Organise workload to make your valuable time count

Most of us complain that we do not have enough time to do the things we want to do: more time with the family, sport, holidays. Clients complain that we take too long to respond to their phone calls and letters, to do their deals and sort out their problems. This article looks at where we waste time, where we “lose” time and how we can maximise the time we put into work to make our firms more profitable in every sense.

In a typical week, a busy professional will spend at least two hours a day on non-productive work.  At £120 an hour this compounds to £60,000 a year per fee earner of “lost time”.  Much of this can be put to better use, such as directly chargeable client work, developing new client business, managing the firm or relaxing away from the office.  

Time wasters include cumbersome systems and procedures, poor work habits of the firm or certain individuals and ineffective use of existing resources.  In addition, professionals spend a lot of their time on areas of work which their clients regard as adding little or no value to their service delivery.  

Our ultimate goal should be to focus on delivering client satisfaction at the same time as reducing workloads and time spent on “unrewarding” work.  

Internal audit

First of all, we need to look at how we are spending our time.  Time recording systems are sophisticated enough to give us much of this information.  Individual and department printouts can identify specific areas of difficulty and indicate where changes need to be made.   

Where chargeable targets are not being met:  

• Are workloads spread unevenly? Are people finding delegation difficult?  
• Are fee earners not recording time fully? Do they understand how to operate the system?  Do they have enough time to record time properly?

Where chargeable targets are being met or exceeded:

• Is the firm able to fully recover those hours? Do clients pay without question and on time? Do clients come back to us for repeat work?
• If not, are people being asked to do work they do not know how to do?  Are they spending time “re-inventing the wheel” because styles are difficult to access?  Are the systems slow and cumbersome to use?  

Secondly, an overview of everyone’s timesheets will illustrate where people and departments are working effectively and where there are problems.  Some people simply seem to be better at organising their workloads, at getting files processed, at charging and recovering a fair fee.  What works for them can be distilled and applied across the rest of the firm.  Whilst I accept that it is easier to “process” more simple client work, such as debt recovery, it is equally important to manage the risk of complicated work by putting in place good checklists and training.  

Systems and work practices also need to be looked at to see where time is being lost and/or people feel frustrated about wasting time.  

If people are becoming irritated by slow computer software, constant interruptions from internal e-mails or background noise in open plan offices, then this needs to be resolved.  Inevitably time will be lost when people feel they cannot concentrate on difficult work, struggle to get through routine paperwork or spend time away from their desks moaning to other people about these problems.  Internal systems should support staff not exhaust them!  

External audit

In addition, we need to ask clients where they see value for money.  Professionals continue to be reluctant to ask clients for this sort of information, yet those firms who do speak directly to clients comment on how much they learnt as a result.  

Basic client questionnaires at the end of house purchase and sale provide information about levels of satisfaction.  More sophisticated face-to-face interviews with key clients allow questions about what aspects of our service they value and which seem of limited use.  This information should be fed back into our service delivery to allow us to re-allocate where we spend our time.  

Identification of bottlenecks, time stealers and under recovery

Once both audits have been completed and exemplars of good time and client management identified, the firm needs to make changes.  Systems may need to be adjusted, IT training given, delegation improved, bad habits and behaviour addressed.  In many cases, people simply have got used to poor working practices.  

This does not necessarily mean that the firm has an aggressive work culture.  Some happy firms are very inefficient where everyone spends their day trying to help each other with the result that little is achieved.  

In other cases, however, selfish behaviour has been tolerated without comment.  Certain individuals steal time from other people, often by hijacking their staff resources or dumping their poor time management on other people to sort out.  Managing partners complain of their own time being “leeched away” persuading people to do what they should be doing as a matter of course.  

Monitoring workloads is essential.  In general terms people work better when they have 120% of what they can easily cope with to do.  More than that causes high levels of stress.  Less than that, professionals become bored and disruptive.  If people are working long hours and still being unproductive, the whole culture and work practice of the firm has to be investigated and adjusted.  

The benefits

As outlined at the outset, time is finite.  Any audit or change in work practice cannot produce more actual hours in the week.  However, if we review and adjust how time is being spent, the benefits to us and our firms are significant. These include:

• Increasing profitability of client work and fee recovery;
• Decreasing write off of work-in-progress and non recoverable time;
• Reducing client complaints and claims;
• Reducing hours worked in the office;
• Improving service levels, client satisfaction and referrals, and;
• Releasing energy and time to do other things.  

All of this will benefit our relationships with other people, either directly through a feeling of satisfaction of work well done and indirectly by a reduction in overall stress levels.  

Have we the time to do it!?

Many people reading this will be saying “that’s all very well and good but how will

I find the time to do all of that, when I don’t have enough time to do what is currently on my desk?”

Quite often, resources are available. Cash room staff will already be looking at time recording printouts and write-offs.  Reception staff may have time to collate client feedback.  Given current market conditions, not all areas of the firm may be fully stretched.  Rather than have some people interrupting others because they do not have enough to do, they could be asked to tackle this project within a defined time scale.  This will help to re-energise them as well as deliver some of the above benefits quickly.  This in turn will help morale in the firm overall.

Conclusion

Time should not be wasted.  It is essential in any firm to constantly review its use of time.  Longer hours in the office are not the answer to underperformance or poor profitability.  Poor systems and procedures should be adjusted to support rather than frustrate people.  Bad work habits should be challenged and exemplars of effective use of time developed.  Clients should be asked to define what they see as time well spent.

Overall our ultimate aim should be to get through a normal working week with a feeling of time well spent.

Fiona Westwood runs her own management and training consultancy specialising in working with the professional sector.   A solicitor with 20 years’ experience of private practice, she established Westwood Associates in 1994.