Share thisThis question was sent in by a reader and is no doubt one that many people are dealing with on a daily basis. We asked Michele Whelan with The Jackson Laboratory to provide a few thoughts in response to this question.
An appropriate workload for a technician and/or team is going to be based solely on how you, the manager, want it to be and how the group/department operates. It might help to envision the workload distribution as an equation:
(A) Total Time Available – (B) Non-study work = (C) Workload
For portion A of the equation, you need to consider each technician’s daily rotation. Many have the standard 40 hours/week at 8 hours/day for 5 days, but there seems to be a high demand for requesting the 40 hours/week at 10 hours/day for 4 days. You may also have alternate schedules as well, instead of the regular Monday through Friday. In terms of time available, you can use the time technicians are on site just the same. In regards to the non-study work, portion B, this should encompass the time that is not spent in the animal facility. These would be tasks such as meetings, individual and/or group trainings and deskwork. While they are important facets of the day to day operations, the time required does not get included. Also in this category would be lunch time and breaks, however long they may be. By the end, for portion C, you should have the remaining time estimated for the animal work and study specific support. Animal work can be cumbersome if it needs to occur at multiple times throughout the day. Study support is not limited to just the hands on work (injections, monitoring, etc.) but you should also consider paperwork set up and any prestudy prep and communication. Something that tends to be overlooked is other assigned projects such as supply monitoring, sanitization, etc.
For example, a technician that works Monday through Friday, 8 hours per day starts with just that. Let’s say that they receive 30 minutes for lunch and two 15 minute breaks throughout the course of the day. This particular individual also has a 1 hour meeting on Friday morning. All in all, this specific technician is available on Mondays–Thursdays for a 7 hour workload and on Friday for 6 hours.
Following the above equation will assist in the time allotment of a workload, but you will still need to consider the capacities in which you fill that workload. In the previous technician example, she/he is available for 6 or 7 hours of work, depending on the day of the week. It is important that what is expected of them does not exceed that. For this, begin by defining the job responsibilities that each individual carries, as well as the team as a whole. Each task will have its own estimated time in which it is expected to be completed in. You may find by doing this that each technician may have a different possible volume of assigned work. This is absolutely acceptable. It would be valuable to include the members of your team in this part of the process to ensure that you include all potential time required tasks. It would also be advantageous, for current and even future purposes, to make sure that you have a basic framework for both minimum and maximum workload instances.
ALN thanks Michele Whelan, JAX® Services Project Manager, for taking the time to respond to this question. The Jackson Laboratory; www.jax.org.