Delegation at Workplace & its Density

PreScript: I hate using unnecessary jargons and management terms to make stuff sound sophisticated and credit-worthy. In fact, whenever I read the words like ‘strategy, restructuring, paradigm shift, holistic, empowerment’, I feel like puking. So, don’t mind below text being simplistic and to the point. Visit HBR & McKinsey for puke-worthy articles. Enjoy.

In teams, there are always some who are overburdened and some who are relatively not. And then there are some who are mostly found in breakout areas and smoking zones. Irrespective of the workload, it’s an important task of a TL/Manager to frequently keep shifting the load within team members so that no one burns out. It might be a better and effective way of controlling attrition than many others, like promising promotions and on-site. A monthly check of the work load on various resources can be a small but big way to improve both employee productivity and project deliverables.

However, knowing the current load on a person is not as objective a task as it seems, especially in bigger teams. One of the simplest ways to find this is by using email usage density of employees. In IT/ITES and allied industries, email continues to be the primary mode of communication. Tasks are assigned by emails, delivered by emails. It might not be absolute, considering there are modern social-media-like platforms where the team can collaborate, but their use is not that widespread, especially in Indian industry. Also, coding is done outside the email zone. But invoking the infamous ‘bell curve’, we can assume 80% of the industry use emails.

What we can do is very simple. At the end of the month, ask each employee to prepare a table/chart with names of all/major team members and number of emails received & sent to each. I have attached a sample sheet for demonstration. This data extraction can be manual from outlook (may take about 10 mins) or there may be some automation technique out there which I am unaware of. But 10 mins a month should not be a big deal.

The TL/Manager will get the data for all/major employees and will plot a very simple bar-graph in excel (or pivot) to get a quick view of who all are being chased the most and by whom. A sample demo available in the sheet. Uses can be many, if properly applied. There will be some roles which are PMO/coordinator, so they will be sending high numbers of emails. Project Managers will have a high spike in graph considering they are in CC in many emails. But a TL/Manager can quickly identify the standing of his/her team and dig deep to take proactive actions. A quick Pareto can be applied to check the top 20-30% of outliers in the graph and a chat with them can help diagnose and improve the situation. This analysis can also be coupled with the modern but unproven ‘continuous-feedback’ performance management systems, adding more weight to it.

This is cheap (virtually zero cost), effective and result-oriented analytics.