Article ID: BM030
Category: Business and Management
Title: The Man Who Wasn't There

Who pays the bill for the man who wasn't there? As I write this, Christmas holiday rotas are on the agenda. It's that time of the year when everybody in IT Services will get out of the office for a few days for a much needed rest. But when they come back, there is always the question of whether we missed them, all of them, all the time, or whether indeed the department could get by with fewer people. See that man there? While he was away, did the department actually cope any less well? Didn't everybody just pull together more, up their work rate and make just that bit more acute, the angle of their shoulders to the wheel? And if they can do that temporarily, then why not always? And if always, do we actually need to continue to pay for that man there?

You can't blame the accountant for asking the question. Business is business and accountancy is a business tool. It is a necessarily narrow form of human mental activity. It sees numbers and only numbers, of only money, against a backdrop of that most primeval of human emotions, fear. Accountancy is not a sophisticated pursuit and there is little scope in its thought processes for subtlety. All accountancy wants to do is 'account for' expenditure, which it must do in terms that make sense in its own limited world of amounts of currency. But we pay attention to accountants because they can tell us whether we're going broke or not. So when an accountant asks for an explanation of the fiscal point of That Man There, the explanation must be provided, numerically, with appropriate, humbled deference to the Fear of Spending Too Much Money.

This is the root question - do we need to continue to pay for the man who wasn't there? If you get asked that question, ever, you've already failed. What it means is that in the absence of anything else against which to judge your group's performance, they are judging you by their own standards and criteria - which criteria by definition exist in their circumstances not yours and therefore cannot be entirely relevant to your situation - and thus are no basis for sound judgement because they must necessarily be incomplete. But you let it get that way. It is the absence of judgement otherwise that left them to make up their own way to judge you. All the question does is demonstrate that somebody who otherwise does not understand you is basing a judgement on that limited understanding. You shouldn't have left it this long.

There must have been some decision criteria by which the man who wasn't there came to be on the team in the first place. There will have been a process. Somebody must have signed a headcount requisition. Somebody must have decided to dole out some money, to accept a fiscal liability, to take the rap for the expenditure. Whoever that was must have had a reason that matched their financial authority. We must find out what that reason was, how it was composed and whether it is still valid. From that alone, we can find out on what basis is made the decision to hire or retain somebody around here.

Of course there may always be a twist to the logic. The company hires people and thus must spend money, but it chooses to hire them not on the basis of money but on that of politics, or who's asking for it. If these were the channels used to hire the man who wasn't there, then all that is happening is the that the question is being asked later than it should have been - it was not properly asked at the start, so the justification is being examined afresh.

In that case, you've no choice - you have to prove statistically that there is a real need for the man who wasn't there and then convert those statistics into something that can be rendered as money somewhere in an accounting system.

It may be that the accountant posing the question sees no individual benefit from the man who wasn't there and so notices no difference during his absence. But just because one person does not see a benefit does not mean that none is produced. So what exactly does each member of your staff produce on a regular basis? People are asking what they are paying for. You're going to have to show them. Which means you are going to have to monitor and then prove the productivity of your staff.

But don't be like a speed camera. Speed doesn't cause accidents, gormlessness does. But because there is no reliable measure of gormlessness, the accountants, being accountants, measure what they can rather than look for a way of measuring something really useful. In other words, don't just assume a number to be useful just because it's the only number you have. So you can count the number of helpdesk enquiries he does - so what? Is that the only way he fills his time and produces a benefit? What else does he do and who gains as a result and by how much, and in what way does that save or make somebody some money and how much?

You don't have to do this all the time - it can be too onerous - but it is useful to have an occasional snapshot of the typical expenditure of time of all your staff in all the ways that time is consumed and the benefits accrued from its consumption.

Going beck to the question, if it has been suddenly asked, then we can assume that the answer is unknown - which means that there is currently no such measurement regime in place. Ah. Oh dear. Prepare yourself for a surprise. If you start measuring out of the blue, the first thing you'll get is fear from your staff. I mean Wow, they say people are frightened of dying but that's nothing compared to how frightened they are of being judged (which is why people are frightened of dying anyway, let's face it).

But don't buckle. Remember that by measuring like this, you are demonstrating to your staff what is actually important. They can benefit from this - now they know what matters, they can realise that so satisfy those who would judge them, all they have to do is produce against what is measured - which is focussed effort rather than just activity and overwork for its own sake.

And another thing - start measuring output and I guarantee output will go up - so you can see the real amount of work your department can do. But then if even you didn't know that in the first place, it's no surprise the accountant asked that question is it? Best start measuring now before the question occurs to the accountant the next time one of your men isn't there.

Noel Bruton is an independent consultant and trainer who assists IT Services groups and helpdesks to improve the service they provide. Based in the UK, he has a worldwide clientele since establishing his consultancy practice in 1991. He is the author of 'How to Manage the IT Helpdesk - a Guide for User Support Managers' (ISBN 07506 49011) and 'Managing the IT Services Process' ISBN 07506 57235). He writes extensively in the IT press and is a popular speaker on the IT Support conference circuit.

For more information on on Noel Bruton's services, either call +44 (0)1239 811646 or email noel@noelbruton.com.