Types of Waste in the Office and Their Relative Magnitudes

Thesis published by Douglas C. Wood on November 5, 2014

 Introduction

The issue of wasted time in office environments is two-fold: the lack of a functional model and the lack of measures of office waste. A functional model will clarify both measures and solutions, and dollar-based measures will provide impetus for continuous executive support in solution implementation. To fill this gap , a survey was used to collect data on office waste in seven categories: meetings, wasteful distractions, messaging, arrangements (physical and virtual), health issues, engagement, and poor results and/or workflow. Demographic data allowed stratification by type of industry, manager level, and organization size. Summary conclusions are:  The largest categories of office environment waste measured by cost are workflow, distractions, and messaging (including e mail). These differences are found to be different at a 0.05 level of significance. The cost of office waste is lower for non-supervisory workers, and higher for middle level workers, but not for executives. There is no significant difference in the cost of office waste by manufacturing vs. other industries, or by small- to- mid size vs. large organizations.

Office work categories and waste descriptions

Meetings: face to face and virtual, with one or many; waste is often time spent with limited outcomes

E Mail and other messaging: including telephone work; waste is seen in time finding contacts, sorting, and organizing results

Information storage and retrieval due to physical and virtual arrangements: searching for information or physical items; waste is seen in time delayed, recreation of lost materials and in dead end searches

Distractions and/or lack of engagement: waste is time lost by not working on priority issues

Poor results and/or workflow: rewriting, revising calculations, etc.

Health issues: time off due to stress, injury, eye strain, exercise during working hours, time spent managing health insurance, making or taking appointments.

Motivations: lack of team support or social interactions, lack of interest, inability to see personal rewards for full work, slower work due to a perceived or real lack of compensation, inadequate challenge, or too- hard challenge

Survey results: Calculations for waste cost in descending order

Workflow            $4759

Distractions        $3447

Messaging           $3307

Motivation          $2835

Meetings             $1569

Information        $1509

Health                   $486

Total                      $17912

© 2014  Douglas C. Wood  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Link to full study: https://ucmo.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01UCMO_INST/fqt33n/alma991006841281905571