DETERMINING EMPLOYEE TIME ALLOCATION WITH WORK SAMPLING Dana Johnson, the manager of Michigan County’s welfare office, wants to be sure her employees have adequate time to provide prompt, helpful service. She believes that service to welfare clients who phone or walk in without an appointment deteriorates rapidly when employees are busy more than 75% of the time. Consequently, she does not want her employees to be occupied with client service activities more than 75% of the time.

APPROACH c The study requires several things: First, based on the calculations in Example 5, 833 observations are needed. Second, observations are to be made in a random, nonbiased way over a period of 2 weeks to ensure a true sample. Third, the analyst must define the activities that are “work.” In this case, work is defined as all the activities necessary to take care of the client (filing, meetings, data entry, discussions with the supervisor, etc.). Fourth, personal time is to be included in the 25% of nonwork time.

Fifth, the observations are made in a nonintrusive way so as not to distort the normal work patterns. At the end of the 2 weeks, the 833 observations yield the following results:

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NO. OF OBSERVATIONS 485 126 62 23 137 833 ACTIVITY On the phone or meeting with a welfare client Idle Personal time Discussions with supervisor Filing, meeting, and computer data entry