CICI (Construction Industry Collaboration Initiative) Time Survey

Background

A Harvard Business Review (HBR) article published in 2014 entitled ‘Your Scarcest Resource: Time is money, but few organisations treat it that way’[i], whilst published 10 years ago is as valid today in its content as it was then.

In the second paragraph of this article the authors, Michael Mankins, Chris Brahm and Gregory Caimi wrote: ‘…most companies have no clear understanding of how their leaders and employees are spending their collective time. Not surprisingly, that time is often squandered—on long e-mail chains, needless conference calls, and countless unproductive meetings. This takes a heavy toll. Time devoted to internal meetings detracts from time spent with customers. Organizations become bloated, bureaucratic, and slow, and their financial performance suffers. Employees spend an ever-increasing number of hours away from their families and friends, with little to show for it.’

The authors, all of whom worked for the consultancy Bain & Company, examined the time budgets of 17 large corporations and found that:

• Companies are awash in email;
• Meeting time has rocketed;
• Real collaboration is limited;
• Dysfunctional meeting behaviour is on this rise;
• Formal controls are rare (to manage emails or meetings); and
• There are few consequences (for the squandering of time).

Through our work and interactions over the last 12 months we at CICI have increasingly become aware that the 6 points raised by the authors in the HBR article are as present and alive today as they were 10 years ago.

This Survey

Our belief is that the leaders and companies across the Construction sector are unaware that time, unlike other resources, is irreplaceable, for once spent it cannot be regained, and is being squandered.

Through this survey our aim at CICI was to gather data with the purpose of either confirming whether our thinking was right or not through 6 simple questions (we did not want to consume too much of people’s time). The goal was to then share this survey’s findings across the sector.

The survey was undertaken in April and May 2024.

[i] M. Mankins, C, Brahm & G. Caimi (2014) ‘Your Scarcest Resource’, Harvard Business Review, May 2014

Conclusions

• Companies across the sector are ‘awash with email’ communications that is consuming ‘time’. Emails are accounting for 10-15 hours or more a week or 22%-33% of a 45-hour week, some 1.1 to 1.6 days of a 45-hour week in the ‘writing, reading and answering of emails.’

• People are consuming considerable amounts of time in meetings. Over 67% of respondents reported to be spending between 3-5 hours or more of their day in meetings, between 1.6 and 2.75 days of a 45-hour week.

• The time people have for ‘real collaboration’ is limited. 59% of respondents said that they spent only 2 hours or less ‘working collaboratively with people on a project or contract’ with 62% of respondents saying that they spent less than 20% of their day ‘face-to-face collaborating with people in delivering a project or contract’. On a working day of 9 hours (based upon 45-hour week) this means that these people spend no more than 1 and ¾ hours a day or 9 hours in a 45-hour week face-to-face with people creating, building and maintaining the trust and inter-personal relationships key to both leading others, fostering and modelling collaboration and collaborative working.

• Formal controls are rare. Some 76% of respondents report that they are working 9 hours or more a day – a working week of 45 hours. 28% report that they are working days of 10 hours or more and 50 hours or more a week. There appears to be no ‘controls’ in place to understand the ‘squandering of time’ with long working hours being an accepted behaviour in the sector.

• The survey data points to Dysfunctional behaviours especially in email and meeting usage that may contribute to the long hours worked or conversely are responsible for them. Respondents report on spending about 1 and ¾ hours face-to-face a day with people, meaning that key leaders in a business have little or no time to spend with their people. This needs to change as does the amount of ‘time alone’ to think etc.

• There are consequences. The survey did not investigate how effective or ineffective the meetings people attended were nor the time spent in emails, but both unless controlled by greater self-discipline, improved time management, increased use of technology and AI are ‘consuming’ the resource of time ae well as contributing to the non-value adding activities that impact both productivity and profitability.

The survey poses further questions that need to be further addressed:

• Are these long hours leading to better productivity?
• Should organisations expect their employees to work these hours?
• Do these long working hours impact wellbeing around both physical and mental health?
• Is working 10 hours or more a day, fair on the partners/family of these people?