5. Request “shared resources” temporarily from another
department.
6. Give a person who just finished a high overload project a
new temporary project that he or she personally enjoys, to
partially overcome the suffering from the overload.
7. Identify and reduce excessive mental demands in key jobs.
8. Provide compensatory time off.
9. Add fun to the work.

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138 Chapter Nine

10. Encourage people to do recovery/rejuvenation rituals every

90 to 120 minutes.
11. Pull out the stops on reward and recognition.
Can you do all of these? Of course not, but several base hits can
score some runs. This list is repeated in the Appendix.

SUMMARY – THREE KEY POINTS

1. Middle managers are the backbone of an organization, but

they suffer from work overload because people come at
them from both above and below.
2. To reduce work overload, middle managers must take
short-term actions on their own activities but also long-
term actions to convince upper management to address
work overload as a broader problem.
3. Individual professional contributors provide the technical
expertise for an organization, but many also suffer from
work overload. Professionals in healthcare, air traffic
control, investment transactions, and other areas could
write a book on work overload.

What’s missing from all this? The leadership of upper manage-

ment – the next chapter.

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10
What Is the Role of
Upper Management in
Work Overload?

Joe and Dennis are upper managers in two companies.

Joe is always learning from others – even though he has a
casual brilliance. He assembles the right team of smart
people, delegates, stays out of the way, but is there to help
when needed. Wow, does he communicate – not just
“walking around,” but using the latest technologies to
keep all levels informed. He encourages openness at all
times; he wants to hear the good and the bad. His ethics
rest on one principle: do the right thing. He is deliberate
and calm and looks like he is about to milk a cow. Dennis
manages by fear and intimidation (“I’m the boss”). Push,
push, push, if people can’t handle it they can be replaced.
He is a micromanager, frequently interfering in activities
to inject his “better ideas.” It’s clear to all that if you
bring Dennis bad news, you will be criticized in the pres-
ence of your peers. Ethics? To Dennis, the truth is nego-
tiable. Dennis is intense and looks like he is about to bark.

Upper managers fall in between these two extremes.

MY PERCEPTIONS ABOUT UPPER

MANAGEMENT
Upper management strives to satisfy numerous – and sometimes con-
flicting – demands of customers, employees, regulatory agencies,

139

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140 Chapter Ten

shareholders, and a board of directors. All of this in a highly compet-

itive marketplace. Frankly, few people have the capability to be suc-
cessful upper managers. It’s a tough job, and anyone who thinks
otherwise has not worked closely with upper management.
We ask upper management for leadership on so many parame-
ters – profit, ethics, community affairs, product quality, diversity of
employees. Now we ask for their leadership on work overload.
Enlightened upper managers realize that work overload of their
people can be a serious problem that must be addressed, solved,
and prevented in the future.
But those upper managers who manage by fear and intimida-
tion justify their actions as necessary to meet competition from
other companies. Many of these managers are successful – at least
in the short run. For these managers, work overload of employees
is not a major problem, “it’s a fact of business life.”
Upper managers suffer from many of the same problems as mid-
dle managers. A question was posed to 1400 CFO’s: What is greatest
challenge for financial executives today? The results: 36 percent said
time management; 27 percent said keeping up with technology; 19
percent said achieving work/life balance; 13 percent said staying cur-
rent with accounting regulations. (See USA Today, 2001).
Most upper managers work long hours, are engrossed in their
work, and simply do what’s necessary to get the job done. Many of
these managers clearly have work overload. But they don’t under-
stand that the rest of us are mere mortals and their employees view
that work overload differently. When upper managers pile the
work on employees, those employees view the manager actions as
disrespectful.
Chapter 9 provides some short-term actions on work overload.
But work overload is a complex problem that often requires a strat-
egy to solve the problem. The approach involves two steps: 1) con-
vince upper management of the seriousness of the problem, and 2)
develop and implement a strategy to reduce and control work over-
load. We discuss these next.

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What Is the Role of Upper Management in Work Overload? 141

HOW TO CONVINCE UPPER

MANAGEMENT THAT WORK
OVERLOAD IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM
Can we convince upper management to take action on work over-
load? The answer is”yes.” But (you knew there would be a but) we
need to rustle up a convincing case.
Sometimes upper management is simply not aware that a work
overload problem exists. This can happen when:
• Labor budgets are tight and managers are discouraged from
adding people, that is, managers are encouraged to run a
“lean” operation.
• Skilled labor is scarce and it is difficult to fill open personnel
requisitions.
• Middle management is fearful to bring the problem to upper
management because it indicates that middle management
cannot properly manage the department.
• Upper management (and middle management) does not
realize that key processes have much waste and that this is a
contributing cause of work overload. Therefore, they simply
live with the problem and hope that they don’t lose key
people because of work overload.
• Other reasons.
Middle managers often say, “The overload problem should be
obvious to upper management but they don’t care about overload
and therefore take no action.” The realities are: 1) upper manage-
ment loses touch with employees two or more levels below, and 2)
upper management accepts work overload as part of their job and is
complacent about the feelings of the rest of the organization.
We all know that “people resist change.” That includes some
upper management people. To quote the American economist John
Kenneth Galbraith: “Faced with a choice between changing one’s
mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody
gets busy on the proof.”
In my experience, when upper management becomes aware of
a problem, most of them first try to understand the nature and seri-
ousness of the problem. If upper management makes a judgment
that the problem requires action they ask for proposals, evaluate the

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142 Chapter Ten

proposals, and then makes decisions. Of course, all of this must be

done within the constraints of cost and time.
Upper management is confronted with many problems and
must make difficult decisions often based on the impact of problems
on cost, and we cannot expect them to take action on work overload
unless we present them with a compelling case to change the status
quo on work overload. It is the responsibility of middle manage-
ment to make that compelling case. In the steps that follow, watch
for opportunities to get upper management personally involved in
the process by encouraging them to offer ideas for any of the steps.
In the first step, we find out the size of the problem.

FIND OUT THE EXTENT OF WORK

OVERLOAD
Frankly, nothing will happen on work overload until upper man-
agement is convinced of the seriousness of the problem. Then how
will we convince them? By presenting them with facts on work over-
load, stated in the language of upper management, that is, costs and
sales revenue. We need to assemble data that shows, in dollars, how
much money the organization is losing (yes, losing) each year due to
work overload.
We can show what work overload costs an organization each
year. The main elements are shown in Table 10.1.

Table 10.1 Costs of work overload.

• Extra costs
– Mandatory overtime
– Voluntary overtime
– Lost sales income from potential customers due to inferior output
– Lost sales income due to defections of current customers caused
by inferior output
– Cost of correcting inferior output
– Cost of lower productivity during overload hours
– Cost of scrap
– Cost of downgrading product
– Cost of excessive inspection to find inferior output
– Cost of investigating and settling complaints on inferior product
continued

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What Is the Role of Upper Management in Work Overload? 143

continued
– Product warranty charges due to inferior product
– Worker compensation costs and extra insurance costs
• Personnel resignations
– Resignations of key employees, as revealed in exit interviews
– Recruiting and retraining costs due to resignations

Sometimes, just collecting the costs of work overload is sufficient to

spur management action.
Some of these costs can be obtained from established operating
records, but some other costs must be estimates. To establish credi-
bility for the data, obtain the estimates from sources that have
responsibility for the data, for example, accounting, marketing,
human resources, and quality.
Additional steps could include:
• Have the accounting department assemble data on
unexpended vacation time for middle managers and
individual professional contributors.
• Have the human resources department conduct an audit of
departments to determine the extent of work overload for
both managers and the workforce.
• Consider the impact of work overload on families. This may
have an impact on upper management as they can relate that
situation to their own family life.
• Ask upper and middle management what other information
should be collected in order to understand the size and
nature of the overload.
• Consider bringing in an outside consultant to study the extent
of work overload and propose further analysis and action.
Knowing the size of the problem, we can analyze the data to
prepare a case for upper management.

ANALYSIS OF THE OVERLOAD DATA

Now the hard work begins. The data analysis and subsequent discus-
sions must focus on a theme of upper management helping middle

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144 Chapter Ten

management to solve the overload problem. Simultaneously, middle

management must realize that the overload problem will need to be
solved in steps. Patience and cooperation must be the by words.
Sometimes, upper management “throws people at a problem”
to show dramatic action (and not spend any more time discussing
the problem) But if adding people to solve an overload in one area
means reassigning people from other areas, this results in work
overload in the areas where resources are “borrowed” – particularly
if there is an “add-on” effect.
The analysis and discussion of the data can proceed in several
ways:
• Have the upper management leadership team (current
jargon for the top person and the direct reports) discuss the
data at a regular top management meeting. But make sure
work overload is an early agenda item so there is sufficient
time for discussion. The discussion will probably require
several regular meetings.
• Set up a task force of several members of the leadership
team to analyze the data and present recommendations to
the full upper management leadership team.
• If initial analysis shows that the overload problem is
concentrated in one or several departments, the department
heads can analyze the data and meet with upper
management to present recommendations to relieve the
overload.
For complex situations of work overload, it may be necessary to
break up the total problem into parts and use a project team (see
Chapter 8) for each part. An upper management task force could
define the parts and define the mission of each project team. The
human resources department could facilitate the project teams and
coordinate the total effort.
Whatever approach is taken, upper management must lead the
discussion to emphasize a priority in reducing overload, give neces-
sary approvals to action, and set up mechanisms to follow through
to assure that the problem is solved and steps taken to prevent
future work overload.

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What Is the Role of Upper Management in Work Overload? 145

CONVINCING UPPER MANAGEMENT

TO ACT ON WORK OVERLOAD
Convincing upper management to take action on an important issue
is, to use an old-fashioned word, tough. Upper management is pre-
sented with many proposals on a wide variety of issues. Many of
these proposals are worthwhile but often require resources that are
never in sufficient quantity to honor all proposals. Proposals to
reduce work overload are particularly sensitive. My viewpoint is
that proposals to reduce work overload are in competition with
other proposals. We must present upper management with a solid
case to act on work overload.
My suggestions on building that solid case are summarized in
Table 10.2.

Table 10.2 Elements to justify action on work overload.

Focus on upper management priorities
• Tie in to overall company strategies
• Tie in to personal priorities of upper management
Quantify the seriousness of work overload problem
• Data on extra costs due to work overload
• Data on personnel resignations
• Personal observation by upper management
Gain the support of others
• Individual support of other functions
• Team of middle managers to study work overload
Create a proposal
• No surprises
• Benchmark against other organizations
• Present alternative solutions
• Watch the timing

Focus on Upper Management Priorities

Building such a case should show how a strategy to reduce work
overload contributes to higher-level priorities to improve and sus-
tain overall organization effectiveness.
Find out (from upper management confidants) the current pri-
orities of upper management and try to address these priorities (not
yours) in presenting a strategy to reduce work overload. Addressing
the “bottom line” by estimating the cost of work overload may carry

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the day, but other factors such as reducing labor turnover and build-
ing trust with employees may be current priorities and actions to
reduce work overload could produce tangible results to help these
other priorities.

Quantify the Seriousness of the Work Overload

Problem
Data can be collected to quantify the extra costs incurred due to
work overload. Examples of such costs are listed in Table 10.1.
Data can be collected to quantify the impact of work overload
on employee retention and resignations. Again, see Table 10.1.
Sometimes, the simple act of observation by upper manage-
ment can help. Judith Lyons of Vista Plan Solutions reminds us that
“the best senior managers start the day by walking through opera-
tions and they repeat the walk in the afternoon because the pace
picks up.” Observing what work overload means in practice can be
persuasive.

Gain the Support of Others

If you have responsibility for operations, try to gain the support of
other functions that are affected by inferior output from operations
due to work overload. These functions might include marketing,
human resources, customer service, and quality.
Propose that a middle manager team be created to study work
overload. This brings new inputs on the seriousness of the problem
and possible solutions. From all of this a consensus can emerge to
present to upper management.

Create a Proposal
No surprises. None of us like surprises that put a roadblock in some
plans that we have. Upper management is no exception. The first time
that upper management hears about a serious work overload prob-
lem should not be when a formal proposal is made to take action.
Find out what other organizations are doing about work over-
load. This benchmarking not only provides additional ideas but also
provides evidence that effective action can be taken. Upper man-
agement talking with their counterparts at other organizations can
really be persuasive.

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What Is the Role of Upper Management in Work Overload? 147

Several alternative actions (with the pros and cons) to reduce

work overload can be useful. Presenting only one action may ignite
some negative reaction from upper management and invite outright
rejection of the proposal. Present several alternatives to provide
upper management with actions that meet their priorities. Consider
proposing that a consultant be brought in to study work overload.
Change can come at right and wrong times. Choose the right
time. But keep the discussion going without pushing for immediate
agreement. Look for, and present, additional information that will
help promote agreement at a later time
Kolb and Williams (2001) provide valuable ideas on negotiating
to achieve agreement on any issue.

ISSUES FOR UPPER MANAGEMENT TO

CONSIDER ON WORK OVERLOAD
As upper management deliberates on work overload, some issues
will emerge:
• Many CEO’s have boundless energy. Workaholic managers,
starting at the top, expect their people to be workaholics –
and this is simply wrong. It’s just a question of time before
their people leave.
• Upper management must evaluate the impact of downsizing
and/or mergers on work overload. These dramatic events
often achieve financial savings by reducing personnel.
Uncertainty about jobs coupled with an already existing
level of work overload can be a disaster, particularly during
the transition period. Finally, those remaining in the
organization often find themselves doing more work, that is,
work overload.
• Make priorities crystal clear so managers can allocate
resources to the sequence of priorities. For 2004, the National
Enterprise Operations Division of Bank One states the top
priorities as “Partner of Choice” (Percent Shared Objectives
Met), “High Performance Culture” (Percent Employee
Engagement), “Financial Discipline” (Percent Unit Cost
Met), and “Industry Leadership” (Percent Services in Top
Tier). These priorities are established and communicated via
their Commitment FlowdownTM (the Commitment

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FlowdownTM is a proprietary methodology of Orion

Advisory, LLC, www.OrionAdvisory.Com).
• Work overload has a large impact on the personal and
family life of employees, and upper management needs to
accept some responsibility for this.
• Work overload, if not corrected, causes high labor turnover
resulting in extra costs, poor quality delivered to customers,
and poor delivery response to customers.
• Management style and practices contribute to work
overload. No one respects a manager who manages by fear
and intimidation or a manager who repeatably becomes
involved in activities at lower levels (micromanaging)
instead of setting directions and providing support.
Examples of poor management practices (see Chapter 5)
include lack of management support, lack of career
planning, and lack of family-friendly practices. When these
practices combine with work overload, employees are not
just tired but they are mentally and emotionally stressed
leading to burnout (while the employee searches for a
position in another company).
• When it is not possible to quickly relieve overload,
management must at least show concern and empathy. A
simple step is this: walk through operations every few days
and stop to talk with people. My research on workforce
teams spawned a story. A company held a banquet for those
who had participated on teams. All appreciated the party,
but one person remarked, “This was the first time I have
ever seen the plant manager – too bad he doesn’t walk
through the shop once in a while.” Why can’t all upper
managers be like Jamie Dimon, CEO of Bank One? He is a
wizard in making connections with all levels at the bank.
• An organization needs to be careful that it is not trying to be
“best” at too many different parameters, that is, cost, quality,
product innovation.

e Old Italian proverb: He who commences many f

things finishes but few.

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• Have human resources conduct exit interviews for those who

choose to leave the company. Among other questions, ask
“Was your workload reasonable and satisfactory to you?”
• The action plan on work overload must include: 1) steps to
implement the action; 2) steps to assure that the action was
successful in relieving work overload; and 3) measures to
periodically track and/or audit work overload in the future.
Eventually, you will present a strategy for reducing work over-
load – but not before you have taken the aforementioned steps to
convince management that the problem is serious. The discussion so
far has focused on the seriousness of the problem. Next, we will
focus on developing the strategy.

DEVELOPING A STRATEGY ON WORK

OVERLOAD
A strategy on reducing work overload and preventing future work
overload must answer four questions: 1) how will work overload be
measured? 2) how much reduction in work overload is desired?
3) what approach will be taken to reduce the work overload? and
4) what specific principles and policies will be followed to reduce
the current level of work overload and maintain the new level in the
future? Here are the key steps in developing a strategy to reduce
work overload:
1. Define the operational goals for your department. These
might be:
• Process X checks per day.
• Meet a labor budget of $Y per month.
• Meet an error rate of no more than Z processing errors
per day.
These goals do not address work overload (yet). The
approach is to first convince upper management that you
are starting with a bottom line perspective.
You will also need to present data on how well these
goals are being met (or not met).

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2. Determine the current level of work overload and how this

relates to bottom-line financial measures (see previous
discussion on quantifying the cost of work overload). For
example, the current work overload might be that 35
percent of the employees have been on mandatory overtime
during the past three months and, if this level of overtime
continues, it will result in an extra cost of $X,000 per year.
Another measure of the cost of work overload could be
data on retention of key employees. If work overload
appears to have caused injuries that have increased
insurance costs, then these extra costs can be quantified.
This step is meant to convince upper management that
work overload is serious and action must be taken.
3. Take steps to determine and remove the key causes of work
overload. We have identified in Chapter 2 10 contributing
causes of work overload. But you need to identify the key
factors in your organization. One way to obtain this
information is to use a written survey asking employees to
review the 10 factors in Chapter 2 (or prepare your own list
based on input from a sample of employees) and divide 100
points among the factors to indicate the relative
importance. Caution: such a survey understandably raises
the expectations of employees, that is, they expect to see
changes made. Also, they will request (again, under-
standably) a written summary of the results. Getting input
of affected employees (not just their supervisors) should be
a key part of the strategy. Do this as an early step.
Also, a focus group of employees (guided by a facilitator)
can be asked to discuss the factors contributing to work
overload.
In addition to these data on employee perceptions, other
data can help to convince management. For example:
• Various forms of waste in the processes. This waste uses
human resources. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 described how to
identify the waste and redesign the process and the indi-
vidual jobs to eliminate the waste and reduce the work
overload.
• Unfilled personnel requisitions. Perhaps these average 16
each month or 11 percent of the personnel authorized. As

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What Is the Role of Upper Management in Work Overload? 151

a benchmark, a similar department in the XYZ Company

averages about 4 percent.
• Computer software and hardware problems. Typically, the
minimum number of problems is X per week (with an
average of Y per week). These problems involve computer
downtime resulting in work stoppages that later cause
work overload to catch up to meet customer processing
requirements. As a benchmark, a similar activity at the
RTU Company averages about K per week.
• Work process not capable of meeting quantity or quality
requirements. A recent random sample revealed that
about 31 percent of people’s time was spent on finding
and correcting errors in the process. This extra time
results in a work overload to meet customer requirements
on processing. As a benchmark, the number at the GHJ
Company is 12 percent. The reasons why a work process
is not capable can involve work design, personnel selec-
tion and training, inputs from internal and external sup-
pliers, and other reasons.
• Insufficient resources to handle a normal workload. Even
if waste is eliminated from processes, the resources cur-
rently assigned may still not be sufficient. But this point
must be proven to upper management by studying the
capability of the process and providing data to show that
current resources are not sufficient.

Note how this presentation (to management) makes use of two

concepts: 1) a numerical value of the size of the critical factor, and
2) a comparison to a similar organization. It is agreed that it is not
always possible to include one or both of these concepts, but they
sure make the case stronger.
As you collect data on the factors contributing to work overload,
watch for the “Pareto principle.” This principle says that in any pop-
ulation that contributes to a common effect, a relative few of the con-
tributors – the “vital few” – account for the bulk of the effect. Thus,
we must identify the vital few contributors to work overload (based
on data) and focus our effort initially on these factors to obtain the
fastest result.

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152 Chapter Ten

A formal project-by-project approach may be necessary to tackle

the main issues in work overload. Each “project” is a work overload
issue to be solved. This approach has three main steps:
1. Prove the need by presenting data on the seriousness of the
overload problem (see previous discussion).
2. Identify specific projects. This involves obtaining
nominations for projects, deciding priorities, selecting
initial projects to demonstrate the approach, and writing a
problem and mission statement for each project.
3. Organize project teams and implement the projects.
Typically, each team has a leader, members, a secretary, and
a facilitator. Carrying out each project involves:
• Verifying the project need and mission
• Diagnosing the causes
• Providing a remedy and proving its effectiveness
• Dealing with resistance to change
• Instituting controls to hold the gains

The detailed steps in this approach have been proven exten-

sively in the business world. See, for example, my book on Quality
Planning and Analysis. How do we convince upper management to
authorize such an approach if it is needed? By using the bottom-line
financial measure discussed previously in step 2.
This project-by-project approach involves not just an operations
department but is cross functional and probably involves human
resources, information technology, and likely other departments.
4. Set goals, with time targets, on removing the causes. For
example, a goal on overall work overload might be no
employee in the department shall have work overload for a
period of two continuous months. Goals on critical factors
might be:
• Unfulfilled personnel requisitions: reduce to 10 percent
in six months
• Overtime: reduce overtime by 25 percent within one
month

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What Is the Role of Upper Management in Work Overload? 153

• Computer software and hardware problems: reduce to 20

in six months
• Process rework: reduce to 8 percent in six months

Even if these goals must be somewhat arbitrary, they provide

guidance for the next step. That is, developing plans to achieve
these goals.
Examples of successful internal efforts in each of the areas
should be presented to convince upper management that an
approach has been developed that works and what is needed is for
upper management to authorize a continuation of this approach
with assigned responsibility and resources.
5. Develop and implement plans to achieve the goals. These
plans should include some principles or policies that
should be followed to prevent work overload. Examples
might be:
• All new jobs will be analyzed to be sure that sufficient
time is allotted and that employees have sufficient
resources and training to meet all job requirements.
• All jobs will be filled with a careful match of employee
skills and job requirements.
• The use of beepers after work hours will be discouraged.
• Checking e-mail messages after work hours will be dis-
couraged.
• All employees will take a lunch break and this break may
not be taken at their work station.
• A family-friendly attitude will be encouraged (see
Chapter 11).
• A senior management person must spend one full day
every two months in an activity with work overload.

Each goal should have a person or function designated as hav-

ing the primary responsibility for coordinating all efforts to achieve
that goal. For example:
• Unfilled personnel requisitions: Primary responsibility will
be the human resources department working in conjunction
with the operations department.

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154 Chapter Ten

• Computer problems: Primary responsibility will be the

information technology department working in conjunction
with the operations department.
• Process not capable problems: Primary responsibility will be
the operations department working in conjunction with the
quality department and specified internal and external
suppliers to the operations department along with internal
staff departments or external consultants.
Each case should specify a date by which a corrective-action
plan is developed and implementation started. Don’t forget to pro-
vide for some fun in the process to ease the agony of overload.
An alternative to this is to ask upper management to appoint a
cross-functional task force to study the work overload problem.
The taskforce should be given a one-page mission statement stating
the scope of the task force effort and giving a date for reporting to
management.
6. Review progress with periodic measurements and audits of
current work overload areas. The measurements should be
in the same units of measure as the goals (step 4). Measures
should focus on turning knowledge of the process into
action on work overload.
Measurements can also be supplemented with physical
audits of work activities that have serious work overload.
These can be brief visits to the work area to provide
supplementary detail useful for corrective action. These
audits can be made by a quality department, which usually
has people trained as auditors to provide an independent
and objective review of activities.
7. Provide for a periodic review with upper management
of progress toward goals. This provides the essential
leadership of upper management to assure resolution of
the work overload problem. These reviews with upper
management must lay the groundwork for execution of
plans. Thus, clarify what the follow through will be, who
will do the what, when and how, what resources they
will use, and when the next review will take place. Bossidy
and Charan (2002) present many useful ideas on execution
in the business world.

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8. Set up controls to continuously manage work overload. The

control sequence for work overload includes:
• Identify the contributors to work overload.
• Establish how you would measure each contributor.
• Establish a standard for each contributor.
• Measure actual performance.
• Compare actual performance to the standard.
• Take action on the difference.

But this control sequence should be established for all key char-
acteristics of a process – not just work overload. This is the way to
manage the process, that is, periodically measure the important per-
formance parameters for the operational goals of the department
(step 1), identify problems early, and take action. This helps to pre-
vent work overload by avoiding the need to assign resources (by
adding to the work load of already busy people) to correct a prob-
lem. The big assumption here is that the processes have been ana-
lyzed and waste removed so that the processes are capable of
meeting their performance requirements. Note that this control
sequence for all key process characteristics identifies potential
problems early and helps to prevent firefighting – a key cause of
work overload
A key step in all this is measurement. Some principles can help
us to develop effective measurements for quality. The six guidelines
for measurement (see Chapter 9 under Managing Information) are
helpful in planning for measurement.
To summarize, in the previous pages we have presented ideas
to: 1) convince upper management of the seriousness of the work
overload problem, and 2) develop a strategy for reducing and con-
trolling work overload.
Now you are ready to make a presentation to management.
Rehearse the presentation before a few observers who play the role
of upper management by asking you questions that upper manage-
ment might ask. Also, recognize the time pressures on upper man-
agement and, therefore, be concise. No digressions from the point.

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156 Chapter Ten

OPERATIONAL ACTIONS THAT UPPER

MANAGEMENT MUST TAKE
Some-high level operational actions are needed:
• Upper management should make clear that the total
working hours must be kept within reason.
• Examine the status of products offered and customers
served. Suppose a company offers 1000 different products,
but 300 of the products account for only 4 percent of the
total volume of sales. Also, suppose the company serves 450
different customers, but 50 of these customers account for
only 5 percent of the total sales volume. The question arises:
should the company offer all 1000 products and serve all 450
customers? Further analysis is needed to recognize other
factors, but if some products could be eliminated and/or
some customers declined, the resources saved could reduce
work overload.
• Processes that are overloaded probably contain significant
waste that should be identified and eliminated (see Chapter
3). If necessary, upper management must provide additional
resources to study the processes and identify and eliminate
the waste. This alone may free up enough resources to solve
the overload problem. But upper management must direct
that savings from process redesign be used to reduce work
overload – instead of to increase profit. Only top
management involvement can assure that this will happen.
• Upper management should watch for opportunities to help
middle management in the middle management work
overload problem. Sometimes a brief intervention by upper
management can remove obstacles that are causing work
overload for middle managers. For example, middle
managers deal with middle managers at a supplier to
resolve problems. When an impasse occurs (causing work
overload due to the problem) a phone call by upper
management to the upper management of the supplier can
often resolve the problem quickly. Of course, asking upper
management to intercede can only happen occasionally, but
some occasions are the right time.

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What Is the Role of Upper Management in Work Overload? 157

• Upper management must make sure that middle

management has sufficient time to periodically review
priorities for their units and review activities for work
overload.
• Middle managers should be supported to pursue the actions
discussed in Chapter 5 concerning the mental demands of
jobs of subordinates (lack of management support, career
concerns, and lack of family-friendly practices). Upper
managers must support the concept of matching people to
the right jobs (see Chapter 7). Employees in jobs that do not
suit their abilities and interests quickly become unhappy and
stress builds up to combine with work overload to cause
problems. On the other hand, employees suited for their jobs
are satisfied in the job and can handle significant work
overload (at least for awhile) because they are happily
focused on their work and the results that the work achieves.
• Pursue the actions discussed in Chapter 7 concerning
retention of key personnel (retention data, employee opinion
surveys, and outside research).
• Upper managers must search for creative solutions to the
work overload problem and tap the ideas of all personnel to
identify these creative solutions. One example is flextime in
which employees are allowed some flexibility in choosing
their working hours (see Chapter 11). The flextime may not
directly reduce work overload, but it relieves some of the
personal stresses that when combined with work overload
cause serious problems.
• When it is not possible to quickly reduce overload,
management must provide relieving (palliative) actions such
as special time off to cushion the overload (and prevent
disaster) until the overload can be reduced. Palliative actions
are helpful but don’t fight a fire with a water pistol. Stronger
actions are needed.
• Inject some fun activities to lighten the burdens.
Finally, there is one more essential role for upper management.
An important reason for work overload of middle managers is the
lack of cooperation and teamwork among middle managers them-
selves. Longenecker and Neubert (2000) did research with 204 man-
agers from 16 large manufacturing and service firms. The research

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158 Chapter Ten

identifies the factors that prevent front-line management from

working together (for example, personality conflicts, conflicting
goals rewards based on individual performance). The research also
identifies the problems created by front-line management not work-
ing well together (communication breakdowns, wasted resources
and efforts, increased job-related stress, and workplace tension). But
a key research result is what front-line management thought neces-
sary to achieve cooperation.
The five recommendations were:
1. Develop consensus around a common vision and super-
ordinate goals that focus on organizational outcomes.
2. Implement team-based performance measurement,
feedback, and reward systems.
3. Ensure that top management demonstrates and fosters
cooperation in word and deed.
4. Promote the use of team building, skill development, and
team training as common practices in organizational life.
5. Facilitate front-line management team involvement in and
ownership of decision processes and outcomes.
Note that these recommendations address issues raised on the
mental demands of jobs in Chapter 5. But to implement such con-
cepts clearly requires the initiative and leadership of upper man-
agement.
To sum up, an enlightened upper management will address
work overload of employees because it’s the right thing to do – not
because there’s a payoff. Upper managers are confident people –
sometimes wrong, never in doubt. They can solve the work overload
problem.

SUMMARY – THREE KEY POINTS

1. Enlightened upper managers realize that work overload

can be a serious problem for their employees and that it
must be addressed; other upper managers (the flinthearted)
choose not to address work overload of their people.
2. It is the responsibility of middle managers to convince
upper managers to take action on work overload.

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What Is the Role of Upper Management in Work Overload? 159

3. If a middle manager uses the approaches suggested and

fails to convince upper management to act on work
overload, then the middle manager should . . . resign.

Work and family activities interact. Companies can help their

people to meet both job and family responsibilities. The next chapter
shows how some companies step up to the plate to help employees.

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11
What Are Work and
Family Issues in
Overload?

Laura, the mother hen at a regional bank, worked long

hours for many reasons. She aggressively requested to be
cross-trained in almost every job function in her division
– she enjoyed staying busy, and she really needed the
extra money. Laura had a primary job function – to man-
age and report time-card information. But working about
50 hours per week wasn’t enough.
Laura’s sister was terminally ill with just months to live
and a family to care for; she had a husband also in poor
health who recently lost his job as a car salesman. Laura
was the breadwinner for an entire family tree.
Laura always had time to work, and she always did the
work of two people. She was burdened with the pain and
anxiety of poor health of family members, and she carried
the burden with a smile and attitude of hope. Working
longer hours than anyone else, often 70-80 hours a week
to make ends meet, and then off to the hospital to visit her
ailing sister and then quickly home to care for her hus-
band. Laura always delivered holiday candy to her chosen
few co-workers and superiors. Laura had her reasons. . . .

161

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162 Chapter Eleven

WORK AND FAMILY LIFE – TIMES HAVE

CHANGED
A few decades ago, jobs were separate from family life; today, jobs
and family life strongly interact. For many people, the realities of
work put dramatic burdens on family life. A PBS program reported
that family time has decreased by 22 hours per week since 1970. The
contributing factors are:
• Both spouses work in about 64 percent of married couples
with children under the age of 18. About 55 percent of
mothers with children younger than one year old are
working, about 61 percent with children under six years of
age, and 79 percent with children 6-17 years old. These data
come from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics.
• In 13 percent of American families, one spouse is working
simultaneously at two jobs, according to Bond, Galinsky, and
Sawnberg (1998). Reich (2001) reports that the Bureau of the
Census survey on “Households by Type and Selected
Characteristics” shows that single-parents head more than 30
percent of families.
• Many Americans work longer hours than in the past. Reich
(2001) reports that Americans work 350 hours per year more
than Europeans.
Other factors also become intrusive to family life:
• The 24/7 work week. Some companies operate functions on
three shifts and middle managers are on call for all three
shifts, thus 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Technology
makes this possible and serving global markets accelerates
the scenario. Middle managers often pay a price if they are
responsible for overall operations.
• Modern communication devices result in both advantages
and additional burdens to middle managers. The devices
include home faxes, voice mail, e-mail, beepers, cell phones,
and car phones. Messages must be answered, often when the
managers are at home. Responding includes sharing the
information with other colleagues and this takes more time.
• Long commutes to work.

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What Are Work and Family Issues in Overload? 163

• Extensive business travel.

• Other.
Americans work longer hours (and often with both spouses
working) to have sufficient income to achieve and maintain a
desired standard of living. For upper and middle income people,
this results in the desire to “keep up with the Jones’s.” (As a song
from Lone Star Cafe goes: “We’ve been so busy keeping up with the
Jones’ four car garage and we’re still building on.”) Lower income
people just try to maintain a bare minimum standard of living.
What does all of this mean? Several realities emerge:
• We are never satisfied. We need additional possessions to
maintain satisfaction. Our needs today become a routine
expectation tomorrow particularly in light of what our
friends possess.
• Organizations know how to discover “hidden customer
needs” – the needs that customers have yet to discover. (My
book Quality Planning and Analysis even discusses how
companies can discover these needs). The organizations see
the opportunities and they develop products to meet the
needs. Some of these new products are highly beneficial;
some of them are simply trivial gimmicks. The point is this:
our desire for more and more products contributes to the
need for additional income and this leads to work overload.
• We love to shop. In her thought-inspiring book The
Overworked American, Juliet Schor (1992) states the case well:
“Once purely a utilitarian chore. Shopping has been elevated
to the status of a national passion. For some people,
shopping has become an addiction, like alcohol or drugs.”
Blunt, but does the shoe fit?
• Marketing practices are persuasive – they create desire for
new products and enable more people to purchase those
products.
So, wonderful products emerge and societal forces create our
desire, thus leading to the need for additional income. The result is
a more intense pace of work life, that is, work overload.
But the pace of work life merges with the pace of family life to
become a distressing combination.

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164 Chapter Eleven

THE PACE OF FAMILY LIFE

America has an enviable standard of living. (Unfortunately, we still
have a wide gap between the “haves” and the “have nots.”)
Part of that standard of living is a wonderful array of family activ-
ities – to those families who have the income and the time to afford
these activities. Consider the athletic programs for children. Team
sports are softball, baseball, hockey, soccer, basketball, football, swim-
ming, and more. But think of the transportation involved (usually by
the mothers), not just for the games but also for the many practices. In
theory, participation can be limited to a few sports, but in real life, the
participation in sports creates a burden for the family. A group of
mothers in Minnesota reached two conclusions: 1) they were strongly
in favor of the benefits of the sports programs, and 2) the time
involved for all concerned was getting out of hand. Discussion with
the coaches focused on what might be done to retain the programs but
reduce the time involved. The parents even set up a website
(www.familylife1st.org) to encourage other communities to try ideas.
Most of us do volunteer work at a school, a religious activity, a
community organization – often in the evening. Some people attend a
monthly meeting of their professional society, again in the evening.
Families even “outsource” some activities to save time. Examples
are childcare, cleaning, food preparation, even dog walking. Thus,
time is an issue and when one or both spouses work then overload at
the workplace is further compounded by time overload in family
activities. Some of the stories are humorous (but highlight a problem):
a mother and father schedule a family meeting each week, all must be
present, and no outside activities are permitted to interfere.
In addition to time overload, some activities require money such as
golf, equipment for hockey and football, and horseback riding. These
expenses add pressure to earn more income and this leads to more
work overload. These comments apply to middle income people.
Imagine the situation for low income people, for example, the wife
who works as a housekeeper at a hotel during the day and her husband
who works as a doorman during the evening. Lucky for them that their
employer is Marriott, one of the leaders in work-family programs.
Is the answer to follow a life of “simplicity” – focus on the true
needs for your existence? It’s worth a try – start by reading some
books on keeping life simple. But I agree with Robert Reich that it
isn’t easy to distinguish between “needs” and “wants.” We don’t
live in a vacuum where we can decide what we need and restrict
those needs to what we can afford. Instead, we live in a world with

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What Are Work and Family Issues in Overload? 165

extended family, friends, a work community, and a social commu-

nity. In addition, technology provides an unending supply of new
products and services, and marketing makes them irresistible. These
factors lead to wants that go beyond basic needs and cause us to
work harder to gain the income required for these new wants.
These are weighty matters for families to consider and make their
individual judgments. For those who wish to examine these serious
matters in more detail, two references are useful. Reich (2001)
describes how the changing national economy has resulted in ever-
expanding opportunities for all of us but at the price of a more hectic
life. For your family, Doherty and Carlson (2002) show specifics of
how families with overscheduled kids can take steps to lead a more
balanced life. Here’s my point: the hectic pace of family life further
intensifies the stress created by overload from a job.

WHAT ORGANIZATIONS ARE DOING

TO HELP – SEVEN ACTIVITIES
Some organizations have a family-friendly working environment.

e Old German proverb: A good example is half a sermon. f

Table 11.1 shows seven work-family activities that companies

employ to help families.

Table 11.1 Seven work-family activities.

1. Flexible work options
a. Flexible work schedules
b. Working at home
c. Job sharing
d. Part-time work with partial or full health benefits
2. Assistance in meeting childcare needs
3. Assistance in meeting eldercare needs
4. Assistance in relocation of employees
5. Availability of family and medical leaves
6. Assistance with physical and mental health needs
7. Assistance in other family matters

Next, we discuss these seven activities. The examples cited come

from the rankings of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in
Fortune magazine.

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166 Chapter Eleven

1. Flexible work options

a. Flexible work schedules (“flex-time”). This permits the
employee to schedule work hours to make it easier to
handle family responsibilities, such as getting children to
and from school. Baxter Healthcare has about 2000
employees on a flexible schedule or working at home.
At American Century Investments, a mutual fund and
brokerage organization, more than half of the employees
have a flexible work schedule. At First Tennessee Bank,
93 percent of the employees say they take time off from
work when they think it’s necessary.
Work has a serious impact on many families. Maybe we
need to restructure the work from the traditional 40
hours, five days a week to whatever structure is needed.
Surveys show that employees would give up some salary
(or salary increases) in order to have time off – that’s how
bad the hectic pace has become). Other employees would
not give up salary for time off, but at least the choice
would be available.
b. Working at home (“flex-place”). Employees may work at
home allowing them to care for children (or elderly par-
ents). Telecommunications tools are often involved lead-
ing to the term “telecommuting.”
c. Job sharing. Hewlett-Packard permits job sharing, even
for some managers. This requires trust in each other and
much communication.
d. Part-time work with partial or full health benefits, if
desired by the employee. Starbucks provides medical,
dental, and vision coverage to all workers, including
part timers. Federal Express covers healthcare for
most part timers.

These examples of flexible work options are available in many

organizations. Such arrangements depart from traditional work
arrangements and require careful planning among employees and
managers. To facilitate the process of change, Bank One uses a six-
step process for an employee to request a flexible work option and
for the manager to review the request. These steps are shown in
Figure 11.1.

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What Are Work and Family Issues in Overload? 167

Whose Responsibility
Employee Manager
Step 1: Identify the schedule you want ✔
Select the type of flexible work option you want to
request. Identify the proposed schedule.
Step 2: Think through your request ✔
Using the Employee Worksheet and/or checklists, identify
how the schedule will sustain your performance and affect
others. Surface issues and identify solutions. If applicable,
identify telecommunicating/work-at-home issues. Identify
how your results will be evaluated, how the schedule itself
will be monitored.
Step 3: Propose the request to your manager ✔
Take time to prepare your discussion. Review and
complete the Employee Worksheet, putting yourself in
your manager’s shoes and in your customers’ shoes. Fill
out Section A of the Proposal-to-Plan form. Next, meet
with your manager and discuss your proposal. Listen to
your manager’s questions, concerns, and ideas.
Step 4: Review the proposal ✔
Listen to the employee’s proposal. Use the checklists in
Section B to review the request. Review Tips for Success.
Surface concerns. Refer to the Common Concerns
section in the Guide. Consider solutions.
Step 5: Take action ✔
Decide to approve or deny the request. Contact your
Human Resources Business Partner about special or
unusual issues or to ask specific questions (for example,
overtime, changes to benefits, and so on) and under-
stand all telecommuting/work-at-home issues before
approving a request. Communicate your decision and the
business reasons to the employee. Designate a pilot
period. Complete Section C of the Proposal-to-Plan form.
Keep a copy of the Proposal-to-Plan form in the
employee’s desk file. Send a copy of all completed
proposals (approved and not approved) to your Human
Resources Business Partner. If employee status changes,
complete the appropriate paperwork.
Step 6: Make the new approved schedule work ✔ ✔
Appropriately communicate changes to customers,
co-workers, and others. Periodically review performance
results and monitor how the schedule itself is working.
Determine if the new work schedule will continue
beyond the pilot period.

Figure 11.1 Proposal-to-Plan process.

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168 Chapter Eleven

Flexible work options are often the main part of a company pro-
gram. But other services are also a part of work-family programs.
These include:
2. Assistance in meeting childcare needs. This includes on-
site childcare facilities, financial assistance for off-site
options, or financial assistance to communities to develop
childcare facilities. PBS reports that good quality day care
for two kids can cost as much as $1100 per month – that
may be a quarter of a double income. But companies can
help. MBNA America Bank provides affordable childcare at
$119-$150 a week. Amgen Corp. has a childcare center for
450 children. AFLAC has a childcare center with a monthly
rate of only $292. EMC not only has on-site childcare but
also summer camp programs for children.
3. Assistance in meeting eldercare needs. Some workers must
take time off, may lose out on preferred job assignments and
promotions, retire early, or even resign because of the
pressures of eldercare. A Met Life study of more than 1500
workers who provide eldercare revealed some sobering data,
for example, 64 percent had to take sick days or vacation
time, 22 percent needed a leave of absence, and 13 percent
retired early. Eldercare responsibilities will escalate rapidly
as the population gets older.
4. Assistance in relocation of employees. Eli Lilly realizes
that relocation of employees raises significant problems for
families. The company furnishes assistance in areas ranging
from spousal employment, housing, and children’s sports.
5. Availability of family and medical leaves – with or
without salary. At the Edward Jones Company, a broker
who has a baby is guaranteed 75 percent of her average
commissions for six weeks after delivery. ACXIOM
provides a week of paid leave for new fathers.
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 provides up
to 12 weeks per year of unpaid leave for medical
emergencies. Reich (2001) believes ultimately we must
have paid family leave for emergencies (like most other
countries). A few (about 5 percent) companies even offer
leaves of absence with salary and benefits. The “sabbatical
leaves” permit employees to engage in almost any activity
to revitalize themselves and return to work with a new

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What Are Work and Family Issues in Overload? 169

lease on life. Among the companies are American Century,

Charles Schwab, Frank Russell, Nike, and Time Inc.
(Browning 2003).
6. Assistance to help employees with physical and mental
health needs. MBNA America Bank supplies a 24-hour
hotline for medical advice. Hallmark’s Compassionate
Connections program helps workers to deal with stress
and grief.
7. Assistance in other family matters such as retirement
planning and adoption assistance. MBNA America Bank
donates up to $20,000 support for adoption, and additional
services. Home Depot presents a financial education
program on matters including developing budgets,
understanding credit, and home buying. Marriott with
116,000 hourly employees has a hotline to help employees
locate affordable day care, find apartments or homes, or a
host of other issues. Bank One even has a “homework
hotline” with a teacher to help students. Marriott also
helps employees who have problems with the English
language. Amgen Corp. has a weekly farmers market.
These organizations provide creative approaches to
helping families. Rose (2003) describes work-life initiatives
in various companies including the impact on parameters
such as job satisfaction and employee retention.

ELIMINATION OF MANDATORY
OVERTIME
A 1997 study by the Families and Work Institute reports that nearly
one in five employees is required to work paid or unpaid overtime
once per week with little or no previous notice. Alternatives to
mandatory overtime are available: make overtime voluntary, or sub-
stitute compensatory time off for overtime salary. Of course, the
pressure for additional family income means that many people will
want the overtime hours but . . . at least they will have a choice. Why
must we eliminate mandatory overtime? Simply because it’s the
right thing to do. At the Vanguard Group of mutual funds, employ-
ees can even buy an extra week of vacation.

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170 Chapter Eleven

THE TOP COMPANIES ON WORK –

FAMILY PROGRAMS
For companies to institute work-family practices requires a change
in traditional thinking. The reasons why it can’t be done are endless,
but the impressive list of companies with work-family programs
tells us that it can be done. Working Mother magazine (Oct. 2003)
identified the 100 best companies for working mothers. Among the
top 10 were (alphabetically): Abbott Laboratories, Booz Allen
Hamilton, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Eli Lilly and Company, Fannie
Mae, General Mills, IBM Corporation, Prudential Financial Inc., S. C.
Johnson & Son, Inc., and Wachovia Corporation. My compliments to
these 100 organizations. Let’s hold them up as examples to the other
organizations that simply offer excuses why it can’t be done.
Baxter Healthcare believes that the key to business success is:
have the right people. To get those top people, Baxter realizes the
company must have flexibility in personnel practices. If a company
really believes that getting the right people is paramount, then the
company will overcome the obstacles to providing work-family
practices.
Friedman and Greenhaus (2000) present the results of research
based on survey data from about 860 employed alumni of two busi-
ness schools. Their research examines “the effects of gender, profes-
sional culture, and social expectations on the evolving roles of men
and women in crafting an integrated life.”

BENEFITS OF WORK-FAMILY
PROGRAMS
Organizations with strong work family programs report the follow-
ing benefits:
• Improve employee satisfaction, which, in turn, leads to
improved customer satisfaction. This applies to those having
direct contact with customers and those who work behind
the scenes.
• Recruit new employees with superior skills and experience.
Increasingly, job candidates can choose among employers
based not only on the position but also on work scheduling
flexibility and other aspects of a job.

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What Are Work and Family Issues in Overload? 171

• Retain talented employees. The bottom-line savings are the

time and cost saved to recruit, interview, and train a new
hire. See Chapter 7 for some convincing data.
• Promote a balanced life for employees to enable them to
achieve personal goals in family, education, and community
activities.
• Enhance community relations because satisfied employees
present a positive image of the company to the community.
An “Alliance of Work/Life Professionals” who work in business,
academia, or the public sector aims to promote a healthy balance
between work and personal life (their website is www.awlp.org).

HOW TO INSTITUTE WORK FAMILY

PROGRAMS
First, how should we present the case to upper management? A
good approach combines financial data with information on
employee demographics and needs (discussed next, and informa-
tion on the benefits of a program (discussed previously).
Lack of work-family programs results in absenteeism and
employee turnover. These two factors can be quantified in dollars.
Information on employee demographics includes the number of
working mothers, number of mothers with children in school, num-
ber of employees with eldercare responsibilities, number of employ-
ees who are recent immigrants and who may have problems with
language or other matters, and other statistics. Sometimes, if we just
collect these numbers and present them to management the impact
can be surprising.
Next, we must determine what the employees need to balance
their work life with their family life. How do we find out? Use
employee surveys and small focus groups, run by a trained focus
group facilitator.
Work-family programs do cost money. Some of the needed
funds can come from increases in worker productivity. These
increases in productivity should not come from making employees
work faster and harder. They should come from eliminating waste
in processes – a key focus of this book. If a company has a quality
improvement or performance improvement program based on the

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172 Chapter Eleven

project-by-project approach, then projects aimed at work overload

can be identified and pursued by improvement teams.
As an industrial engineer I believe we should divide monetary
savings from eliminating waste in five ways, in order of priority:
1) reduce work overload; 2) work-family programs for employees;
3) increases in salary and benefits to employees; 4) funds for addi-
tional productivity improvement efforts so that improvements
become a way of life; and 5) distribution to shareholders – the people
who endow the financial foundation for the company.
The next section of this chapter describes how Marriott devel-
oped and applied its program.

The Middle Manager and Work-Family Programs

The job flexibility provided in work-family programs complicates the
business life for many middle managers. Their experience says that
employees work five days a week, eight hours a day (at least). Further,
the traditional “command and control” management style is still
prevalent, that is, the supervisor is in a clear position of authority that
includes monitoring the time spent by employees on the job. Flexible
hours for employees are a significant change for managers and we
need to help them with the training and encouragement to make
work-family practices be successful. Unfortunately, some supervisors
may never accept the changes. Some corporate cultures discourage
employees from using work-family benefits such as flexible hours.
Employees feel they may be viewed as not serious about work if they
use such benefits and this would hurt their careers. Upper and mid-
dle management must communicate their support of work-family
practices, and employees should use these practices.
Many middle managers also have family responsibilities and they
can benefit from work-family programs. But the job flexibility that is
such a strength of these programs may not be easy to apply for peo-
ple in supervision roles. Every effort should be made to make work-
family programs useful to all employees, including middle managers.

WORK-FAMILY PROGRAMS AT THE

MARRIOTT CORPORATION
The Marriott Corp. is one example of an organization with an exten-
sive program (they call their program Work/Life). Most Marriott

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What Are Work and Family Issues in Overload? 173

locations operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week and have a com-
plicated work schedule environment for both the business and the
employees.
Marriott has a program of “Alternative Work Arrangements” to
help their associates balance personal and professional responsibili-
ties. These alternatives include flextime, compressed work week,
reduced work week, telecommuting (work at home), and job shar-
ing. Associates propose an alternative work arrangement and are
given help in writing the proposal to recognize the effect on the busi-
ness, customer, and associate.
Other Marriott programs encompass:
• Childcare
– Childcare discount directory
– Maternity matters – birth or adoption
– Public policy work on childcare
• Eldercare
– Eldercare locator
– Elder relocation program
– Discount at Marriott senior living services properties
• Education, training, and information
– Management and supervisory training (on work/life
management)
– The Balance Newsletter (providing information on
work/life issues, workplace effectiveness, and
best practices)
– Work/Life website
• Family Care Spending Account – Marriott associates who
pay for childcare, eldercare, or care of a disabled family
member can set aside tax-free money for these expenses.
• Marriott’s Associate Resource Line – a toll-free 24 hours a
day, seven days a week confidential program that offers
consultation and referral on a wide range of work and
personal life issues. The service is available in 150 languages.
Additional programs include library-by-mail, tips on tape,
volunteerism, College Level Exam Program (CLEP), and

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174 Chapter Eleven

participation in the federally sponsored Earned

Income/Advanced Income Tax Credit program to earn
additional income.
Marriott recognizes that work-family issues also affect their
managers. The “Management Flexibility” concept emphasizes get-
ting the job done rather than the number of hours worked.
Managers are required to identify inefficiencies and low-value work
that may cause long hours. The process is called “work redesign”
(the theme of this book).
Mariott’s Management Flexibility concept reflects transforming
attitudes and behaviors, changing hours, and redesigning processes.
Here are some of their principles:
• Think hard about the way you do your work.
• Change your own behaviors (don’t feel guilty and don’t
criticize others about leaving early).
• Communicate (positive reinforcement, discourage negative
behavior).
• Foster teamwork (fill in for someone who needs to leave
early).
• Constantly look at better ways to do things.
Their approach used these elements: a pilot process at three loca-
tions, have managers respond to surveys, hold focus groups to iden-
tify issues causing long hours, outline possible solutions to minimize
inefficiencies, measure the impact of flexibility initiatives, and
change attitude and behaviors toward work. Notice their focus on
reducing work overload by studying and redesigning the work. At
the pilot locations, hours were reduced by almost five hours per
manager, low-value work was cut in half, managers report lower lev-
els of stress and burnout, there is less emphasis on hours worked and
more emphasis on important work accomplished, and management
is more supportive of personal/family responsibilities. For a refresh-
ingly frank paper on the Marriott experience, see Munck (2001).
This book aims to reduce work overload in two ways: 1) eliminate
waste from processes and use the resources saved to reduce the work
overload of the remaining activities, and 2) redesign work to reduce
the mental demands that also contribute to work overload. When
work overload is present, the resulting stress spills over into family
life creating problems at home, which, in turn, affects employee

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What Are Work and Family Issues in Overload? 175

performance back on the job – a vicious circle. Work-family programs

of the type described in this chapter are wonderful. But work-family
programs alone, or teaching employees how to handle job stress
alone, cannot solve the problem of work overload. Thus, we must
redesign processes to eliminate waste and redesign jobs to reduce
mental demands.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION ON WORK

FAMILY PROGRAMS
Information is conveniently available for you to learn the basic con-
cepts – and to keep up to date – on work and family practices.
My suggestions are:
1. Human Resources Institute, affiliated with The University
of Tampa. This organization does research in the broad area
of human resource issues and practices. The Institute
monitors more than 150 major issues including those in the
work and family area. Over 100 companies support the
Institute. The website – www.HRInstitute.info – is
continuously updated.
2. Families and Work Institute. The Institute does “research
that provides data to inform decision making on the
changing workplace, changing family, and changing
community.” The Institute also receives support from
companies. Their website is www.familiesandwork.org.
3. Fortune magazine. The annual issue on “100 Best
Companies to Work For” provides a wealth of examples of
specific practices by company.
4. Working Mother magazine. The annual issue on “100 Best
Companies for Working Mothers” provides details on
work-family practices, by company.
5. Alliance of Work/Life Professionals. This organization
promotes a healthy balance between work and personal
life. The website is www.awlp.org.
These sources have been a great help to me in doing research for
this book.

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176 Chapter Eleven

SUMMARY – THREE KEY POINTS

1. For more than half of American families, jobs of the wage

earners (one or more) now have a significant negative
impact on family life.
2. Our ever-increasing desire for a higher standard of living
causes burdens to add to family income, leading to work
overload.
3. Many organizations demonstrate that work and family
activities to help employees are feasible, but many other
organizations do not respond to the need. To the laggards:
it can be done, the evidence is crystal clear.

In the final chapter, we will sum it all up.

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12
What Do We Do Next?

S
ome people believe that the current grey-haired generation
“lives to work,” but the younger generation X “works to live.”
Such generalizations have far too many exceptions to be useful.
Work overload is a problem for many people.
After a recap, we will offer some immediate action steps by
upper and middle management to launch the overload battle.

A RECAP

1. Many people do have work overload; many people do not

have work overload. Middle managers and individual
professional contributors (particularly those whose
activities involve much customer contact) lead the overload
brigade.
2. People who are suited and pleased with their jobs willingly
handle (even enjoy) some excess hours (and even stress).
But there is a limit.
3. The increased pace of work and family life feed on each
other, that is, long work hours means less time for family
and the fast pace of family activities adds mental and
physical burdens to work.
4. Work overload leads to errors in work, safety risks, job
dissatisfaction, and other serious issues.

177

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178 Chapter Twelve

5. People who experience work overload perceive the main

reasons are insufficient resources, firefighting, work
processes that are not capable, problems with internal and
external suppliers, computer hardware or software
problems, information overload, unclear performance goals
and responsibilities, inadequate selection and training of
personnel, and other reasons.
6. Most work processes include activities that contribute little
or nothing to the final output. We know how to eliminate
these waste activities from a process. By eliminating the
waste, we can use the resources saved to reduce the work
overload.
7. To reduce work overload, we must analyze both the
technical content and the mental demands of the work. The
components of mental demands are mental intensity, time
spent on the job, content and authority, management
support, career aspects, and social interaction. We can
redesign the job for these mental demands.
8. Work redesign for the workforce should result in jobs of
sufficient scope to provide for learning new skills.
Participation of workers in planning the redesign and
empowerment in decision making leads to a state of self-
control for the workforce.
9. The matching of skills (inherent and acquired) and interests
with job requirements is essential. More intense efforts to
make a good match yield significant benefits.
10. To reduce and control work overload, the redesign of work
activities should be the primary action to take. Upper
management must provide the time and special skills
necessary for redesign.
11. Methods to handle job stress can be an important
supplement to redesign of work, but the work redesign is
critical because it removes some sources of overload and
therefore reduces the stress.
12. The workforce has permanently changed. Families are now
in the workforce. For companies to obtain the best talent,
the companies need work family programs.

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What Do We Do Next? 179

SWING INTO ACTION

Throughout this book, I have suggested some actions for upper and
middle management. This final chapter suggests a few immediate
actions that could break the impasse on work overload. It won’t be
easy and there will be reasons why some of these actions won’t
work. So . . . we will state an action and then an obstacle of why the
action won’t work, and, finally, what we could try to overcome the
obstacle. First, some actions for upper management.

WHAT SHOULD UPPER MANAGEMENT

DO NEXT?

Action by Upper Management

Find out the extent of work overload.
This won’t work because . . . We know work overload is a prob-
lem but it’s infrequent, only happens to a few people, and the cir-
cumstances are beyond our control.
But maybe we could try . . . Ask accounting to add up the paid
overtime hours for the past year and also the unexpended vacation
time for middle managers and individual professional contributors.
Also have the middle managers and professional contributors keep
track of their (unpaid) overtime for a representative period of one
month. If the results confirm that overload may be a serious prob-
lem then conduct a full study on the total cost of work overload. See
Chapter 10 for details.

Action by Upper Management

Eliminate mandatory overtime.
This won’t work because . . . Circumstances often make it neces-
sary to have mandatory overtime.
But maybe we could try . . . As an experiment, eliminate manda-
tory overtime for say, three months, while simultaneously eliminat-
ing waste from processes. This means upper management must
guarantee that the savings from eliminating waste will be used to
reduce work overtime. See Chapter 10.

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180 Chapter Twelve

Action by Upper Management

Upper management should meet with upper management of
another company that has an extensive work-family program to
learn about the benefits.
This won’t work because . . . Work-family issues are too different
in various companies.
But maybe we could try . . . A one-time meeting – just a few hours
– to hear from another CEO firsthand about the benefits and imple-
mentation ideas on work-family activities. See Chapter 11.

Now, some actions for middle management.

WHAT SHOULD MIDDLE

MANAGEMENT DO NEXT?
Action by Middle Management
Keep a time log for one month recording time spent by simple cate-
gories such as departmental planning and administration, firefight-
ing, personnel issues, meetings, managing information, business
travel, or any set of appropriate categories. See Chapter 9.
This won’t work because . . . This is unnecessary; I know where I
spend my time.
But maybe we could try . . . Don’t rely on your memory – get some
data. Ask an assistant to keep the time log for you.

Action by Middle Management

As an experiment, study waste in two cross-functional processes.
This won’t work because . . . We don‘t have the time or skills to
do it.
But maybe we could try . . . The study could be done by a staff
department, retirees, a consultant, students from a local college, or
some other source. See Chapters 3 and 4.

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What Do We Do Next? 181

Action by Middle Management

As an experiment, study two individual jobs for excessive mental
demands due to job content or poor management systems.
This won’t work because . . . We don’t have the time or skills to
do it.
But maybe we could try . . . Use the self-control checklists and
other material in Chapter 6 to analyze the jobs. Ask for volunteers –
a middle manager to guide the study and workers to participate
with ideas. See Chapters 5 and 6.

A CLOSING NOTE
Capitalism has helped to make America great. Most of us want a
capitalist society but not one that means work overload. As capital-
ists, we can be smart enough to solve the work overload problem.
We started this book with a reference to Frank and Lillian
Gilbreth. The Gilbreths are watching us to see if we get it right on
work overload.
That’s all I have to say.

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Appendix A
Can’t We Act Tomorrow
on Work Overload?
(See Chapter 9)

1. Eliminate mandatory overtime (to force the study of waste

in processes).
2. Set a target date for eliminating the work overload.
3. Set up an employee roundtable to brainstorm ideas on how
to ease the overload.
4. Hire temporary help.
5. Request “shared resources” temporarily from another
department.
6. Give a person who just finished a high overload project a
new temporary project that he or she personally enjoys, to
partially overcome the suffering from the overload.
7. Identify and reduce excessive mental demands in key jobs.
8. Provide compensatory time off.
9. Add fun to the work.
10. Encourage people to do recovery/rejuvenation techniques
every 90 to 120 minutes.
11. Pull out the stops on reward and recognition.

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Appendix B
List of Actions by
Middle Management
(See Chapters 9 and 12)

Basic: Devise ways to identify and eliminate waste from work

processes and reduce excessive mental demands. As a pilot
approach:
• Study waste in two cross-functional processes
• Study two individual jobs for excessive mental demands
Departmental planning and administration
Time management:
– Read a time management book
– Keep a time log of activities for a representative month
– Add 20 percent to time estimates for projects
– Schedule a half hour each day for assessing priorities

Setting priorities on major projects:

– Twice a year, step back and review current projects

Follow through on projects:

– Focus on a few goals
– Learn to say “no” to additional work
– Delegate
– Add fun to the job

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186 Appendix B

– If overload cannot be eliminated quickly, have a plan of

actions to compensate for the overload

Firefighting:
– Short-range actions
* Add temporary help
* Train additional firefighters
* Face the reality that some fires (problems) will not be
solved
– Long-range action:
* Prevent the fires (see Chapter 10 under Long Range
Actions)

Personnel Issues

• Recognize the symptoms of work overload

• Plan work to rejuvenate people after work overload
• Install an automatic follow-up on the status of open
(unfilled) personnel requisitions
• Pursue additional sources of recruiting personnel
• Pursue approval of additional resources as part of a long-
range strategy (Chapter 10)
• Clarify job responsibilities
• Select and match people to job requirements
• Train people for a full career
• Address career and other personnel problems

Meetings
• Consider alternatives to meetings
• Prepare thoroughly for meetings
• Conduct meetings efficiently
• Follow-up after meetings

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Appendix B 187

Managing Information
• Review internal information received
• Drop subscriptions to some magazines
• Review how to handle e-mails
• Collect selected data (see six criteria in Chapter 9)

Business Travel

Alternatives:
– Videoconferencing
– Satellite broadcasting
– Teleconference calls
– Teleconference calls with data collaboration
– E-mail

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Appendix C
List of Actions by Upper
Management
(see Chapters 10 and 12)

Determine the extent of work overload

• Determine the costs of work overload.
• Have accounting assemble data on unexpended vacation
time for middle managers and individual professional
contributors.
• Have human resources audit departments to determine the
extent of work overload for all personnel.
• Consider the impact of work overload on families.
• Ask upper and middle management what other information
on work overload to collect.
• Consider using a consultant to study work overload.
Have some or all middle managers develop a strategy for work
overload in their departments
• Define the operational goals for the department.
• Determine the current level of work overload and how this
relates to bottom-line measures.
• Determine the key causes of work overload.
• Set goals, with time targets, on removing the causes.
• Develop and implement plans to achieve the goals of current
work overload areas.

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190 Appendix C

• Provide for a periodic review with upper management on

progress toward meeting the goals.
• Set up controls to continuously manage work overload.
Operational actions by upper management
• Eliminate mandatory overtime.
• Meet with upper management in another company that has
an extensive work-family program.
• Make clear to all that the total work hours must stay within
reason.
• Provide resources to study processes for waste.
• Help middle managers to reduce their work overload.
• Make sure middle managers have sufficient time to
periodically review priorities.
• Support middle managers on reducing excessive mental
demands on all jobs.
• Support middle managers on matching jobs with people.
• Support middle managers on retention of key personnel.
• Search for creative solutions to work overload and tap the
ideas of all personnel.
• Inject fun activities.
• Take compensating actions when work overload cannot be
reduced.
• Achieve cooperation and teamwork among middle
managers (five recommendations in Chapter 10).

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Appendix D
Actions to Minimize
Work Overload
(See Chapter 9)

• Decide where you want to go in life and make plans to get

there.
• Don’t forget the essentials: exercise, food, sleep, spiritual,
time to do nothing.
• Set long-range and short-range work objectives.
• Avoid excessive emphasis on task completion (hurry
sickness).
• Be a corporate athlete:
– Physical capacity
– Emotional capacity
– Mental capacity
– Spiritual capacity
– Rituals and rejuvenation

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Appendix E
Stress Reducing
Techniques
(See Chapter 9)

Become aware that you are stressed

• Create a personal stress log to identify the types of situations
that cause stress. The log should document the date,
situation, intensity of the stress, and your thoughts and
actions.
• Identify specific patterns of negative thinking and learn to
substitute positive responses to block out the negative.

Apply relaxation techniques to induce relaxation to alleviate the

stress and to prevent future stress
• Meditation – empty your mind of active thought,
particularly negative thought.
• Progressive muscle relaxation – systematically relax muscle
groups.
• Belly breathing (diaphragmatic breathing) - breathe slowly
in and out through the nostrils.
• Guided imagery – create a favorite scene in your mind
and use it to escape unpleasant situations (perhaps use an
audio tape).
• Hypnosis and self-hypnosis – create a focused state of
consciousness that helps you to enter a calm, meditative
state.

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194 Appendix E

• Biofeedback – use monitoring devices to furnish information

about stress.
• Self-observation – to furnish information about stress.

Physical techniques

• Physical exercise.
• Yoga – a regimen of breath control, meditation, and
stretching and strengthening exercises ending in meditation.
• Tai Chi – one form (called T’ai Chi Chih ®) is a series of 19
gentle movements and one pose that stimulates, circulates,
and balances the energy in the body.
• Baths – warm, leisurely.

Social and spiritual support

• Social interaction – enjoy the company of your friends.
• Spirituality – personal prayer to help induce a meditative
state and relaxation.

Work environment
• Music.
• Color and design of workplace.

Body essentials
• Proper diet.
• Sleep at least seven hours.
• Exercise.

Increase your tolerance level for stress

• Have clarity on job responsibility.
• Have a job with meaningful purpose.
• Have a job design that approaches self-control and avoids
excessive mental demands.

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Appendix E 195

• Have some fun and use other rituals to recover and

rejuvenate.

Some excellent references on stress reduction and exercise

1. Harvard Health Publications. 2001. Mind/Body Medicine,
Harvard Health Publications.
This is a 41-page booklet prepared by the Harvard
Medical School that interprets extensive medical
information on stress for the general reader. The booklet
provides a readable scientific explanation of how our minds
affect our bodies, presents tools and techniques to use, and
how all of this relates to relates to seven major health
conditions. The booklet includes a glossary of medical
terms, a list of organizations to contact for further
information, and a selected list of books for further reading.
2. Potter, Beverly. 1998. Overcoming Job Burnout – How to Renew
Enthusiasm for Work. (Berkeley, CA: Ronin Publishing, Inc. )
This is a 302-page book written by a counseling
psychologist that blends humanistic psychology and
Eastern philosophies with the principles of behavior
psychology. The book covers the causes of burnout and
presents the principles of managing stress and how these
can be applied to eliminate job burnout and make work life
more meaningful. An extensive bibliography directs you to
further reading.
3. National Institute on Aging. 2001. Exercise. (Gaithersburg,
MD: U. S. Department of Health and Human Services). To
order a free copy, call 800-222-2225.
This is an 80-page booklet written by health scientists at
the National Institutes of Health with advice from a
distinguished group of health scientists from universities.
The booklet covers four types of exercises: endurance,
strength, balance, and flexibility. The step-by-step
instructions for each type of exercise are super clear – even
include diagrams. Every family should have this booklet.

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References

Chapter 1
DeGraaf, John, David Wann, and Thomas H. Naylor 2002.
Affluenza – The all-consuming epidemic. (San Francisco: Berrett-
Koehler Publishers).
Galinsky, Ellen, Stacy S. Kim, and James T. Bond 2001. Feeling
overworked: When work becomes too much. (New York: Families
and Work Institute).
Munck, Bill 2001. Changing a culture of face time. Harvard Business
Review (November): 125-131.
Rapoport, Rhona, Lottie Bailyn, Joyce K. Fletcher, and Bettye H.
Pruitt 2002. Beyond work – family balance. (San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass).
Reich, Robert B. 2001. The future of success. (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf).

Chapter 2
None.

Chapter 3
AT&T Quality Steering Committee 1990. Achieving customer
satisfaction. (Indianapolis, IN: AT&T Customer Information
Center).
Damelio, Robert 1996. The basics of process mapping. (New York:
Quality Resources).

197

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198 References

Gryna, Frank M. 2001. Quality planning and analysis, fourth edition.

(New York: McGraw-Hill).
Juran Institute Inc. 1980. Quality improvement tools – flow diagrams.
(Wilton, CT: Juran Institute).

Chapter 4
Batson, Robert G., and Tracy K. Williams 1998. Process simulation
in quality and BPR teams. Annual Quality Congress Proceedings.
(Milwaukee: American Society for Quality): 368-374.
De Marco, Tom 2001. Slack. (New York: Broadway Books).
Fortune 1985. The Renaissance of American Quality (October 14).
Hammer, Michael, and James Champy 1993. Reengineering the
Corporation. (New York: Harper Business).
Lawson, M.B. (Buff) 2001. In praise of slack: Time is of the essence.
Academy of Management Executive 15, no. 3:125-135.
Nohria, N., and R. Gulati 1996. Is slack good or bad for
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Chapter 5
Karasek, Robert, and Töres Theorell 1990. Healthy work. (New York:
Basic Books).
Van Yperen, Nico W., and Mariëtt Hagedoorn 2003. Do high job
demands increase intrinsic motivation or fatigue or both? The
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Chapter 6
Davis, Robert, Susan Rosegrant, and Michael Watkins 1995.
Managing the link between measurement and compensation.
Quality Progress (February): 101-106.
Friedman, Stewart D., Perry Christensen, and Jessica DeGroot 1998.
Work and life – The end of the zero-sum game. Harvard
Business Review (November-December): 119-129.
Gryna, Frank M. 2001. Quality planning and analysis, fourth edition.
(New York: McGraw-Hill). Reproduced with permission of The
McGraw-Hill Companies.
Hackman, J. Richard, and Greg R. Oldham 1980. Work redesign.
(Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company).
Hemsath, David 2001. 301 more ways to have fun at work. (San
Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers).
Karasek, Robert, and Töres Theorell 1990. Healthy work. (New York:
Basic Books).

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References 199

Shirley, Britt. M., and Frank M. Gryna 1998. Work Design for Self-
Control in Financial Services. Quality Progress (May): 67-71.
American Society for Quality, Reprinted with Permission.
Wallin, L., and I. Wright 1986. Psychosocial aspects of the work
environment: A group approach. Journal of Occupational
Medicine 28: 384-393.
Weinstein, Matt 1996. Managing to have fun. (New York: Simon &
Schuster).
Wrzesniewski, Amy, and Jane E. Dutton 2001. Crafting a job:
Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work, Academy
of Management Review 26, no. 2: 179-201.
Yerkes, Leslie 200l. Fun works creating places where people love to
work. (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers).

Chapter 7
Gustafson, Carl 200l. Employee retention: Ways to maximize this
competitive edge. Sterling Conference, Orlando.
Leonard, James F. 1986. Quality improvement in recruiting and
employment. Juran Report Number Six (Winter). (Wilton, CT:
Juran Institute Inc).
Levering, Robert, and Milton Moskowitz 2004. 100 best companies
to work for. Fortune (January 12): 58-78.
Ligos, Melinda 2001. The company was downsized. Now you’re
upsized. New York Times (October 28): Money and Business
Section 11
McDermott, Robin E. 1994. The human dynamics of total quality.
Annual Quality Congress Proceedings (Milwaukee: American
Society for Quality Control): 225-233.
Maslach, Christina, and Michael P. Leiter 1997. The truth about
burnout. (San Francisco: Jossey–Bass).
Morgan, Ronald B., and Jack E. Smith 1996. Staffing the new
workplace. (Milwaukee: ASQ Quality Press and Chicago: CCH
Incorporated).
Reichheld, Frederick F. 200l. Lead for loyalty. Harvard Business
Review, (July – August): 76-84.
Wood, Alfred 1994. Employee retention. Manage 46, no. 2: 4-7.

Chapter 8
Argyris, Chris 1998. Empowerment: The emperor’s new clothes.
Harvard Business Review (May – June): 98-105.

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Aubrey, Charles A. II, and Derek S. Gryna 1991. Revolution

through effective improvement projects. Quality Congress
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Avery, Christopher, with Meri Aaron Walker and Erin O’Toole
Murphy 2001. Teamwork is an individual skill: Getting your work
done when sharing responsibility. (San Francisco: Berrett–Koehler
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Quality Control Handbook, fourth edition. (New York: McGraw-
Hill Book Company). Reproduced with permission of the
McGraw-Hill Companies.
Centano, Ann, Karla Ahn, and Roberta Tawell 1995. Operation-
alizing quality in daily work concepts. Impro Conference
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Forrester, Russ 2000. Empowerment: Rejuvenating a potent idea.
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Fortune 2001. (September): 3, 206L.
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Gryna, Frank M. 1981. Quality circles. (New York: AMACOM).
Harvard Business School 1994. Case 9-694-076 Taco Bell,
Cambridge, MA.
Katzenbach, Jon R., and Douglas K. Smith 1993. Wisdom of teams.
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Mann, David W. 1994. Re-Engineering the manager’s role. Annual
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Skiba, Karen D. 1996. Accelerated continuous improvement
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Wetlaufer, Suzy 1999. Organizing for empowerment: An interview
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Chapter 9
Aft, Lawrence S. 2000. Work measurement and methods improvement.
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Benson, Herbert M.D., and William Proctor 2003. The break-out
principle. (New York: Scribner).
Bohn, Roger 2000. Stop fighting fires. Harvard Business Review
(July–August): 83-91.

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Drucker, Peter F. 2002. They’re not employees, they’re people.
Harvard Business Review (February): 70-77.
Guernsey, Lisa 2001. Why e-mail is creating multiple
e-personalities. New York Times, (September 26): Business and
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Gunther, Marc 2001. God and Business. Fortune (July 9): 59-80.
Harmon, Amy 2001. Remote rendezvous, worried travelers warm
up to videoconferencing, New York Times, (September 24):
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Hartman, Bob 1983. Implementing quality improvement. Juran
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Harvard Health Publications 2001. Mind and body medicine. (Boston,
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Hindle, Tim 1998. Manage your time. (New York: DK Publishing, Inc.)
Hutchings, Patricia J. 2002. Managing workplace chaos. (New York:
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Loehr, Jim, and Tony Schwartz 2001. The making of the corporate
athlete. Harvard Business Review (January): 120-128.
Pfeffer, Jeffrey, and Robert I. Sutton 2000. The knowing – doing gap.
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Chapter 10
Bossidy, Larry, and Ram Charan 2002. Execution. (New York:
Crown Business).
Gryna, Frank M. 2001. Quality planning and analysis, fourth edition.
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Kolb, Deborah M., and Judith Williams 2001. Breakthrough
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Chapter 11
Bond, J.T., E. Galinsky, and J.E. Swanberg 1998. The 1997 national
study of the changing workforce. (New York: Families and
Work Institute).
Browning, Lynnley 2003. A burnout cure that few companies
prescribe. New York Times (July 6) Money and Business
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Doherty, William J., and Barbara Z. Carlson 2002. Putting family
first. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC).
Friedman, Stewart D., and Jeffrey H. Greenhaus 2000. Work and
family – allies or enemies? (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Munck, Bill 2001. Changing a culture of face time. Harvard Business
Review (November): 125-131.
Reich, Robert B. 2001. The future of success. (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf).
Rose, Karol 2003. Work life effectiveness. Fortune. (September 29):
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Schor, Juliet B. 1992. The overworked American. (New York: Basic
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Chapter 12
None.

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About the Author

F
RANK M. GRYNA has degrees in industrial engineering and
more than 50 years of experience in the managerial, technolog-
ical, and statistical aspects of quality activities.
From 1991 to 1999, he served first as director of the Center for
Quality and then as distinguished university professor of manage-
ment at the University of Tampa. From 1982 to 1991, he was with the
Juran Institute as senior vice president. Prior to 1982, Dr. Gryna was
based at Bradley University, where he taught industrial engineering
and served as acting dean of the College of Engineering and
Technology. He is now distinguished professor of industrial engi-
neering emeritus. Dr. Gryna was also assistant professor of statisti-
cal quality control at Rutgers University and served in the U.S.
Army Signal Corps Engineering Labs. At the Space Systems
Division of the Martin Company, he was manager of reliability and
quality assurance.
In addition, he has been a consultant for many companies on all
aspects of quality and reliability programs from initial design
through field use.
He coauthored Quality Planning and Analysis with J.M. Juran and
was associate editor of the second, third, and fourth editions of
Juran’s Quality Handbook. His research project, Quality Circles,
received the Book of the Year Award sponsored by various publish-
ers and the Institute of Industrial Engineers. He has received recog-
nitions as a Fellow of the American Society for Quality, and a Fellow
of the Institute of Industrial Engineers. He has also received various
awards, including the Distinguished Service Medal, the Edwards

203

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204 About the Author

Medal, and the E. L. Grant Award of the American Society for

Quality; Engineer of the Year Award of the Peoria Engineering
Council; teaching and professional excellence awards; and the
Award of Excellence of the Quality Control and Reliability
Engineering Division of the Institute of Industrial Engineers. Dr.
Gryna is also the recipient of the Ott Foundation Award, presented
by the Metropolitan section of the American Society for Quality.
He currently does research and writing.

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Index

Page references in italics indicate figures.

A personnel for, 24
of process data, 25–26, 30–33
Abbott Laboratories, 170 for self-control, 53–54, 61–68
absentees, 19
of waste, 25–33
accidents, 8
Argyris, Chris, 100
acquisitions, 7
artificial intelligence, 125
ACXIOM, 168
athletes, 132, 135, 136
add on tasks, 3, 144
AT&T, 116
administrators, 50
Aubrey, Charles A., II, 100
See also managers, middle; audits, 23–24, 154
managers, upper autonomy, 55
Adobe Systems, 89 Avery, Christopher, 109
adoption assistance, 169
AES Corporation, 99
affluenza, 7
AFLAC, 89, 168
B
Aft, Larry, 5, 115 Bailyn, Lottie, 7
Ahn, Karla, 101–2 Baker, Edward M., 103
Aid Association for Lutherans, 105 Baldwin, Bruce A., 131
Alliance of Work/Life Professionals, Bank One Corporation, 92, 100, 108,
171, 175 147–48, 166, 169
Alston & Bird, 89 Baptist Health Systems (South Florida),
American Century Investments, 166, 92
169 The Basics of Process Mapping (Damelio),
American Express Consumer Card 32
Group, 105 baths, 194
Amgen Corp., 168, 169 Batson, Robert G., 37
Amoco, 58 Baxter Healthcare, 23–24, 96, 166, 170
analysis belly breathing, 134, 193
of flow diagrams, 32, 33 benchmarking, 38, 42, 85, 146, 150–51,
of job characteristics, 53–56 180
of mental demands, 53–54 Benson, Herbert, 132
of overload data, 143–44 BF Goodrich Chemical Group, 103

205

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206 Index

biofeedback, 134, 194 resources, insufficient, 13, 14, 20, 112,

black belts, 108–9 151, 178
Blistex, 135 selection/training of personnel,
blitz teams, 101 inadequate, 14 (see also s
Bond, James T., 4, 162 election of personnel; training
Booz Allen Hamilton, 170 of employees)
boredom, 39, 46, 56 standard of living, 7, 49, 90, 163, 164
Bossidy, Larry, 154 supplier inputs, 14, 15–16, 113, 178
bottlenecks, 40 surveys to identify, 150
boundaries of work processes, 25–26 vital few, 151
boundary managers, 99 work process control, lack of, 13, 15,
Bradley University, 24 112
brainstorming, 137 work process inadequate to
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., 170 demands, 13, 15, 113, 151, 178
Browning, Lynnley, 169 Census Bureau, 162
Bruch, Heike, 117 Centano, Ann, 101–2
budgets, 141 chairs, 58
bullying, 3 Champy, James, 36–37
bureaucratized service workers, 50 change
Bureau of Labor Statistics, 85, 162 in job design, 74 (see also job
burnout, 4, 44, 91, 148, 195 redesigning)
business travel, 127–28, 163, 187 radical vs. incremental, 36–38
resistance to, 141, 172
timing of, 147
C See also redesigning work processes
Charan, Ram, 154
capitalism, 181 Charles Schwab, 169
career development/planning, 48, 49,
Cheaper by the Dozen, 1
59–60, 83, 90, 148 checklist for manufacturing sector,
Carlson, Barbara Z., 165 62–68
Carter, Terry, 79 checklist for service sector, 68–75
Catalytica Pharmaceuticals, 135 Chick-fil-A, 80
Caterpillar Tractor Co., 25 childcare, 48, 49, 57, 60, 168
causes of work overload Christensen, Perry, 75
acquisitions, 7 cognitive distortions, 134
competitiveness among colleges, as sources of analysis
companies, 6 personnel, 24
computer problems, 14, 16–17, 113, commercialized service workers, 50
120, 151, 178 Commitment Flowdown™, 147–48
customer expectations, 7 communication devices, 162
downsizing, 7, 88, 112, 147 community relations, 171
family activities, 7 commuting time, 162
firefighting, 13, 14, 112, 178 competitiveness among companies, 6
globalization, 6–7 computer modeling, 37
goals/responsibilities, unclear, 13, computer problems, 14, 16–17, 113, 120,
15, 113, 178 151, 178
information overload, 14, 16, 113, conflicts, 103
125, 178 confrontation, fear of, 48
mergers, 7, 35, 49, 112, 147 consultants, external, 24

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Container Store, 89 disconnects, 30

contract workers, 123 Doherty, William J., 165
control sequences, 155 downsizing, 7, 88, 112, 147
cooperation, 157–58 dress codes, 58
costs, 8, 142–43, 146, 150 Drucker, Peter F., 123
craftsmen, mental demands on, 50 dual career ladder, 90
credit unions, 87 dust, 56
critical thinking, 134 Dutton, Jane E., 56
criticism, 3
cross-functional processes, 20, 21
cross-functional/project teams, 24, E
100–101, 102, 104, 108, 144
Cummins Engine, 89 Economic Policy Institute, 85
Edward Jones Company, 89, 168
customers
efficiency, 1, 40–41
complaints from, 45, 55
Eital, Tim, 83, 122, 128
expectations of, 7
eldercare, 48, 49, 57, 60, 168
external, 26, 27, 40
Eli Lilly, 168, 170
identifying, 25–28
e-mail, 16, 113, 124, 125–26, 128, 187
internal, 26, 40
EMC, 168
needs of, discovering, 25–26, 28, 40,
emotional capacity, 132, 133–34
163
empathy, 148
prioritizing, 26–28, 156
employees
suppliers as, 26
borrowing of, 3, 19, 137, 144
transferring activities to, 41
cost of losing, 89
decision making by, 46–47, 55, 98
D finding, 84–88
front-line, and customers, 8, 45, 55
Damelio, Robert, 32 insufficient number of, 33
data jobs matched to, 79–83, 122, 157,
analysis of, 143–44 178
on extent/seriousness of overload, perceptions of being overloaded,
142–43, 146 4–5, 14
on retention, 91–92, 146 rehiring of, 86
selecting, 126–27 relocation of, 168
work process, 25–26, 30–33 remote locations for, 87
See also measurement retaining, 89–92
Davis, Robert, 72 selection of, 14, 16, 64, 70, 80–84, 81,
DeGraaf, John, 7 113, 178
DeGroot, Jessica, 75 skills of, and job content, 46–47,
delegating authority/tasks, 98, 118, 185 57–58, 178
Deloitte and Touché, 91 social interaction of, 45, 47, 58–59
demand-control-support (DCS) model, surveys of, 50
50 tired, 3, 35, 148
DeMarco, Tom, 41 training of, 14, 16, 64, 70, 88–89, 93,
designing work processes. See redesign- 113, 123, 178
ing work processes transportation for, 86
desks, 58 Employment Management Association,
diet, 132, 194 80
Dimon, Jamie, 148 Employment Policy Foundation, 85

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empowerment/participation, 48, 68, Federal Express, 166

95–110, 178 feedback, 48, 55–56, 59, 65, 71–72
accountability arising from, 97–98 finance department, 23–24
definition/characterization of financial compensation, 48, 49, 60, 90
empowerment, 96–97 firefighting
fear of, 97–98 by middle managers, 119–21, 186
and fear of job loss, 96 as a warning sign, 3
guidelines for implementing, 98–99 as waste, 21
importance of, 97 work overload caused by, 13, 14, 112,
middle management’s role, 99–100 178
organizing work, 95–96 First Tennessee Bank, 166
ownership/responsibility Fletcher, Joyce K., 7
arising from, 97 flexible work options, 91, 166, 167, 168,
salary increases arising from, 99 172
and self-control, 100, 178 flextime, 46, 48, 49, 57, 60, 87, 157, 166,
and teams, 100–110 (see also teams) 167, 172
upper management’s role, 99–100 flow diagrams
the workforce’s role, 99–100 nonvalue-added steps identified in,
workforce teams, 95 39
endorphins, 115 for task identification, 54
energy, 117–18 for work processes, 25–26, 27, 28–32,
equipment, dangerous, 47 29, 32–33
ergonomics, 47 focus, 117–18, 134, 185
errors, 177 food services case study, 76
and injuries, 8 Ford Motor Company, 36–37, 58
inspections for, excessive, 22–23 Forrester, Russ, 100
and productivity/costs, 8, 10 Fortune, 88–89, 92, 96, 165, 175
rework to correct, 21–22 Frank Russell, 169
by tired employees, 3 Friedman, Stewart D., 75, 170
vital few, identifying, 40–41 frustration, 8, 44, 53, 58, 103
Esso Research and Engineering Fry, Dolores, 59
Company, 90 fun, 58–59, 119, 137, 154, 157, 183, 185,
Ethicon Endo-Surgery, 58 195
exercise, 115, 130, 132, 134, 194, 195 Fun Works (Yerkes), 59
Exercise (booklet), 195
exit interviews, 149
Exxon Mobil, 23–24 G
Galbraith, Kenneth, 141
F Galinsky, Ellen, 4, 162
Gallup Organization Inc., 92
face time, 8 Gantt, Henry L., 105
fairness, 48, 60 gathering areas, 58
Families and Work Institute, 4, 7, 175 gender equity, 7
family. See work-family issues General Electric, 37
Family and Medical Leave Act (1993), General Mills, 170
168 generational differences, 177
Fannie Mae, 170 Ghoshal, Sumantra, 117
fatigue, 50, 104, 136 Gilbreth, Frank, 1, 23, 136
fear, climate of, 95, 148 Gilbreth, Lillian, 1, 23, 105, 136

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globalization, 6–7 Human Resources Institute (University

goals, operational, 149 of Tampa), 175
goals/responsibilities, unclear, 13, 15, humor, 119
113 “100 Best Companies to Work For”
“God and Business” (Gunther), 135 (Fortune), 88–89, 92, 165, 175
Graniterock, 88–89 hurry sickness, 131
green belts, 108–9 Hutchings, Patricia J., 131, 136
Greenhaus, Jeffrey H., 170 hypnosis, 134, 193
Greyston Bakery, 135
Gryna, Derek S., 100
Gryna, Frank M., 62, 96, 100, 102, 106, I
152, 163
Guernsey, Lisa, 126 IBM, 37, 90, 170
IE. See industrial engineering
guided imagery, 134, 193
illness, 3
Gulati, R., 41
industrial democracy, 109
Gunther, Marc, 135
industrial engineering (IE), 1, 23, 32, 136
Gustafson, Carl, 92
inefficiency, 40–41
information management, 125–27,
H 186–87
information overload, 14, 16, 113, 125,
Hackman, J. Richard, 54 178
Hagedoorn, Mariëtt, 50 information technology (IT), 16–17,
Hallmark, 169 39–40, 87–88
hallways, 58 injuries, 8
Hammer, Michael, 36–37 inspections, excessive, 22–23
handoffs (white space), 40, 113 International Labor Organization
Harmon, Amy, 128 (United Nations), 5
Hartman, Bob, 116 internships, 86
Harvard Business School, 105 interruptions, 3, 45
Harvard Health Publications, 132, 195 intimidation, 3, 148
hazards, 47, 56 isolation, 58
health benefits/plans, 87, 166 IT. See information technology
health needs, 60
Hemsath, David, 59
Hewlett-Packard, 39, 58, 166 J
high performance model, 132–36
Hindle, Tim, 115 J.M. Smucker, 89
Job Content Questionnaire, 50
holidays, 119
job redesigning, 53–77
Home Depot, 169
ability/desire to regulate the
horizontal job enlargement, 54
process, 65–68
hours
autonomy, 55
flexible, 46, 48, 49, 57, 60, 87, 157,
career planning, 59–60
166, 167, 172
checklist for manufacturing
increases in, 5–6, 35, 162–63
sector, 62–68
keeping them reasonable, 156
checklist for service sector, 68–75
mental demands caused by, 44, 46,
control in doing the job, 58
121
family-friendly practices, 60–61
humanists, 109
feedback, 55–56, 59
human resources department, 23, 92,
job characteristics, analysis of, 53–56
143

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and job content, 57–58 Kim, Stacy S., 4

knowledge of what one is Klepfer, Jeffrey, 5, 44
actually doing, 64–65, 70–72 knowledge processes, 41
knowledge of what one supposed is knowledge workers, 123
to do, 62–64, 68–70 Kodak, 86
management support, 59 Kolb, Deborah H., 147
mental demands, analysis of, 53–54 Kritsas, John, 91
mental intensity of the job, 56
self-control, analysis for, 53–54,
61–68 L
skill variety, 54, 56, 57
social interaction on the job, 58–59 labor budgets, 141
laborers, mental demands on, 50
task identity, 54–55, 56
labor information, 85
task significance, 55, 56
lattice career paths, 90
time spent on the job, 57
Lawson, M. B., 41
work environment, 53
lawsuits regarding overtime, 3
for work/family, 75–77
leadership teams, 144
jobs
Leiter, Michael P., 91
control in doing, 45, 47, 50, 58
Leonard, James F., 85
descriptions of, 82
letters, 16
employees matched to, 79–83, 122,
Levering, Robert, 89
157, 178
lighting, 58
meaningfulness of, 46–47, 54, 56
Ligos, Melinda, 88
mental intensity of, 44, 45–46, 56, 178
line of invisibility, 30
rotation of, 89
Loehr, Jim, 132
security/lock-in, 48, 49
Long, Clayton, 136
shared, 57, 166
Longenecker, Clinton O., 157–58
social interaction on, 45, 47, 58–59,
lunch at one’s desk, 132
178
Lyons, Judith, 24, 123, 146
time spent on, 44–45, 46, 57, 178
working environment, 47, 57–58
See also job redesigning; job
satisfaction M
job satisfaction, 17, 177 management practices
and career development, 83, 90 command and control, 172
and job content, 83 mental demands caused by, 48–50,
key elements of, 89–90 148
and narrow jobs, combining, 39 and waste, 33
reductions in, 8 managers, middle, 111–38
and repetitive sequences, 39 actions to be taken by, 137–38,
See also job redesigning 180–81, 183, 185–89
journals, 16 bossy, 114
Juran, J. M., 61 business travel by, 127–28, 187
Juran Institute, 31 care and well being of, 131–36
cooperation among, 157–58
delegating authority/tasks by, 98,
K 118, 185
empowerment feared by, 97, 114
Kaiser Permanente, 101–2
empowerment/participation role of,
Karasek, Robert, 44, 50, 60–61
99–100
Katzenbach, Jon R., 109

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family responsibilities of, 131–32 Managing to Have Fun (Weinstein), 59

firefighting by, 119–21, 186 Mann, David W., 99
focus/energy of, 117–18, 134, 185 manufacturing sector checklist, 62–68
and fun, 119, 157, 185 marginal workers, 50
goals/objectives of, 130–31 marketing, 163
identity of, 112 Marriott Corporation, 8, 22, 164, 169,
information managed by, 125–27, 172–74
186–87 Maslach, Christina, 91
meetings held by, 124–25, 186 master black belts, 108–9
mental demands on, 45–46, 50, 57 Mayo healthcare system, 101
palliative actions by, 119, 157 Mazda, 36
people problems handled by, 79–80 MBNA America Bank, 168, 169
personnel issues for, 121–24, 186 McDermott, Robin E., 82
planning/administration by, 115–19, McDonald’s, 86
185 measurement
prioritizing of projects by, 116–17, and audits, 154
147–48, 185 guidelines, 125–27, 155
reductions in, 112 on retention, 91–92
as suffering from work overload, 2 of work processes, 25–26, 30
and teams, 102, 104, 106–7, 113–14 See also data
time spent on activities, 114–15, 123, medical leave, 60, 168–69
180 meditation, 130, 134, 135, 193, 194
turnover among, 8 meetings, 124–25, 186
and upper managers, 117–18, memos, 16
143–44, 156–57 mental capacity, 132, 133, 134
vacation time for, 143 mental demands, 43–51, 137, 157
and work-family programs, 172 analysis of, 53–54
work overload of, 130–31, 177 control in doing the job, 45, 47, 50, 58
managers, upper, 139–59 and job content, 44–47, 57–58, 178
actions to be taken by, 156–58, and long hours, 44, 46
179–80, 189–90 and management practices, 48–50,
change resisted by, 141, 172 148
convincing them of the problem, mental intensity of the job, 44, 45–46,
141–43, 150–51, 179, 189 56, 178
convincing them to act, 145–47, 150, by occupation, 50
179 social interaction on the job, 45, 47,
empowerment/participation role of, 58–59, 178
99–100 time spent on the job, 44–45, 46, 57,
extremes in, 139, 158 178
issues to be considered by, 147–49 mental health needs, 169
leadership demands on, 139–40 mentoring, 87
mental demands on, 50, 57 mergers, 7, 35, 49, 112, 147
and middle managers, 117–18, Met Life, 168
143–44, 156–57 micromanaging, 148
priorities of, 145–46 Microsoft Office, 40
process analysis authorized by, 25 middle managers. See managers, middle
proposals/presentations to, 146–47, Mind and Body Medicine (MBM report),
155 132–35, 195
reviews with, 154 moonlighting, 7
salaries of, 60, 90 Morgan, Ronald B., 82, 84, 90
work overload of, 1–2, 177 Moskowitz, Milton, 89

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mothers, working, 5, 49, 162, 170 Pareto priority index (PPI), 116–17
motivation, 50, 91 participation. See empowerment/
Munck, Bill, 8, 174 participation
Murphy, Erin O’Toole, 109 participative management, 109
muscle relaxation, 134, 193 part-time workers, 122, 166
music, 194 pastoral care, 87
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, 82 Paychex, 89
Peale, Norman Vincent, 135
people. See employees
N people building, 109
See also empowerment/
National Enterprise Operations Division participation
(Bank One), people with disabilities, 86
147–48 personality, 81–82
National Institute on Aging, 195 personal priorities. See work-family
National Workplace Bullying Advice issues
Line (UK), 3 personnel. See employees
Naylor, Thomas H., 7 personnel requisitions, 84–88, 122, 141,
negative thinking/emotions, 103, 150–51
133–34, 193 Pfeffer, Jeffrey, 127
negotiating, 147 pharmaceutical plant case study, 75–76
net conferencing, 127 physical capacity, 132–33
Neubert, Mitchell, 157–58 Pitney Bowes, 58
Nike, 169 planning/administration, 115–19, 185
Nohria, N., 41 Plan Vista Solutions, 123
noise levels, 47, 56, 57 pollution, 47
nonvalue-added steps, 22, 39 Pontiac Motor, 102
“no,” saying, 118, 185 position descriptions, 82
positive thinking, 134, 135
Potter, Beverly, 195
O power naps, 132
occupational groups, 50 The Power of Positive Thinking (Peale),
Oldham, Greg R., 54 135
“100 Best Companies to Work For” The Power of Positive Thinking in
(Fortune), 88–89, 92, 165, 175 Business (Ventrella), 135
operational goals, 149 PPI (Pareto priority index), 116–17
organization boundary, 30 primary processes, 20
Orion Advisory, LLC, 147–48 prioritizing of projects, 116–17, 147–48,
outside actions, 41–42 185
outsourcing, 86–87, 123 prison labor, 86
Overcoming Job Burnout (Potter), 195 problems
overtime, 3, 46, 57, 60, 137, 169, 179, 183 handling, 74–75
The Overworked American (Schor), 163 prioritizing, 121
sporadic vs. chronic, 119–20
See also firefighting
P procedures, clarity/completeness of,
63, 69
Pacific Bell, 87 processes. See work processes
palliative actions, 119, 157 process maps, 26
Pareto principle, 31, 40–41, 150–51 See also flow diagrams

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procrastination, 118 R
Proctor, William, 132
productivity, 8, 10 Rapoport, Rhona, 7
Raymond James Financial, 81, 83, 91,
products, prioritizing, 156
122, 128
professional contributors
recognition, 48, 60, 91, 103, 138, 183
care and well being of, 131–36
recovery events, 135–36, 138, 183,
identity of, 128–29
195
vacation time for, 143
recruiting, 80, 85–86, 87–88, 186
work overload of, 130–31
professional employee See also selection of personnel
redesigning work processes
organizations (PEOs), 123
to eliminate waste, 35–36, 156
professionals, mental demands on, 50
guidelines, 38, 38–42
project-by-project approach, 152–55,
need for, 25–26, 34
171–72
outside actions, 41–42
project teams. See cross-functional/
process inefficiencies, 40–41
project teams
process planning, 40
proposals/presentations, 146–47, 155
radical vs. incremental change,
proverbs
36–38
Arrogance diminishes wisdom, 48
and time/resources, 41
Don’t overwork a willing horse, 6
types of design changes, 35–36
A good example is half a sermon,
and work content, 38, 39–40
165
reengineering, 36–37
Habit is a shirt that we wear until
Reich, Robert B., 162, 164, 165, 168
we die, 39
Reichheld, Frederick F., 80
He who commences many things
rejuvenation, 122, 135–36, 138, 183, 186,
finishes but few, 148
195
He who stumbles over the same
relaxation, 130, 134, 135, 193–94
stone deserves to break his
Republic Bancorp, 89
neck, 31
resources
If your friend is made of wax, don’t
insufficient, 13, 14, 20, 44, 112, 151,
place him near the fire, 57
178
It is too late to come with the water
slack, 41
when the house is burned
and waste elimination, 20, 25
down, 121
respect, 48, 81–82, 102–3
A small hole can sink a big ship,
responsibilities, understanding of, 58
17
retirees, 86
Soft words don’t scratch the tongue,
retirement planning, 169
108
reviews of work, 64–65, 70–72
Talk doesn’t cook rice, 91
rewards, 48, 60, 103, 138, 183
Prudential Financial Inc., 170
rework, 21–22, 31, 32
Pruitt, Bettye H., 7
rituals, 135–36, 138, 183, 195
purpose, sense of, 135
Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company,
105
Q Rivera, Andy, 119
Rogen International, 126
quality culture, 67–68, 75, 96 Rogers Corp., 85
quality department, 23 Rose, Karol, 169
Quality Planning and Analysis (Gryna), Rosegrant, Susan, 72
96, 152, 163 routinized workers, 50

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S Steelcase, 58
strategy, development of, 149–55, 189–90
S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc., 170 stress
salaries, 60, 90, 99
childcare/eldercare as a source of, 57
sales revenue, 96
definition, 4
SAS Institute, 89
managing/reducing, 19–20, 132,
satellite broadcasting, 127–28, 187
136–37, 178, 183, 193–95
Schor, Juliet, 163
mental demands as producing, 44
Schwartz, Tony, 132
sources, 4, 8, 11, 136
Sears, 82, 124
See also mental demands
selection of personnel, 14, 16, 64, 70, students, 24, 85–86
80–84, 81, 113, 178 suggestion programs, 103
self-control, 53–54, 61–68, 100, 178 supervisors, 102–3
self-hypnosis, 134, 193
See also managers, middle
self-managing teams, 101, 104–8 suppliers
self-respect, 102 as customers, 26
Servicemaster Co., 86–87, 135 inputs from, 14, 15–16, 113, 178
service sector checklist, 68–75 transferring activities to, 41
shareholders, 172 surveys of employee opinions, 92
shifts for work, 19, 35, 162 Sutton, Robert I., 127
Shirley, Britt. M., 62 Swanberg, J. E., 162
shopping, love of, 163 symptoms of work overload, 3–4, 121
Silver, Larry, 81
single-parent households, 162
situational leadership, 109
Six Sigma, 23, 108–9
T
Skiba, Karen D., 101 Tai Chi, 194
skill variety, 54, 56, 57, 88–89 task identity/significance, 54–55, 56
slack, 41 Taylor, Frederick W., 104–5
sleep, 130, 132, 194 TD Industries, 89
Smith, Douglas K., 109, 121 teams, 100–110
Smith, Jack E., 82, 84, 90 blitz, 101
social capital, 109 cross-functional/project, 24, 100–101,
social interaction, 45, 47, 58–59, 178, 194 102, 104, 108, 144
social support, 135 effectiveness of, 108–9
software, 39–40 effects on employees, 102–4
See also computer modeling; facilitators of, 108–9, 124–25
computer problems importance of, 110
Southwest Airlines, 80 leadership, 144
specialists, career development/salaries management’s support of, 102, 106
of, 90 (see also under managers,
spiritual capacity, 132, 133, 135 middle)
spiritual support, 194 self-managing, 101, 104–8
sports, family participation in, 164 workforce, 95, 101–4, 106, 114
St. James, Elaine, 131 work space for, 58
stakeholders, 26 technicians, mental demands on, 50
See also customers technology
standard of living, 7, 49, 90, 163, 164 for boring jobs, 46, 56
standards, 63, 66–67, 69–70, 72–74 and customer expectations, 7
Starbucks, 166 and job security, 49

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and work hours, 162 Walker, Meri Aaron, 109

See also specific technologies Wallin, L., 60–61
telecommuting, 87, 166 warning signs of work overload, 3–4,
teleconferencing, 128, 187 121
telephone calls, 16 waste
temperature levels, 47, 57 amount of, 20
temporary help, 121, 123, 137, 183, 186 analysis of, 25–33
Texas Instruments, 90 eliminating, 20, 25 (see also redesign-
Theorell, Töres, 44, 50, 60–61 ing work processes)
threats, 3 firefighting, 21
301 More Ways to Have Fun at Work frustration as, 44
(Hemsath), 59 inspections, excessive, 22–23
3M, 90 and management practices, 33
time estimates for processes, 41, 185 monetary savings from eliminating,
Time Inc., 169 171–72
time management, 115, 134, 185 nonvalue-added steps, 22
Tawell, Roberta, 101–2 resources, and elimination of, 20, 25
training of employees, 14, 16, 64, 70, rework to correct errors, 21–22
88–89, 93, 113, 123, 178 unnecessary steps, 22
transfers, 83, 122–23 Watkins, Michael, 72
travel, business, 127–28, 163, 187 web conferencing/link, 127
trust, 48, 107 Wegmans Food Markets, 89
turnover, 8, 91, 148 weight control, 132
Weinstein, Matt, 59, 119
welfare to work programs, 86
U Wetlaufer, Suzy, 99
white space (handoffs), 40, 113
Ultimate Home Care, 59 Williams, Bob, 5–6, 137
upper managers. See managers, upper Williams, Judith, 147
urgent vs. important projects, 116 Williams, Tracy K., 37
Woodward Governor, 102
workaholics, 147
V work content, 38, 39–40
vacation time, 3 work environment, 47, 56, 57–58, 66,
value stream maps, 26, 28 103, 194
See also flow diagrams work-family issues, 161–76, 169
Vanguard Group, 169 changes in, 162–63, 178
Van Yperen, Nico W., 50 childcare, 48, 49, 57, 60, 168
variation, minimizing, 67 demographic facts, 162, 171
Ventrella, Scott, 135 eldercare, 48, 49, 57, 60, 168
vertical job enlargement, 55 family activities, 7, 164
videoconferencing, 127, 187 family-friendly practices, 48, 49–50,
Vista Plan Solutions, 24, 146 60–61, 148, 165–69
Volvo Cars, 60–61 family leave, 60, 168–69
gender equity, 7
and job redesigning, 75–77
W loss of family time, 162
medical leave, 60, 168–69
Waan, David, 7 overtime, 169 (see also overtime)
Wachovia Corporation, 170 pace of family life, 164–65, 177

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simplicity, 164 and customers, 25–28

See also work-family programs data analysis, 25–26, 30–33
work-family programs, 49 definition, 20
benefits of, 170–71, 178, 180 flow diagrams for, 25–26, 27, 28–32,
information sources on, 175 29, 32–33
instituting, 171–72 inadequate to demands, 13, 15, 31,
at Marriott Corporation, 172–74 113, 151
and middle managers, 172 vs. jobs, 34
services included, 168–69 maintaining, 67
top companies, 170 and management practices, 33
workforce teams, 95, 101–4, 106, 114 measuring, 25–26, 30
work groups, self-regulating, 48 and performance standards, 66–67,
work hours. See hours 72–74
Working Mother, 170, 175 types, 20, 21
work overload, overview of waste in, amount of, 20
actions to minimize, summary, 191 waste in, analysis steps for, 25–33
causes, 6–7 (see also causes of work waste in, forms of, 21–23
overload) See also redesigning work processes
complaining, 6 work sampling, 115
consequences, 8 work shifts, 19, 35
immediate steps to take, 137–38, 183 workweek length. See hours
people affected, 1–2, 11 Wright, I., 60–61
scope of the problem, 4–6, 34, Wrzesniewski, Amy, 56
142–43, 179
self-assessment, 9–10
viewpoints, 10–11 X
warning signs, 3–4, 121
work processes, 19–34 Xilinx, 89
adjusting, 67
analyses of, personnel for, 23–25
boundaries, defining, 25–26 Y
causes of problems in, 31 Yerkes, Leslie, 59
changing work vs. people, 19–20 yoga, 194
control, lack of, 13, 15

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