What is work sampling?
Work sampling is statistical technique for determining how workers spend their time and has been practiced since the 1930’s. The work sampler would come up with a list of activities that workers can be observed doing and then taking random observations of workers for a period of time to come up with an estimate of how workers spend their time. The technique is particularly useful to analyze non-repetitive or irregularly occurring activities (ex. maintenance work, construction, healthcare professionals, etc). Because work sampling normally extends over a long period (2 to 4 week), occasional irregularities such as lighter or heavier work days do not overly affect results.

When to apply work sampling
1. In order to get a baseline of staff utilization. Having a baseline measurement of current staff utilization would allow a decision maker to see if more workers are needed or if staff need to be redistributed in order to more effectively use the workforce.
2. When management is trying to figure out how many staff are required for future work load increases or decreases.
3. To objectively prove or disprove notional saying of workforce efficiency / inefficiency.

 Some work sampling watch-outs
Building the business case with workers

Worker engagement and participation in the study is absolutely necessary in order to get an accurate and fair representation of the workflow utilization levels. The process for launching off a work sampling study has to be transparent to the workers, engaging them before the launch of the study to explain the concept, what it would mean to them on a daily basis and what the purpose of the study is. Handling worker questions and concerns before and during the study is absolutely necessary in order to ensure the study is carried out in a fair manner.

Conducting a work sampling study can also be a great way to address some issues that the workers feel are close to heart. These could be issues about perceived unfairness in workload distribution between roles, perceived long wait times for getting the tools, materials or approvals they need to do their work, perceived unsafe or undesirable work conditions, etc. As such, a well designed study can gather information on several different issues, providing numerical evidence to support decision making.

Furthermore, a well trained work sampler can engage workers on an individual level during the study, gather information on their concerns and improvement suggestions, and related it in a summarized format to management. This provides workers with another avenue for getting positive changes made in their work place as a result of the study.

Working in unionized environments
Unionized work environments can appear to be more challenging for management to work with when trying to make changes to the work environment, staffing and relate processes. This does not have to be so however and work sampling studies have been carried out in government union environments many times by our team. Similar to the points mentioned in the previous section, the union and its representatives need to be engaged in the process so that the study is conducted in a fair and transparent manner. The study results are analyzed applying statistical expertise to ensure that the results are significant and accurate enough if they were to be challenged in court. In the extreme case that the union disagrees with the study findings and challenges them, they can be encouraged to conduct their own study and compare results. From our experience, this is a rare occurrence but if the union does end up challenging the initial study, a properly conducted study would yield the same results several times over.   

Recruiting internal resources to help with data gathering
Sometimes it can be costly to hire several work sampling / industrial engineering professionals to conduct the data gathering in your organization, especially if you facilities are quite large and/or the number of workers observed is small. In such cases, internal resources can be trained to work with a hired professional to execute the work sampling study and keep the costs low.

When selecting the internal resources it is important to pick individuals that would be perceived as neutral to the workers so that the workers feel comfortable around them without the negative perception that management is monitoring or watching them. Individuals who are personable and are comfortable answering staff questions are preferred since they should be able to easily integrate into the staff work environment. The selected work sampling helpers would be expected to answer staff questions about the study as they collect data and escalate or resolve any concerns from staff that might arise. 

There is also a huge benefit in having internal resources involved in the work sampling study since they would get trained on how to conduct a work sampling study and would have the ability to replicate a similar study in another area of the organization if so desired. Statistical expertise for the analysis of the data can be gained by a trained internal analyst or by leveraging the original professional resource.

Summary and Next Steps
Work sampling is a great technique to use if you would like to get a better understanding of how efficient your workforce and to get the numerical evidence you need to do something about it. If you would like to get more information about launching a work sampling study in your organization please contact us by phone or by providing your contact information below.