True or False: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion

Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time available for it’s completion.

What this means is that normally, if you were to be given 1 hour to finish 3 tasks, you will probably consume the full hour just to complete those 3 tasks at hand.

Had you been given 45 minutes to finish the exact same 3 tasks, within reason, you would most likely be able to complete it as well, though probably in a more rushed manner.

But the thing is, had you been given a 1.5 hour deadline to accomplish the same, you would still probably submit the completed tasks just before the deadline.

My personal experience and observation:

I’ve worked with a good number of captive and outsourced contact centers and BPOs in with both front and back office operations, and below is what I’ve observed.

The effect of Parkinson’s Law on Back-Office functions is that as the volumes go up, people processing the work items tend to work faster and get more done. Why? Because they still want to go home on time.

Obviously this “hack” will work to an extent, as beyond a certain point, you may have to have them do overtime just to complete the remaining tasks.

On the other hand, for Front-Office functions, apparently the opposite happens. As the volume of work goes up, so does the handling time. Why? Because people get tired, and they need to rest. Call center agents utilize the hold time or after call work to take a break, drink water, or rest their voice.

Conclusion:

Once again, this is based on my personal observation and experience having been doing this for over 10 years.

If you’re going to work on a project where handling time, productivity utilization, or other time or speed-based metric, I would recommend you still test this hypothesis if you’re dealing with front or back-office departments.

Good luck!

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