#2 – Know Your Resource Utilization Rate
If there is anything that every worker knows to be true, it’s that emails, meetings and other administrative tasks are unavoidable. Whether you like sorting through dozens of emails every morning or not, it’s a part of most jobs. This means that when you plan projects, you must keep in mind the resource utilization rate or the actual amount of an employee’s time they have available to work on projects. Most organizations use a resource utilization rate of 80% and while this is a good standard, you should really consider whether this standard is right for your organization. It’s also possible that certain teams or roles have different utilization rates.
One of the easiest ways to determine your resource utilization rate is to talk with employees. They might already have an idea of how much time they spend on non-project related tasks, but if not, you can ask them to keep track of their time for several weeks and detail exactly how much time is spent replying to emails, attending meetings, etc. In addition to speaking with employees, one of the biggest indications that your resource utilization rate is off is when projects are consistently finished before their completion date or past their completion date. While there are always things that can speed up or delay a project, consistently missing completion dates when those assigned to projects aren’t over or under allocated could be a sign that the resource utilization rate needs to be adjusted.