Skilled work : work for which a skilled worker is trained.
Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 3:10 am
Type and value creation of work: Value-added work decreases and overhead increases
The Asana study distinguishes between three types of work:
Work around work : Activities such as communicating about work, searching for information, switching between apps, dealing with changing priorities, and getting status updates (study abstract).
Strategic work : How do we achieve goals and what can we optimize?
The study found that home office has increased the proportion of work construction email list related to work and significantly decreased the strategic proportion. However, the proportion of qualified work has certainly increased due to the peace and quiet of home office. The results are:
53% work around work
40% skilled work
7% strategic work
My experience is that it is certainly not good for companies if more than half of the working time is spent on overhead work and we only spend 7% of the time thinking about how we can improve something. In general, this optimization is very important. Let's imagine:
Working time: 40h -> 21h overhead, 16h knowledge work and 3h
Salary 60,000 gross -> 31,800 euros for overhead per year per employee
So theoretically you only hire 1/2 FTE but you are happy to give them work for 1 FTE
But what could be the reason for this? The next two aspects show this. First and foremost, they are technology, processes and fatigue.
The Asana study distinguishes between three types of work:
Work around work : Activities such as communicating about work, searching for information, switching between apps, dealing with changing priorities, and getting status updates (study abstract).
Strategic work : How do we achieve goals and what can we optimize?
The study found that home office has increased the proportion of work construction email list related to work and significantly decreased the strategic proportion. However, the proportion of qualified work has certainly increased due to the peace and quiet of home office. The results are:
53% work around work
40% skilled work
7% strategic work
My experience is that it is certainly not good for companies if more than half of the working time is spent on overhead work and we only spend 7% of the time thinking about how we can improve something. In general, this optimization is very important. Let's imagine:
Working time: 40h -> 21h overhead, 16h knowledge work and 3h
Salary 60,000 gross -> 31,800 euros for overhead per year per employee
So theoretically you only hire 1/2 FTE but you are happy to give them work for 1 FTE
But what could be the reason for this? The next two aspects show this. First and foremost, they are technology, processes and fatigue.