What percentage of your time at work are you actually working? 18

[Christine74]

I was just reading the "How many hours per week do you work?" thread and would like to ask all of you what percentage of those hours you spend at work are you actually *working* at your job, meaning that you're not chatting with your coworkers, or pretending to work when you're not, or posting to online message boards .

Personally, I'm probably only working productively for around two hours of each eight-hour shift, which works out to 25%. How about you?

Thanks,

-Christine

 

[p11100]

I’d say you’re a bit of a slacker Christine74. I myself maybe between 60 to 80 %, but I tell the boss I give a 100% each day

 

[vooter]

110%

 

[metengr]

Christine74
I am going to give you a star for your brutal honesty! Make sure your boss does not know your ET identity.

 

[Drej]

I like your gusto vooter, but by definition the most you can give is 100%. If by definition you could give more than 100%, then I'd be giving 150 billion trillion % .

If contributions to Eng-tips counts as working, then I'd say 100%, otherwise a fair bit lower.


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[IRstuff]

The absolute number is not necessarily relevant. The question is whether you are more, or less, productive that the population in your job.

TTFN

 

[MadMango]

IRstuff, that goes along with the saying "20% of the people do 80% of the work."

[green]"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."[/green]
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
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[bioengr82]

the absolute number is relevant when you are a consultant and need to be accountable for every hour of your time. that said, I'm billable ~90% of the day

 

[ScottyUK]

I am that 20%...



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If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!

 

[metengr]

Being billable does not equate to productive. Look at lawyers or consultant engineers.

 

[EddyC]

For me it generally depends upon how much work backlog the company has. I am averaging about 70% in a year. Is there a specific reason why you ask? If your employer is satisfied with your overall performance, that's all that counts.

 

[EngJW]

No one can put in 100% once you subtract getting a cup of coffee, checking the weather and news, talking about the football game, and maybe a personal phone call. I suppose some people will take the cell phone and laptop along while sitting on the can. So I would bet for a conscientious, efficient person, maybe 6-7 hours out of 8, or 6-7 hours out of 10 or maybe 6-7 hours out of 12.

 

[AndrewTX]

I see myself in the same area as P11100, I'm "actually" working about 80-85% of the time. Although, some of the chit-chat that goes on can be a little productive.

There are days were I am 100% but most days it is around 80-85% and can drop down to 70% if the day's work load is light.

 

[Maui]

It depends on what you call "working". If I am physically present in my place of business, and am willing and able to perform productive work, I believe that I can actually count 100% of my time spent there as "working" hours. My success in furthering the goals of my assigned projects(also known as productivity) is often hampered by the reluctance of others upon whom I depend to complete their part of the assignment. So in my opinion I may be working, but at the same time be less productive than I would prefer.

 

[ctopher]

90% working
10% Eng-Tips and learning

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP3.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

 

[tygerdawg]

one of my jobs was a project engineer / manufacturing engineer. Boss slammed me for never hitting my project completion date estimates. So for three weeks I recorded everything I did, times, frequencies, etc. Very anal-retentive engineer behavior. The results were that due to formal/informal meetings, potty breaks, coffee breaks, vendor discussions, co-worker discussions about work, co-worker BS sessions, etc., I could only reasonably expect 40% of each work day for productive work time. I used a copy a MSProject to plan my schedules. I would assign the number of hours to each task AS IF I was working at 100% efficiency, no interruptions or distractions. Then I would divide that quantity by 40% to get the correct number of hours required to do the task at the efficiency.

I started hitting all my schedules. I discussed my method with my boss, and he realized that there were wa-a-a-a-ayy too many meetings and other non-value-added activities. So he started managing better and my efficiency went up.

When I started freelancing, the efficiency went up to 85%-90% or more, depending upon how much coffee and phone calls I had to answer.

TygerDawg

 

[ivymike]

Herein lies the difference between those who haven't been there, but think there's a punchline to be found in there somewhere (and many do laugh), and those who have been there but might still be able to laugh, despite hearing it way too often:

bioengr82: the absolute number is relevant when you are a consultant and need to be accountable for every hour of your time

metengr: Being billable does not equate to productive. Look at lawyers or consultant engineers

It's my experience that consultants are more productive than their client counterparts. This is largely due to the fact that consultants can (must, really) focus on "value-added" work, instead of meetings, meetings, phone calls, meetings, delegating tasks to subordinates, meetings, starting to work but being interrupted by the phone, more meetings, and a few more phone calls. Back when I was a consultant, I averaged about 115% billable (because 100% was defined as 40hrs/wk of billable time, which is what the overhead rates were based upon) and about 10hrs of overhead on top of that to manage various projects. I don't think I ever exceeded 225% billable in any week, but (excluding vacations, holidays, and sick days, all of which your department is penalized for) I rarely was less than 80% billable. Billable work at my organization was time during which you could look the client in the eye (if asked) and explain to him exactly how the work you were doing at that instant added value to his project. For a time and materials project, being billable was what determined how much the company earned (or how quickly you could move on to the next job). For a fixed-cost job, being billable determined, well, pretty much the same things. The company would REALLY make money if they could send you out to a client site for a few weeks, squat a contractor at your desk to leave crumbs in your files, and send you work from another client to do from the hotel in the evenings (since you weren't doing anything else anyway).

At another job, I'd spend a good 60% or more of my time in meetings, and a large portion of the rest of my time answering questions posed by coworkers who either walked up or phoned. Before 7am I could be "productive," then it'd be 5pm or 6pm before I could get anything productive going again. One thing that helped to keep me sane was that I'd had a number of people helping me who were (somewhat) insulated from all the meetings and questions, and who could "keep the trains running on time" and get me the correct answers at a moments notice (well, more like 30mins notice).

 

[flamby]

I am at low 15%. Heck, I don't even pretend to work and browse eng-tips in office! But I am careful in clearing whatever work there is and am available on my seat to answer all those calls from shops. That's all of those 100% my employer expects from me.

Ciao.

 

[corus]

The definition of working does not necessarily mean the time putting pen to paper or doing manual work. A director once told us that a lot of business was done on the golf course on a Friday afternoon. While we sniggered at that he claimed it was productive time. Equally I regard chatting about football/politics/sex/golf (in no particular order) as productive time. Call it team bonding if you like. I've worked in places where people came in sat down and pretended to work all day. They made mistakes in their work, were generally depressed, and the company had a high turn over of staff. I was glad to get out too.
To answer the question, I work 100%, in one way or another.

corus

 

[SomptingGuy]

I often visit client sites as part of my (consulting) job. What always amazes me is that you can always find departments where one person is carrying the others. It seems that the bigger the company is, the higher the doss:work ratio gets. Values of 4-5 are common.