Waiting time as a productive thinking time

Lorraine (not her real name) is a friend on Facebook. She's a human resource (HR) manager of a small factory who inquired about my free management consultation.

- REY ELBO

I agreed on the condition that we do the consultation via Zoom as it offers the best service to all busy managers - it limits conversations to 40 minutes. She asked: "How do we make our workers productive for the last 15 minutes before clocking out?" I took a peek at her profile picture showing her Mona Lisa smile which is often interpreted as a half-smile and half-grief at the same time by many people.

Suddenly, I remembered my experience with male and female workers. The male workers would start preparing to leave the office premises 15 minutes early under the guise of an extended toilet break. Their female counterparts do it 25 minutes early. The routine is often repeated in the morning when both genders punch their fingers in the biometric system.

Lorraine was tasked to resolve the problem of the workers doing unproductive things before they clock out at 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. When factory operators are on the last batch of drying a product, it gives them an average of 15 minutes waiting time before the 4 p.m. bell.

When the workers were seated doing nothing, they were charged for violating their code of conduct against doing unproductive work. Their usual defense was "drying time" of a product they're making for the day.

I told Lorraine that penalizing the workers for their idle time would not solve the issue. "How about cleaning their work station?" I asked Lorraine. She replied there's not much to clean. If there was, the cleaning can be done in three minutes or less. That leaves us with 12 unproductive minutes.