What is capacity planning?
Capacity planning means ensuring you have enough employees to complete the necessary tasks. The number of employees you have and how hard they’re expected to work dictates how much work you can do in a given day, week or month. For example, a team of six people working at 100% all the time can do the same amount of work as a team of 12 working at 50%. It might seem like having your workforce operate at 100% at all times is the most effective way to complete work, but this premise doesn’t account for the humane treatment of your employees.
What is variability in capacity planning?
Variability is an important element in capacity planning for employers. In this context, variability refers to the level of inconsistency in work quality or punctuality. A high rate of variability means the work employees are producing is inconsistent, while a low rate of variability indicates more consistent results. When you have a high rate of variability, you can work to stabilize your results by reducing the workload of employees below 100%. This is important because workers have off days, sick days or unexpected delays in their schedules that impact their efficiency. When you expect everyone to operate at 100% all the time, your company may struggle to meet deadlines, among other problems.
Why full capacity planning doesn’t work
Capacity planning is important for a business to succeed, and when a business operates at full capacity, clients are receiving products on time, profits are stable, and employees are being delegated tasks appropriately so they’re always maximizing their productivity. While this looks great on paper, the reality is that full capacity planning can hurt your employees. When managers expect their employees to be busy at all times, viewing being busy as being productive, you can cause your workers to suffer from burnout .
When you know your employees’ capacity and always utilize them at 100%, it’s a sign you are pushing your staff too hard. You can schedule workers at 85% to 70% utilization (depending on your variability) and see better results than if they’re always working at top gear.
What are the downsides of full capacity planning?
Full capacity planning has several potentially negative outcomes in employee engagement. According to a TORK survey, approximately 20% of American employees are concerned their managers will think they don’t work hard enough if they take their lunch break. Also, 38% of employees said they don’t feel encouraged to take their assigned lunch break, so they skip lunch or eat at their desks. Unfortunately, when employers discourage employees from taking regular breaks, workplace productivity and morale suffer.
Here are some undesirable outcomes of expecting your employees to work at full capacity to meet your production demands and deadlines.
Employees experience increased stress levels
When employees work long hours under pressure to demonstrate to an employer that they’re putting in 100% all the time, they’re likely to experience increased stress levels. This has implications such as health problems (resulting in time off work and decreased productivity) and lower morale among workers.
According to a ComPsych StressPulse Report, 62% of employees have high stress levels at work and report experiencing extreme fatigue or feeling out of control. The same report found that 41% of employees cite their workload as the primary cause of stress in the workplace.
Sedentary lifestyle
A paper published in 2021 indicates a dire situation of overwork in America. Three-quarters of a million people are dying because they’re developing ischemic heart disease and stroke due to longer-than-average work hours. When employees sit at their desks for more than the typical 40 hours a week, it becomes a health risk that’s exacerbated by their stress levels. A Gallup poll found that the average American workweek is 47 hours, not 40, and 11% of full-time employees are working 41-49 hours per week, 21% are working 50-59 hours, and 18% are working more than 60 hours each week.
Decreased performance
The ComPsych report found that 34% of employees lost 1+ hours per day of productivity due to stress.
High stress levels due to workload expectations can impact your company’s performance in other ways, such as employee absenteeism. According to the ComPsych report, 31% of employees miss between 3 and 6 days of work per year due to overwhelming stress levels.
Why is downtime important to employee engagement?
Employee downtime is often seen as a problem, but employers should strategically prioritize it to improve employee engagement levels. Downtime can be as simple as ensuring employees take and enjoy their allotted lunch breaks.
According to TORK’s Take Back the Lunch Break survey, North American employees who take their daily lunch break score higher on various engagement metrics, such as job satisfaction, likelihood of working with the same company for a longer period and the chance of recommending their employer to others.
The survey shows that employees who took their lunch breaks were 8% more likely to be satisfied with the experience of working for their employer than those who didn’t take their allotted break. Those who took a lunch break also reported being 7% more efficient at work than co-workers who worked through lunch.
Some time for employees to slack off at work can be a positive thing because this leads to socializing with colleagues or thinking creatively. Time where the brain is not under pressure to complete a certain task can lead employees to be more productive and better problem-solvers.
Tips for encouraging employee engagement
Besides managing your employee‘s workload and working hours effectively, there are other creative ways to boost engagement among team members.
Eat together
Spending time together as a team helps your employees bond, develop trust and feel valued at work. You can build these relationships by hosting team lunches or fun snack breaks once a week where there’s no expectation of work or productivity, simply a chance for staff to socialize.
Provide creative tools
Let your employees be creative to boost their productivity and challenge themselves. One way to do this is by encouraging them to use innovative technology and software tools, whether that’s learning a new program or working collaboratively through a file-sharing platform.
Be flexible with breaks
It’s challenging for employees to sit in one place and focus on a single task for hours at a time. While a traditional lunch break can be valuable, you can improve employee engagement by encouraging your team to take more regular breaks when they feel like it. Having the option to take breaks can help employees decompress, clear their minds and refocus when they return to their desks.
